Chris Ridley holding a baby crocodile

Chris Ridley was born in Portsmouth, England in 1960. His father is English, born in Brighton and his mother is from Roscommon in Ireland.

The eldest of five children, Chris moved from Portsmouth to live in County Roscommon in 1979 as a means of starting a new, more relaxing life.

Chris has worked part-time on a hospital radio station in Portsmouth, England, reading the news and sports results, as well as presenting the occasional music programme.

Since moving to Ireland, Chris had presented programmes on numerous pirate radio stations, until these stations were outlawed in 1988.

Chris is still involved in broadcasting, but his main outlet is on Internet Radio and the occasion programme for Hospital Raadio Stations.

He has also worked as editor of a small locally produced newspaper for unemployed people in the Sligo area, and was commissioned to produce a monthly magazine for a satellite television organisation during the mid 1980’s.

This website was built solely by Chris Ridley as a means of trying to attract more people to visit Sligo, the town he fell in love with, on a brief visit here in 1982, and which he now calls “home”.

Chris Ridley climbing the lower slopes of Knocknarea mountain Chris‘ first visit to County Sligo was in 1982, when he camped overnight in Rosses Point, he liked what he saw, and as a result, paid a number of short visits to Sligo Town and surrounding area’s over the next 2 years.

After being made redundant from a factory in Roscommon Town in 1984 and found he wasn’t able to find work locally, so he moved to Sligo has hasn’t looked back since.

Chris genuinely loves Sligo, he loves the scenery, the people and the slow (tomorrow will do) pace of life which exists here, it’s totally different from the city life he experienced whilst growing up in Portsmouth.

Chris is employed full-time as a taxi driver, a position he has held since 1992, giving him first-hand experience of visitors needs, the attractions they might want to see, where to find accommodation and which pubs have the music in them.

Sligo has changed considerably since I fist came here, with the building of the Hughes Bridge over the Garavogue River and the rejuvenation of the Rockwood Parade area of the town, the building of the Quayside Shopping Centre and the Inner-Relief Road.

Some local people may think these changes are not for the better, but in the long run any change which makes travelling around Sligo Town easier, and which pulls Sligo into the 21st Century, whist retaining its history and architectural beauty has to be for the better.

Sligo “genuinely” has some of the most beautiful scenery in Ireland and this is Chris‘ way of exposing the beauty of Sligo to those who have never witnessed it, with the long-term intention of attracting tourists to visit Sligo to see the sights which a lot of local people perhaps “take for granted”.

This website is a personal project, without any financial help from any organisation, tourist or otherwise. Therefore the content of this website will depend largely upon how much time I can spare on updating and collating the information contained within it’s pages.

Chris has received numerous compliments about the website, both verbally from townspeople and via e-mail from ex-patriots and visitors alike, and it’s my intention to continue promoting Sligo Townfor as long as feel I need to.

If you care about Sligo Town and would like to help promote the town through this website, whether it be through writing stories or articles or supplying photographs for inclusion on this website, or promoting the website itself, any help will be gratefully appreciated,

just contact webmaster and we can start the ball rolling.

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