Balla is a small N60 village between Castlebar and Claremorris - population around five hundred, one main street, and most drivers between the two towns go through it without slowing down. That is most of the story of modern Balla. The older story is different.
In the 7th century a saint called Cronan - known locally as Mochua, Mochua of Balla - founded a monastery on the rise above what is now the village. The site lasted. By the medieval period there was a round tower, a church, an enclosure. The tower fell or was taken down at some point - what is left is the base, perhaps three metres high, with the original doorway visible. Beside it the medieval church ruins and the old graveyard. It is the kind of monastic site that, in a different county, would be on every postcard. Here it sits behind a low wall on the edge of the village and most people drive past it.
The other thing Balla is known for is Tobermurry, the holy well - Tobar Mhuire, the Well of Mary. It was one of the major pattern-day wells of Connacht, particularly active on Garland Sunday, the Sunday closest to the first of August. Pilgrimage to the well faded through the late nineteenth century but never quite stopped, and the rounds are still walked.
Treat Balla as a fifteen-minute stop on the way to somewhere else. Park near the church, walk to the round tower stump, read the panel, walk to the well. That is the village. The N60 will be waiting.
Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.
What stands at the old monastic site is the stump of an early round tower - about ten feet of wall and a doorway, where there was once a full bell tower. The rest came down centuries ago. The base is enough to tell you what was here.
Stories & lore → 02 TobermurryTobermurry - the Well of Mary - sits on the edge of the village. One of the more-venerated wells in Connacht, a stop on Garland Sunday and other pattern days. People still go. The water still runs.
Stories & lore → 03 The monasteryCronan Mochua - Mochua of Balla - founded a monastery here in the 600s. The medieval church ruins next to the round tower stump are later, but the line goes back. Walk the old graveyard and you are walking on it.
Stories & lore →The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.
There is no bad time. There are different times.
The graveyard around the round tower stump is greenest in spring. Mochua's feast day falls at the end of March if you want a date.
Garland Sunday - the Sunday closest to the first of August - is the traditional pattern day at Tobermurry. Quiet now, but the day to be there.
Light is good on the round tower stones. Through-traffic eases once the schools go back.
The monastic site has no shelter. Bring a coat. The well rounds are still walked, weather regardless.
If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.
Only the base survives. About three metres of wall, the doorway, and that is it. The site is worth the stop; the silhouette is not.
It is not a half-day stop. Fifteen minutes for the monastic site, ten more for the well, and back on the N60.
The line closed to passengers in 1963 and finally in 1974. The station building survives in other use but there are no trains and no plans for any.
The well is Tobermurry - Mary's well - and the saint of Balla is Cronan Mochua, not Patrick. Older guidebooks mix this up. They are wrong.
On the N60 between Castlebar (12 km north) and Claremorris (8 km south). Twenty minutes from either. Knock Airport is half an hour east via the N17.
Bus Éireann services on the Castlebar-Claremorris-Galway corridor stop in the village. Check current timetable; service is light.
No station. The Westport-Dublin line passes nearest at Claremorris, eight kilometres south.
Ireland West (Knock, NOC) is 30 km east - the closest airport in the country to the village. Shannon is two hours; Dublin three.