Baile Hac · Co. Wexford
A five-minute ferry, a Crusader tower, and a pub that has been open since 1929.
Ballyhack is the kind of place you arrive at by accident and leave wishing you'd planned more time. It's a single line of houses on a steep slope down to the water, a pier, a stone tower above the road, and a ferry that goes back and forth across the harbour like a slow metronome. The water in front of you is the combined estuary of the Suir, Nore and Barrow - the Three Sisters - and across it, ten minutes away, is County Waterford.
The ferry is the point. It saves an hour on the road to Waterford City and it always has - the crossing has been here in some form since the 17th century. Passage East Ferry Company runs it now, every ten to fifteen minutes, all year. You sit in the car, you pay through the window, and five minutes later you are in another county. Locals use it like a bus. Visitors use it like a small adventure. Both are correct.
The other thing is the castle. It looks like a square tower with no apologies, because that is what it is - a five-storey Norman tower house built by the Knights Hospitallers around 1450, on the site of an earlier preceptory that may have been Templar before the Order was suppressed. It is run by the OPW, it is free, and it is only open in the summer. The view from the wall walk takes in the entire harbour, three rivers, and a slice of Waterford. Time it for the morning before the ferry rush.
