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The cheery market town of MIDLETON , about ten miles east of Cork, is best known for being the home of Jameson Irish whiskey. The Jameson Heritage Centre tour is a highly polished promotional affair, taking you through the distillery and culminating in a whiskey-tasting session (March-Oct daily 10am-6pm, last admission 4pm; Nov-Feb Mon-Fri tours at noon & 3pm only; GBP3.95/?5.02). The best place to eat is The Farm Gate , Coolbawn (tel 021/463 2771), a deli and restaurant selling and serving fresh local produce (closed Mon-Thurs eve & all Sun). For accommodation, try the hostel An Stor (IHH; tel 021/463 3106), a converted mill on Drury's Lane. Four miles to the south is the sleepy, historic village of CLOYNE . One of Ireland's earliest Christian foundations, the monastery of St Colman, was established here in the sixth century. In medieval times the village that grouped up around it continued to be of religious importance with the establishment of the see of Cloyne, a diocese which extended well into County Limerick. Reminders of this era, though, are few. There's a fine tenth-century round tower , from whose top, 100ft up, there are superb views (key from Cathedral House; GBP1/?1.27), and you can also visit St Colman's Cathedral , a large building of warm, mottled stone originally built in 1250 but disappointingly restored in the nineteenth century. Inside are the grand and grim seventeenth-century Fitzgerald of Imokelly tomb and the alabaster tomb of George Berkley, the famous philosopher who was bishop here from 1734 to 1753. An Egyptian tau cross and the St Anthony's cross on the cathedral doorway are faint traces of earlier Mediterranean influences. Off the Cloyne-Ballycotton road, Ballymaloe House (tel 021/465 2531, www.ballymaloe.ie ; over GBP130/?165.07) is an exceptional restaurant , one of the most famous in Ireland; a meal here will cost you around GBP32/?40.63. Accommodation is in a large seventeenth-century manor house set on a four-hundred acre farm. Five miles on from Cloyne, BALLYCOTTON is a pleasant enough spot, with a little quayside, fine cliff walks for miles to the west, and a beach half a mile away. There's fine guesthouse accommodation at Spanish Point Restaurant (tel 021/464 6177; GBP40-55/?50.79-69.84): bright and airy, it's in a terrific spot and has a beautiful conservatory/dining room overlooking Ballycotton Bay. The Cliffstop Cafe (closed Mon & Tues, plus Sept-May) is worth the steep climb to the west of the village for good pizzas, seafood and salads, and views over the rock-island lighthouse. Not far away to the north are the holiday villages of Shanagarry and GARRYVOE . Garryvoe beach is very long and sandy, but it's beset by caravans advancing upon the shore and very busy during high season. To the east of here the bay is flat and of interest only to birdwatchers, its reed-infested estuary now a protected bird sanctuary . Here a river sidles its way, smooth and khaki, through the mudflats to the sea.
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