Tag: Connemara

Surprise! Ireland trip!

So, I haven’t posted any itinerary or plans, but I’m back in Ireland.

I’ve actually been planning this trip for a couple of years, but what with one thing and another, I had got out of the habit of blogging about my plans. Something that factored into that is that I’m not here alone – my friend, Penny, is with me. And talking and planning with her kind of scratched the same itch that blogging did, solidifying things and making them real.

We landed in Ireland yesterday, after a very long day of travel, and had a very long day again. We had tried to book accommodations in Dublin to start our trip there, but apparently, there was a traditional dance festival [[Or something similar.]] and there wasn’t a room to be had in the city. So, we took a taxi to the train station, then a train to Galway, then walked through Galway to our guesthouse.

I lay down on the bed for a minute to rest, and pretty much immediately fell asleep. Penny went out and did some scouting of the area, and came back after a few hours, woke me up, and we went out to see stuff. We walked down to a restaurant and had some lunch, then walked back the other way to the Eyre Square area to find the Galway Tours office, and booked a tour of Connemara for today.

And, seeing as we were right there, we took a walk through the Latin Quarter, which is the touristy/nightlife area of the city, and sat down for a rest in a cafe.

After that, we made our way back to the guesthouse and, being exhausted, decided to watch some TV and go to sleep.

This morning, we went on our tour of Connemara. Here are some pictures.

Kylemore Abbey. It’s always the feature of the tour, and I’ve taken lots of pictures of it. This is one more

A Connemara pony in a field up near the Kylemore walled garden.

A nice view of Killary Fjord.

Looking down at Lough na Fuaiche.

The sheep hospital (i.e., a cottage now used to store gear and equipment for the locals to look after their sheep) near Lough na Fuaiche.

A famine wall above Lough na Fuaiche.

A statue of Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne in The Quiet Man, which was filmed in and around the village of Cong.

Inside the old church in Cong. A wild Penny lurks in the corner.

High cross in the old church in Cong.

The ruined Cong Abbey.

After that, it was back to Galway. We had some very nice pasta at a restaurant in the Latin Quarter called Freddy’s, then went looking for the docks of the Aran Island Ferry company, because we’re planning to head down there tomorrow and see about taking a trip out to one of the islands.

Then, back to the guesthouse. I’m pretty done with walking, so I did this blog post, and Penny went out to check out a pub called Darcy’s.

And now, I’m done.

Connemara Day

Today was my bus tour up into Connemara. I took a similar tour1 seven years ago, and that tour was on a cold, misty day, with some rain, at the beginning of October. A spring tour, on a bright sunny day2, was a bit different.

Here’s the sort of terrain you get in Connemara. Peatlands, small mountains, scattered rocks, lots of sheep, and small lakes and streams. It reminded me a fair bit of the Scottish Highlands. But look at that gorgeous sky!

This is one of my favourite things – it’s called a crannog. It’s an artificial island built in the middle of the lake as a defense for local bronze-age clans. Some times, they would have special paths under water built up so those who knew the secret could get to the island quickly and safely, while outsiders would fall into the water.

This is the head of Killary Fjord, in the village of Leenane. Killary Fjord is the only fjord in Ireland.

A little further down Killary Fjord, they farm mussels. Apparently, they went to Norway to learn how to properly farm the fjord.

As with the last tour, Kylemore Abbey was the main stop. I took a lot of pictures last time; this is what it looks like when it actually sees the sun.

The walled Victorian Garden at Kylemore looks substantially better in the spring than it did in the fall.

Kylemore Abbey is beautiful, and one of the best things about it are the views. This is the view from the tea shop up near the garden.

I took a few pictures inside the abbey last tour, but I must have missed this thing, which is very cool. It’s a tabernacle and polyptych that the Benedictine nuns brought from the destroyed Ypres abbey.

This is a little stream going over a waterfall as it runs into Lough Scrib. I just think it looks neat, with the gorse and stuff.

So, that was my return to Connemara. Tomorrow, I go to Inismor, and have to get up early for that. And that means I’m going to bed, now.

  1. With a different tour company. [↩]
  2. Which is what I had today. [↩]

Connemara Tour

This morning was my bus tour of Connemara. It was raining pretty hard when we started, and the first couple of places we stopped I was very happy for my Tilley hat and good hiking shoes.

Connemara is, like the Ring of Kerry, very striking scenery on the west coast of Ireland – mountainous, cut with hundreds of tiny streams and several large loughs. The roads are narrow and winding, and there are a lot1 sheep wandering up and down the mountains.

Our first stop was Ross Errilly Friary, which I am told is the best-preserved building of its age and type in Europe. It was still raining, so the pictures aren’t great.

The roof and the floors were timber, and so are gone – the friars abandoned the site just about three hundred years ago, after living here for four hundred years previously. Only the stone remains.

Since it was abandoned, the site has been used as a burial site. The ruins are full of crypts like these, and the floor is tiled with grave markers.

The tower still stands, but you can’t climb up the stairs in it for safety reasons. The bells and bell-pulls are long gone.

The cloister in the middle of the friary, where the monks would read and meditate. It’s surrounded by a walking path, where the monks would walk laps for exercise.

After the Friary, it was on to the village of Cong, where the 1951 John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara movie The Quiet Man was shot. It was still raining, so I didn’t get to see as much as I might have liked, but I did see a little.

Here is the hotel and bar that feature in the movie. The hotel apparently didn’t exist when the film was made, but was added later, and the bar was not a bar at the time of filming. It was turned into a bar afterwards, though.

The narrow, hilly, rainy street of Cong.

We moved on into Connemara itself, then, up through the mountain passes.

Little farms cling to the sides of mountains, above the loughs.

Lough Nafooey (yes, that’s its real name) apparently has a lake monster in it. I didn’t see one.

More farms on the mountainside.

The fields of the farms are divided by dry stone fences. These don’t use any mortar or cement; it’s just rocks fitted together.

This is a Fairy Tree above Killary Fjord. It’s a whitethorn tree that people tie little bits of cloth to in order to attract the good fairies when a child is sick.

When the song talks about “running like the devil from the excise man in the hills of Connemara,” these are the hills they mean.

Our stop for lunch was Kylemore Abbey, where we stayed for two hours. There was a lot to see, and the rain had stopped by this point.

Kylemore Abbey was build at the foot of a mountain, on the edge of a lough, as a stately home for Mitchell Henry and his wife in the mid-1800s.

Here’s a better look just at the building.

Here’s what you see standing on the court in front of the main door into the abbey.

Three rooms have been opened to the public by the Benedictine Nuns who ran the abbey as a school until a couple of years ago. These have been restored to the way they would have looked in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

This is the great hall.

Here’s the front parlour.

And this is the dining room.

Past the abbey is a nice walk through the woods to the gothic church2 and the mausoleum3. The woods are similar to the ones around where I live, but much wetter.

Thick moss coats everything because of the damp. I started getting moss growing on my shoes just in the time it took to take the picture.

Many little streams run down the mountainside to the lough. This one is big enough to have a bridge over it.

The church was built as a cathedral in miniature, inspired by St. Stephen’s at Westminster.

The interior of the church is also beautiful.

Margaret Henry’s mausoleum.

Up the other direction from the abbey is one of the largest walled Victorian gardens in the world. Much of it was still in bloom, even at the end of September.

This is the formal garden area.

The nearer part of the garden is vegetables, while the gardens in the background are a continuation of the formal gardens.

On the way back to Galway, we made one more stop.

This cottage was built as a replica of John Wayne’s cottage in The Quiet Man. It’s not really anywhere near Cong, as far as I can tell.

It was a nice trip, with a lot of stunning scenery. The guide, Mike, was both knowledgable and friendly, and really added to the day by taking us to see some little-known scenic spots4.

Tomorrow, I’m back with the same tour company5 to tour the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. I’m looking forward to it.

  1. No, really a lot! [↩]
  2. Gothic in style, not in age. It was built around 1877. [↩]
  3. Where Margaret Henry, wife of Mitchell Henry, is interred. She died in 1874, and both the church and the mausoleum were erected in her memory. [↩]
  4. Also to meet Joseph, the Connemara pony, and some sheep dogs he knows. [↩]
  5. Galway Tour Company. They’re good. [↩]