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North of Cashel, both the Suir itself and the attractions along its banks wane. The river passes through the larger towns of Thurles and Templemore, though its source in the Devil's Bit Mountain falls short of the little town of Roscrea . Thurles is on the main Limerick-Dublin train line; Roscrea is more easily accessed by bus, being on the main bus route between those two cities. THURLES is of very little interest in itself, but if you're passing through and in need of refreshment you might want to check out the Dwan Brewery & Restaurant in The Mall off Liberty Square, a modern micro-brewery, giving the town's social scene something of a lift, and offering a markedly contemporary barfood menu. Just four miles south of town, Holy Cross Abbey sits beside a broad stretch of the Suir and is well worth a visit. Founded in 1180, restored significantly in the fifteenth century and then left derelict for four hundred years, the abbey was totally restored between 1971 and 1985 and is now a thriving parish church as well as a tourist attraction. You really need to see photographs of the period before restoration to appreciate the significance of this - they suggest that every other ruin you've seen could as easily be so converted. Holy Cross always had singular importance as a centre of pilgrimage, however, claiming to possess a piece of the True Cross . The splinter was reckoned to have been given to Murtagh O'Brien, King of Munster, by Pope Paschal II in 1110. At the turn of the seventeenth century both O'Donnell and O'Neill, the Ulster chiefs, stopped off to venerate this relic on their way to Kinsale to meet the French - no doubt hoping they'd be rewarded with a victory over Elizabeth I. The interior of the church has been fully restored, though here there's been no particular attempt at period accuracy; virtually every wall and pillar has been whitewashed, and all the pews have been varnished. Nevertheless, it's rewarding to see the stone ribbing of the vaulted roofs and most particularly the undamaged fifteenth-century sedilia in the chancel area, the finest in the country. The sedilia, recessed stone seats for the celebrants of the Mass, is of a hard limestone shaped into cusped arches and crowned with crockets, showing decorative friezework as well as the English royal crest and the escutcheon of the Earls of Ormond. In the transept to the left of the nave, you'll find one of Ireland's rare medieval frescoes , this one showing a Norman hunting scene painted in browns, reds and greens. The exterior of the church has a startling full-length slate roof, which reaches down to the cloister pillars. Though the church itself is open year-round, the clositer and its ranges have limited opening times (mid-April to Oct Mon-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 11am-6pm). There's an informal tourist information centre with variable opening hours, a coffee shop and a religious crafts shop within the abbey complex.
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