"The islands in the bay which was of gold colour, look like so many dolphins and whales basking there," wrote the English novelist W.M. Thackeray on a visit to Westport in 1842. Set in a picturesque eighteenth-century landscape on the shores of Clew Bay, WESTPORT , is a comfortable, relaxed town, still recognizably Georgian - it was planned by the architects Richard Castle and James Wyatt - with a leafy mall, octagonal square, a canalized river and one of Ireland's gr... [More]