Sunny Spring Afternoon at Lough Coole

Sunny Afternoon at Lough Coole in County Galway, Ireland.

A sitting area along Lough Coole in the former Lady Gregory Estate in County Galway invites visitors to relax and take in the scenery that inspired much of the work of Nobel prize-winning poet William Butler Yeats.

As Lady Gregory’s guests at the estate, many luminaries from the Irish Literary Revival including Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Edward Martyn,  John Millington Synge and Sean O’Casey, sought refuge here from late 19th and early 20th Century life in a changing Ireland.

Yeats wrote his famous poem, “The Wild Swans at Coole,” about this very lake and the majestic swans that visit its waters each year.

Coole Park now is a nature reserve open to the public all year with a nicely maintained walled garden and kilometers of hiking trails meandering through its 1,000 acres.