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LOUGHREA , on the main road to Ballinasloe and ten miles southeast of Athenry, is like Portumna in that it's a lakeside market town. But it's much smaller, and tiny Lough Rea can't compare with the beauty of Lough Derg for a setting. In the thirteenth century, Richard de Burgo founded a Carmelite monastery here, and it still stands in an excellent state of preservation. The town also has a late nineteenth-century cathedral , whose interior demonstrates the development of the modern Dublin School of Stained Glass - an acquired taste. Much earlier religious art is on display next door in the Loughrea Museum (by appointment only; tel 091/841212; free). This small museum includes episcopal vestments and carved crucifixes from the seventeenth century, beautifully simple silver and gold chalices from as early as 1500, penal crosses and a few rare woodcarvings from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Kilcorban Virgin and Child , which is also on display here, is the earliest of only three such carvings that have been found in Ireland. In a field two miles to the north of Loughrea, near Bullaun, stands the Turoe Stone . A superb, rounded pillar-stone, this is decorated with the bold swirls of Celtic La Tene art, a style found more typically in Brittany. The finest of its kind in Ireland, it dates from the third or second century BC and was probably a phallic fertility stone, used in pagan rituals. There are a couple of fine B&Bs in this area: Mrs Pauline Burke's Four Seasons , Athenry Road (tel 091/541414; GBP40-55/?50.79-69.84), and Mrs Rose Plower's La Riasc , Clostoken (tel 091/841069; GBP33-40/?41.90-50.79), three miles out of town on the Dublin-Galway road. Loughrea also has two fine hotels : the cosy well-established O'Dea's , a converted Georgian town house on Bride St (tel 091/841611, www.commerce.ie/odeashotel ; GBP70-90/?88.88-114.28), and the newly renovated Meadow Court , two miles out of town on the main Dublin road (tel 091/841051, meadowcourthotel@eircom.net ; GBP70-90/?88.88-114.28), which has modern, comfortable rooms and a restaurant which serves immaculately prepared traditional meals such as steak and lamb.
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