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To an even greater extent than Tipperary, everyone passes through County Limerick , and hardly anyone stays. Once here, you're tantalizingly close to the much more rewarding counties of Cork, Kerry and Clare, and frankly you're not likely to linger. Urban, industrial Limerick has none of the breezy west-coast spirit so appealing just about everywhere else along this seaboard. Nevertheless, it is well worth making time to visit the superb Hunt Museum which has collections to rival that of the National Gallery in Dublin, and this, along with a handful of good restaurants and bars, makes the city worth considering as a stopover. Around the county are a number of points of interest, the best of which lie close to two main routes that run southwards from Limerick city. Castle Matrix , an authentic, lavishly restored and renovated tower house stands beside the N23 Limerick to Killarney road; Lough Gur lies thirteen miles south of the city, a Mesolithic-to-Neolithic lake and hill enclave of preternatural beauty, well worth making a detour off the N20, the road to Cork. Both can be reached by public transport. For cyclists , Limerick's terrain is more variable than it's usually given credit for. In its western-to-southwestern corner, the upland bears a likeness to barren stretches of Donegal, whereas the northern estuary stretch is indeed only a slightly bumpy flatland. The centre and east bow in contour towards the eastern frontier of the Tipperary Golden Vale's rich dairy land, but not without gently rising mounds for hills and broadish trickles for rivers. More so than any other county, the land in Limerick is dotted with an array of tower castles , some inhabited but most in ruins or no more than stumps. Historically, Limerick's most notable period arrived with the Norman strongholds, the most dominant family being the Fitzgeralds, also known as the Earls of Desmond - virtually all of Limerick's significant ruins were once this clan's power bases. They quickly became Gaelicized and ruled as independent monarchs, pulling very much away from English rule. The inevitable confrontation with Britain came to a head at the end of the sixteenth century, when in 1571 the Geraldine uprising against Elizabeth I sparked off a savage war, which brought about their downfall and destroyed in its wake much of the province of Munster
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