9781422278017

EUROPEAN COUNTRIES TODAY: IRELAND

ABOVE: The Anglo-Norman Trim Castle on the banks of the river Boyne, County Meath.

The Eastern Countries The eastern counties of the Republic of Ireland—Louth, Meath, Kildare, and Wicklow—enclose Dublin in a crescent encompassing the coast of the Irish Sea to north and south. They offer a splendid variety of scenery, from the quiet green pastures of Meath and Louth, touching the border with Northern Ireland in the north, to the rugged Wicklow Mountains in the south. Today, much of the region is fertile pastureland, the Bog of Allen in Kildare being the largest peatland area in Ireland, while the grassy plain of the Curragh, Ireland’s largest area of arable land, is the center of the country’s Thoroughbred racing industry. Louth, a border county, and Meath, both of them once within the Pale (which was the boundary within which the English Crown had established total authority by about 1500), are areas of quiet farmland these days, attracting

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