Castlerea, Co. Roscommon

_Paul_

I typed into the boards.ie search engine the names of various towns that I could think of off the top of my head around the Leitrim/Roscommon/Mayo area such as Castlerea, Ballyhaunis, Claremorris, Carrick-on-Shannon, Manorhamilton, Ballaghaderreen and it appears that Castlerea is grim? Whereas no-one mentioned anything negative about the other towns.

Is it really that bad, I've never been there before.

Is it worse than Ballinasloe, which I think is quite a drab place...

bluemoon21

Ive never been so i cant help sorry. I doubt it can be that bad as there are not that many grim places in the west.

coralcathy

Castlerea is small and not much happening at all really.

I left there 10 years ago for more exotic lands:) , but seems alot of development going on at the mo.

Still have lots of friends and family there so not all that bad!

Ronan|Raven

I used to live just out the road from it, and also worked in it for a while. It isnt the worst place on the planet but it isnt the best either. Quite a lot of development going on in it at the moment. Some of it not for the best imho. Ballyhaunis is just as bad if not worse. Ballaghadreen is a ****hole of epic proportions in my opinion. But I may be biased having lived near these places for a long time.

Where are you currently living? is it Ballinasloe?

oscarBravo

It's got a prison. How grim could it be?

whassupp2

oscarBravo wrote:

It's got a prison. How grim could it be?

...with all the IRA dudes in it.

Beruthiel

oscarBravo wrote:

It's got a prison. How grim could it be?

Which used to be a hospital for people with long and short term mental problems.

Castlerea is a dive.
I spent 14 years of my young life in that place and left as soon as it was humanly possible to do so.

oscarBravo

...so, what have you been doing in the intervening months?

Beruthiel

Hitch hiking around this fair Isle of ours, picking up any odd job, like fixing sauspans, turning turf and such....

C Fodder

Personally I hate the place but I don't like living in towns at all. All the downsides of city life and all the downside of rural life with none of the benefits of either. Castlerea is probably better than most of the new commuter belt towns around Dublin e.g. Kinnegad which loads of people seem to want to live in. It is a mature market town with a pretty full range of services and a very large public park in the middle of town. It has a few problems in that it is kind of in the middle of nowhere and all the neighbouring towns are without exception s***holes and before I get flamed I mean towns not villages as some of the villages are actually quite nice. It is a very rural town with many of the people in the town owning small farms or plots of land near the town so if you don't like that kind of thing it's not the place for you. I currently live there under protest (other half has a crazy attachment to the place) but I do like the fact that there is a good bakery & deli, off-licence, supermarket, chipper and butchers in town and by good i mean as good as you will find anywhere.
It does appear a bit miserable all the way from Snob-roe to Pill Hill but aren't all towns like that.

Mike...

Castlerea is the biggest hole ever.......

It looks like someting out of a Frank McCabe book.

Mike...

Deleted User wrote:

It looks like someting out of a Frank McCabe book.

Angela Ashes was a fairytale compared to Castlerea

Alessandra

From that area myself and I have to say I find Castlerea a rather dull little town. It doesn't help that the mart is located slap bang in the middle of the town centre or that its night club has a clientele of 15-17 yr olds and 35-65 on any given weekend. That and it's in Roscommon! ha
Ballyhaunis/Ballaghadereen aren't much better. Claremorris has really prospered and developed in recent years and it's a pity that other towns haven't.

sceptre

Alessandra wrote:

or that its night club has a clientele of 15-17 yr olds and 35-65 on any given weekend.

Ah, what I like about River island isn't that it has a mosh pit, it's that it has what appears to be a junior mosh pit just behind it for those who reckon the mosh pit is too deep.

Alessandra

Never been to River Island and refuse to go! Nobody I know likes it either. Most just head to Roscommon/Ballyhaunis etc.

s_carnage

Stay clear of it. Especially River Island. Worst excuse for a nite club ever!!

Interceptor

Castlerea is a backward little craphole. It is nearly as bad as Longford, but not quite as bad as Tuam...

'cptr

Duggy747

Interceptor wrote:

Castlerea is a backward little craphole. It is nearly as bad as Longford, but not quite as bad as Tuam...

'cptr

Heeeeey!! It ain't that bad!!..........well, it is in a way. About 10 development sites (apartment blocks and estates) have been set up in the town in the past 5 years. Swamped with foreigners, which really ain't a bad thing as most ones I meet are good craìc. But what gets my goat is the scum that's been relocated over to the town from Dublin areas, cheeky fùckers causing all sorts of trouble around the place. To say it's worse than Ballyhaunis is ridiculous, that is one hell of a dive, and it's nowhere as dangerous as Longford. Nite-club has always been shìt and now it's turned into a babysitter center, nothing but kids running around the place. As most towns though, it's riddled with so-called "boy racers" driving tin cans thinking that if it's got a loud exhaust then it MUST be a high-performance machine! Pffft!!

mazdagirl

Castlerea is a ****hole I went down there one day to work in our office down there it was just a once off to fill in for somebody I swore never again, when I had finished work I went to go back to my car which was parked outside river island night club it was so busy I said I would go do my lotto before I left castlerea, I went up to a shop and did it, as I was walking back down to my car a guy in a van started to beep the horn and shout out the window to me so I started to walk faster and turned my head away as I did there was a guy in an alley way beside a pub with his lad in his hand and instead of turning away he started smiling at me you never saw a girl drive as fast out of the town, hence I always have plans if they look for me to go there again.

Migser

It has a lovely outdoor swimming pool