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From the Bog of Allen in the east to Boora Bog in the west, County Offaly is dominated by the stuff. It's a low-lying region bounded to the northwest by the meandering Shannon and its flood plain, and only in the south does the land rise at all into the foothills of the Slieve Bloom range. The Bog of Allen , intensively exploited for peat, has been turned into vast swathes of brown desert. Boora Bog is entirely different: it's smaller and less unremittingly flat and bare, and is also the site of an archeological find that proves that there was human life here nine thousand years ago. Western County Offaly is also the location of Clonmacnois , the greatest monastery of early Celtic Ireland, on the great, watery flood-plain of the Shannon. The Bog of Allen only really becomes overpowering after Edenderry , which traditionally marked the edge of the Pale. But even in Edenderry, after miles of dark bogland, it's a distinct relief to reach somewhere with lots of people and an air of prosperity: its single wide street is lined with cheerfully painted houses. Pushing on along the Dublin-Portumna bus route towards Tullamore, you pass through Daingean, formerly Philipstown, the provincial capital in the days when Offaly was known as King's County (both county and capital were planted in Mary Tudor's reign and named after her husband, Philip II of Spain).
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