Enniskillen

The island and its twin spires

Cole's Monument has 108 spiral steps inside it, and if you climb them you come out on a viewing platform above Forthill Park with Lough Erne spread out on both sides. The park itself is five and a half acres of wooded town centre, with shrub gardens and a children's play area at the bottom of the steps. It is a good place to understand where you are, because Enniskillen is difficult to understand from the ground. The historic core sits on a natural island, with the River Erne threading past on either side and linking the Upper and Lower loughs. The name is Irish — Inis Ceithleann, Ceithleann's island — and it means exactly what the town is.

Two spires dominate the main ridge. St Macartin's Cathedral, Church of Ireland, Grade A listed, stands on high ground with a 150-foot tower and one bell cast from a cannon used at the Battle of the Boyne. It is the Regimental Chapel of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, whose memorials line the walls. Directly opposite, across the Main Street, St Michael's Roman Catholic church answers it in French Neo-Gothic, its high spire deliberately echoing the cathedral's tower. You can stand between the two and look up at both.

Victorian woodwork and live music

The pubs are the reason to stay in the town rather than drive out of it. Blakes of the Hollow on Church Street has been pouring Guinness for over 125 years — established 1887, named after the Blake family, and still fitted with its original snugs, etched glass, pitched pine woodwork and tiled floors. It calls itself "one of the most famous and well recognised Victorian pubs in Ireland," which is the kind of claim a pub can make about itself when it has the woodwork to back it. Live traditional music plays every Friday, and the attached restaurant, 28@ The Hollow, does modern Irish cooking under chef Glenn Wheeler.

Charlie's Bar, founded in 1944 by Charlie Burns, runs trad sessions Thursday to Sunday, the Sunday-night ones especially. The Crowe's Nest, established 1897, does everything from traditional Irish to rock.

Craft courtyards and waterside walks

For coffee and food, the Buttermarket is a restored early-19th-century craft courtyard with sixteen studios and Rebecca's Coffee Shop, named after the woman said to be the first person to sell freshly baked bread in Enniskillen. Elsewhere there's White Rabbit for barista coffee and traybakes, Folk for bread and croissants, and Lydia's Bakery at the Diamond. Dollakis does Greek mezze; Little Wing does light-crust pizza.

Walking is the other draw. The Round O and the Broadmeadow are both lakeside strolls on the Erne. Ten minutes out, Castle Coole's parkland has a lakeside trail through mature woodland — snowdrops then bluebells in spring, orchids in the grassland, and long-eared owls resident in the trees.

The railway that vanished

There is no railway. The last train left on 30 September 1957, ending a line that, because it crossed the border, had escaped nationalisation to become the last independent standard-gauge railway in Ireland. The Ulsterbus 261 from Belfast takes about two hours and drops you at the Shore Road station.

Wilde and Beckett on Portora Hill

Portora Royal School, up on Portora Hill, taught both Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett — the latter the only Nobel laureate to have played first-class cricket.