Crossriver

The Republic’s largest lake spreads over 176 square kilometres beside the village, an internationally recognised wetland famous for wild brown trout and summer salmon. The mayfly hatch in May is the high point of the angling year, fished the traditional way with a dapped natural fly, and local boatmen still take visitors out.

About three kilometres from the village stands the 16th-century tower house of the O’Flahertys, the clan that ruled west Connacht, unusual for its double ring of defensive walls. It is a Heritage Ireland site, open through the season, and one of the best-preserved tower houses in the west.

Cruises from the pier cross Lough Corrib to Inchagoill, an island monastic settlement dating back to the 5th century, its two ancient churches standing in the trees between Oughterard and Cong. The boat trip itself, out among the lake’s wooded islands, is half the pleasure.

A few kilometres west off the N59, Glengowla is a 19th-century silver and lead mine worked until 1865 and now open for underground guided tours through its chambers of marble and quartz. It is a genuinely different afternoon, and a good answer to Connemara rain.

The little double-arched Leam Bridge, signposted off the N59 about eight kilometres west, is famous as a location from John Ford’s The Quiet Man and has drawn film pilgrims since 1952. It photographs best in the long evening light.

The river that runs through the village gives Oughterard its walks, including a riverside way of about three kilometres and a waterfall on the Clifden side where salmon can be seen leaping when the water is high. Longer bog-road loops start from the same paths.

The N59 west from the village passes Maam Cross and runs on beneath the Twelve Bens toward Recess and Clifden, which puts the whole of Connemara within a day’s loop. Doing it from Oughterard means driving into the scenery each morning rather than queuing out of the city.