A 6th-century woman saint, 1.5 km north
St Sourney and Drumacoo
The monastic site at Drumacoo was founded in the 6th century by Sárnait - rendered as Sourney, Surney or Sorney - a female saint and associate of Colman mac Duagh of Kilmacduagh. She was buried at the spot known as St Sourney's Bed, and her feast day is the 3rd of May. The stone parish church that grew up here had a flat-headed west doorway of large stones and was extended eastwards in the 13th century, when the finely carved south doorway was added - a pointed arch with the carved heads of a number of cats among its detail. A dramatic 19th-century Gothic-revival mausoleum stands in the same enclosure. The church is a national monument. St Sourney's holy well survives nearby, rebuilt in the 1980s using stones from the old saint's bed. None of it is signposted from the road.
Kilkelly, then Blake, then a nursing home
Cloghballymore Castle
The ruins of Cloghballymore Castle stand near the village. A tower house owned in the 16th century by the Kilkelly family, a clan of Anglo-Norman origin, it later passed to the Blakes, another Anglo-Norman family. An 18th-century mansion was added by Marcus Lynch, whose daughter Ann married Maurice Blake in 1815. Llewellyn Blake, the youngest son, inherited a 5,000-acre estate and served as High Sheriff of Galway in 1886. After his death in 1916 the house became a seminary for the Society of African Missions until about 1950, then a golf and country club hotel which closed in the 1980s. In 2008 it was bought and restored, and since 2013 it has run as Blake Manor Nursing Home, named for the family. The estate overlooks a stream that flows into Galway Bay.
A walk the tide opens twice a year
Island Eddy and the sandbar
Island Eddy is a small, now depopulated island at the inner eastern end of Galway Bay. For most of the year it is cut off by water, but on the big spring tides in spring and autumn a causeway of sand uncovers from Killeenaran pier, giving roughly a two-hour window to walk out and back. Every September the people of Ballinderreen and Kinvara mark it by walking or swimming out to the island and returning to a barbecue on the pier. Mass has been said on the island. Get the timing wrong and the tide will strand you, so it is a thing to do with locals who know the window, not a thing to improvise.
Hurling since 1884
Founded the year the GAA was
Ballinderreen hurling club was founded in 1884, the same year as the GAA itself, which in south Galway counts for a great deal. The club plays in green and white and won the Galway intermediate hurling championship in 2017, beating Meelick-Eyrecourt. The newer fixture on the calendar is the South Galway Bay Music Festival, started in 2022 and held each July, with the gigs staged at the local GAA grounds.