Benbulben

We’re now in County Sligo (SLY-go), William Butler Yeats country. We enjoyed an excellent exhibit on his life and works at the National Library in Dublin. A prolific poet and playwright, he was one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, still going strong more than a century later. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. That’s some kudos.

Although born in County Dublin and raised in both Dublin and London, Yeats spent his childhood summers at his mother’s family home in County Sligo, a place he came to consider his “country of the heart.” His dying wish was to be buried in County Sligo, under the watchful eye of Benbulben, his favorite mountain. And he was, in the cemetery at St. Columba’s Church in Drumcliff, six kilometers from the foot of the mountain.

Today we walked a trail that circled the forest at the western foot of Benbulben, and I too was blown away by this stunning mountain. It changes appearance at every angle, and each vantage point tells a different story. 

For this blog, I had to pare down the number of photos Marcus took of the mountain, for the sake of brevity. Of the 73 he was happy with after his edit, I selected an essential forty. Still too many. It was painful, but I ended with a strong sixteen.

Marcus will take thousands of photos on an extended trip like this one. On each little excursion, such as this walk, I will pull myself away from the beauty I’m taking in to ask him if he got a shot of this rock or that stream, the little path running up to the fold in the mountain? But I can tell by his smile that he’s already got it. We see things the same way, for the most part, but sometimes he sees things I miss. And vice versa. I always eagerly await his next batch of photos so I can immerse myself all over again—and possibly discover something from an unexpected angle. And he anticipates every blog, reliving our adventures and perhaps encountering a perspective he hadn’t considered before.

This blog will become a treasured memory of a delightful day spent outdoors in an exquisite country. And the photos will pop up on our screensavers in the years to come, eliciting gasps of recognition and compelling us to take time out from whatever it is we’re doing to sit and take it all in again. We’re not only capturing images, both visual and emotive; we’re preserving moments in time to be enjoyed again later.

This is why we travel.

Downpatrick Head

Downpatrick Head, a cleft in the far cliffs

Downpatrick Head. In the far northern reaches of County Mayo. Not too far off the main road. A simple walk from the car park. Only fifteen minutes required to take it all in, if you’re in a hurry. But don’t be; it’s breathtaking.

It was barely a mention in Fodor’s Essential Ireland, but it called to me. I knew that despite it being a wee bit off the beaten path, I had to see it. My instincts were right. It is one of the most stunning visuals I have yet to experience on this beautiful island. But then, I always have been a sucker for a sea stack.

rapidly eroding cliffs and subsidence risks
dangerous blowhole, but well marked

As we crossed the field on our walk up to the cliffs, we encountered several blowholes where the rock has eroded from underneath as a result of the Atlantic’s relentless barrage. You can look down into these holes—100 or more feet deep—and see ocean. One day our solitary sea stack may have company.

While Marcus was walking the cliffs, he heard voices but no one was nearby. Intrigued, he walked in the direction of the voices and discovered this blowhole, without so much as a warning sign near it. Good thing he was watching where he was walking—thanks to the many sheep that had recently visited the field. He peered into the yawning hole and saw people below swimming.

this one, not so well marked

Downpatrick Head, or Dún Briste (Broken Fort) in Irish, was once a part of the mainland. It now stands 262 feet offshore. The rock that once bridged the gap was gradually undermined by the wild Atlantic and finally gave up the ghost in hurricane-force winds in 1393.

It’s recorded that “several families” were isolated on the stack as a result of the collapse and had to be rescued with ropes. From 164 feet above the sea. In the 14th century. We’re not talking helicopter rescue here. Ay, yi, yi! Just the thought makes my knees ache.

Almost as impressive as this beautiful sea stack is the vegetation that grows on the cliffs. I have never seen or felt anything like it. It grows in soft, spongy mounds that made me want to spring from one to the next like a kid on a trampoline. The foliage is compact with pliable, yew-like “needles” rather than leaves or blades. Wee pink flowers were just starting to bloom on the surfaces. I think they may be sea pinks or thrift, as it’s called in Ireland, an indigenous wildflower often found on sea cliffs. I’d never realized foliage could be so much fun!

sea pinks?

Downpatrick’s Head was an incredible find. So glad I’d stumbled across it in Fodor’s before our trip, or we may have missed it.

Sing it, Lionel!

I got a chuckle out of the sign on this food truck at the car park. Can’t you just hear Lionel serenading tourists as they pass by?

We biked a marathon!

Well, in distance anyway. 26.2 miles along the County Mayo Greenway from Achill Island to Westport, where we are staying. We’ve never ridden that far before. Yay, us! But, man, is my tush sore!

We had reserved bikes the day before when the weather forecast promised no rain. But on the day of the ride, as the owner of the bike shop drove us out to our launch point, it started to rain. How was I going to do a four-hour bike ride in the Irish rain? Irish rain, as the locals call it, is that fine, non-stop rain that you can barely perceive is falling. It’s more like a hovering mist, or a cloud descended to earth. It penetrates everything, makes you wonder when it was that you were last dry, and sends you scurrying for the nearest pub with a fire going in the hearth. Miracle of miracles, the rain subsided during the 45-minute van ride and the black clouds kept their distance for the remainder of the day.

We couldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been such a level ride—love these rails-to-trails conversions! Well, level until we were seven miles from the finish line. Newport must have been the town where railway service ended, or diverted to some place other than Westport, because the ride from Newport to Westport was relentless downhill plunges and uphill struggles while simultaneously navigating 90° turns—nothing a train could ever negotiate. Think about it: It’s impossible to gain downhill momentum for the uphill climb when you have to turn a corner at the bottom of the hill. So, I have to confess, there may have been a hill or two or three that we walked, but in our defense, the terrain was so hair-raising in parts that signs insisted cyclists dismount and walk it. We didn’t need to be told twice.

a wee swally for a job well done

All in all, it was a great ride, and we’re very glad we did it. After all, knees can be replaced, right?

home again

Irish fjords

Killary Harbour

The day before we left Galway, I got my hair cut. That’s always a potentially traumatic experience on the road, but I found someone I liked. She gave me her mobile number so I could text her at home on a Sunday to make an appointment, for crying out loud, what’s not to like? So while we were chatting as she snipped away, she asked me where we were off to next.

“Westport,” I answered.

“Oh, Westport!” she gushed. “That’s where we go when we want to get away from Galway.” Get away from Galway? Why? We love this city. “Be sure to stop at Killary Harbour on your way. The fjord is beautiful.” Fjord? In Ireland???

Yes, Ireland does have fjords, it turns out. Three of them. And one is Killary Harbour. I thought fjord was a Scandinavian word for a long, narrow inlet or bay. According to my research assistant, however, a fjord is not just a foreign word but also a geological phenomenon. During an ice age, as the rapid accumulation of snow and ice compacts and forms a glacier in a river valley, the weight of the glacier eventually causes it to slide down the valley toward the sea. The V-shaped river valley is carved wider and rounder, into more of a U-shape, by the glacier. At the end of the ice age, the warming climate causes the glacier to melt and the ice effectively recedes back up the valley as the glacier gets smaller. 

When the glacier starts to recede, moraine—that rocky rubble that the glacier has been chiseling off the valley floor and walls and pushing down the valley—is deposited at the lower end and forms a sill or lip to the basin that it’s carved out. Seas rise as glaciers melt, and eventually they rise higher than the sill and flood the basin, creating a fjord. Non-fjordal inlets are the more V-shaped, river-cut valleys that weren’t rounded out by glaciers and don’t have sills that a glacier would leave behind. And there endeth the lesson, as Sean Connery would say.

We didn’t have time for a boat trip into the fjord, but we did stop at a lay-by to watch the boats go by and absorb the beauty.

Get a load of those rhododendrons! I stood mesmerized in a sea of deep pink. My guess is we passed through at peak bloom. Now that, my friends, is beautiful countryside and another serendipitous moment, all because I needed a haircut.

Connemara

view of Ballynakill Harbour and Barnaderg Bay from Diamond Hill

Connemara, the wild, remote wilderness of Irish-speaking Galway. Just the name conjures images of The Quiet Man, which was filmed not far away in east Galway. We looked forward to seeing what glories Connemara National Park had to offer. Reading up on it before we got there, we didn’t see anything mentioned other than a walk up Diamond Hill. Well, there had to be more than that. It’s a national park, for Pete’s sake, and one of only six in the country. We’d just go and see what else they’ve got.

Diamond Hill surrounded by typical Irish grassland

We asked at the visitor center and found that the hike up Diamond Hill really is all they have to offer. No exhibits in the visitors center. No informational plaques outside. Just a walk. 

An interesting note: No matter how taxing the hike, the Irish (and Brits too, we observed when we were in the UK) called them walks, as in a walk in the park. You can ascend 1200 feet over two hours (e.g. Diamond Hill) and it’s still called a walk, although they do acknowledge it’s a “strenuous” walk. That’s one difference between Americans and the Irish. In the US we’d be plastering bumper stickers on our cars saying “I climbed Diamond Hill.” In Ireland they tell their friends “I went on the loveliest walk this afternoon. It was grand.” I just love their understatement!

We opted out of the strenuous part of the walk, but hiked up far enough to get great views of Ballynakill Harbour and Barnaderg Bay, and it was still a good stretch in the fresh country air.

We started to encounter marshy wetlands.

And as we walked, we gradually began to realize something about the park that we hadn’t seen mentioned. The area surrounding Diamond Hill is all bogland. We noticed the reed-filled ponds and the lumpy tufts of grass that we had seen in Killarney National Park’s bog. After gaining a bit of altitude, we saw fields below us where peat was being harvested—the telltale plateaus of turf where vertical slices of peat were being removed like slivers of dark chocolate cake, one layer at a time. The water running in the streams was brown from the tannins leaching out of the peat. And much of the walk was on boardwalk to prevent people from walking on the bog and destroying the fragile habitat.

The color of the landscape changed from vibrant green to rusty brown.
multiple layers of turf in peat fields
peat, or turf, on the banks of this tannin-brown stream

The walk was a series of “aha” moments as we put it all together. Why hadn’t they said something about the bog, talked it up, showcased it for unenlightened visitors, used this beautiful park as an educational opportunity? Perhaps it was another case of Irish understatement. Just get out there and walk in it, and you’ll see what you see. Isn’t it grand?

Connemara ponies

This Connemara pony and her foal grazed amid the midges, annoying flying insects that will suck the blood out of your flesh and the wits out of your head. The mom’s tail was moving non-stop to keep them at bay, and her foal took refuge under her fan. Smart little lad!

Even Connemara lambs have horns. This one can’t be more than a few months old and already has quite a bit of growth.

Crazy Castle

Clonmacnoise Castle

Just outside the monastic site were these crazy remains of Clonmacnoise Castle. One of the many Norman castles built in the 13th century to safeguard the Norman occupation of Ireland, this one was built to secure the midlands, specifically the bridge over the River Shannon, a vital trade route at the time.

We’ve seen lots of ruins, but never any seemingly dumped on their heads! How did this happen? My guess is Finn MacCool was responsible. The legendary Irish giant was accused of throwing boulders across the Irish Sea to Scotland. But more on him later as we make our way to Northern Ireland….

Clonmacnoise

Clonmacnoise monastic site

Ever wonder why there are so many monastic sites throughout Ireland? I could paraphrase Thomas Cahill from a fascinating little book he wrote called How the Irish Saved Civilization, but I won’t. He says it so much better himself. 

Ireland was unique in religious history for being the only land into which Christianity was introduced without bloodshed. And this lack of martyrdom troubled them, to whom a glorious death by violence presented such an exciting finale. They developed their own martyrdom, Green Martyrdom. The Green Martyrs sacrificed their lives to God by leaving behind the comforts and pleasures of human society and retreating into solitude—to a green no-man’s-land outside tribal jurisdictions—to study the scriptures and commune with God.

The Green Martyrdom extremes were quickly abandoned in favor of monasticism, a movement which involved a more social contract, something the Irish found it difficult to live without. Since Ireland had no cities, these monastic establishments grew rapidly into the first population centers, hubs of unprecedented prosperity, art, and learning.

Irish monks began copying religious manuscripts soon after St. Patrick converted the island to Christianity, which was just in the nick of time. Many of the original manuscripts were lost when the Roman Empire crumbled only a century later. So Irish monasteries, with their illustrious libraries, became centers for learning in the Christian world. People traveled here from around the world to study and engage in religious discussion and debate. The two most prolific monastic sites in Ireland were St. Kevin’s at Glendalough (which we visited in the Wicklow Mountains) and St. Cierán’s (Kieran’s) at Clonmacnoise in the Midlands (County Offaly).

Today we visited Clonmacnoise, only an hour’s drive from Galway. I was expecting to find just another collection of ruined stone huts, but I was blown away by the beauty of the site and its surroundings. We hadn’t ventured this far inland on the island. The inland terrain is so delightfully different from that of the coast.

the River Shannon

Most striking is how lush the River Shannon is inland. It’s not at all the dark river we saw tumbling over cold, black rock in Limerick. Here at Clonmacnoise the river swells wide, deep, and blue. The banks are lined with reeds, and every now and then a boat passes peacefully upriver as if it has all the time in the world. How could you not love these impressive stone buildings, round towers, and high crosses set against a background of brilliant blue sky, Irish-green grass, and that gorgeous river?

St. Cierán’s memorial

The hut where St. Cierán, founder of Clonmacnoise, lived and died became his burial place, as was the custom at Clonmacnoise. The hut began to lean because pilgrims would remove soil from its base to take home with them. Spreading a bit of St. Cierán’s earth in the four corners of their fields was thought to yield a more bountiful harvest.

We loved the ruins of this sweet little nun’s chapel just a half-kilometer down the lane. The detail on the stone is like lacework, and those wildflowers springing from stone…. Mm, mm, mm!

Inis Mór

the Cliffs of Aran, from Dun Aengus on Inis Mór

We’re not fans of tours, but sometimes a tour is truly the best way to see a place. The weather was beautiful while we were in Galway, perfect for visiting one of the Aran Islands just offshore where Galway Bay meets the North Atlantic. There are three islands; I chose the biggest, Inis Mór (Inishmore), because I wanted to hike up to Dun Aengus, a stone fort overlooking the Atlantic to the west and County Clare to the south across Galway Bay, seemingly at the edge of the world.

We could have driven the 40 kilometers to Ros an Mhil, figured out the ferry schedule and bought tickets, and arranged to rent bikes, hike, or hire a cab or local tour guide to take us to the foot of Dun Aengus, or we could just hire Michael Faherty, an Inis Mór native, to arrange the whole package for us.

Michael was born and raised on Inis Mór. He was a commercial fisherman until the EU restrictions on fishing open waters became too restrictive. He decided to try his hand at the tourism business. He picks you up in his van in downtown Galway, drives you to the ferry, purchases the ferry tickets, escorts you to the island where he has another van to drive you from the ferry terminal not only to Dun Aengus, which is the highlight, but also to his favorites spots on the island. 

Seven Churches monastic site

Note: Michael inherited his father’s farm on Inis Mór last year when his father passed away, so he maintains that too. The day before our tour, he had to stop mid-tour to “pull a calf.” One of his cows was having a difficult delivery, so he had to pull off the road at one of his pastures to help her out. Man, why didn’t we book the tour the day before?

The most striking thing about Inis Mór? The stone. OMG, it’s everywhere! The Aran Islands are actually a geological extension of the Burren. We saw clints and grikes [The Burren] on the island like the ones we saw in the national park. Over the centuries, as farmers cleared land for livestock, they removed stone from the fields and used it to build walls delineating pastureland. Michael says there are 7800 linear miles of stone wall on Inis Mór alone.

snail in a grike

Michael recently built a shed on his property using stone from his land. It was about 92% complete when the local authorities showed up. You can’t use those stones. They’re part of the heritage of our island. You’ll have to put them back. So Michael disassembled his shed. (Why didn’t they stop by when the shed was only 19% done? he mused.) You can own the land, you can build a wall with the stone from your land, but you can’t build a structure with the stone. They have more stone than they know what to do with. I doubt they could exhaust the supply if they tried.

This is the kind of insight you get only from hanging out with the locals.

member of the local seal colony

City of Tribes

a wee bit of craic in Galway

Galway is the fourth largest city in the Republic of Ireland—after Dublin, Cork, and Limerick—and by far the most charming of the four. Called the City of Tribes, it has an interesting history.

When King Henry II of England decided in the late 12th century that it would suit his interests to appropriate Ireland for England, he gave away prime Irish real estate to the English gentry who served him well during the occupation. Over the centuries these families assimilated into Irish life, marrying Irish women, cultivating the land, and establishing successful commercial businesses. Galway, run by a consortium of fourteen families of British origin, became the third largest port in the British Empire after London and Bristol.

Spanish Arch

After the English Reformation in the 16th century, the Irish adopted the new religion, although often in name only and frequently reverting to their beloved Catholicism. By the mid-17th century, King Charles I had had enough of these upstarts who refused to accept the Church of England and sent Oliver Cromwell over to convert them by force, which often resulted in death. 

When Cromwell arrived in Galway, he mocked the fourteen families, belittling them for their assimilation into a savage culture by referring to them as the Fourteen Tribes of Galway. Proverbially, Cromwell may have won the battle, but he lost the war. The families took great pride in adopting the label, continuing to call themselves tribes in defiance of Cromwell and the throne. Those fourteen families are alive and well today in Galway, running the government by more democratic means these days. Their names are very prominent in local politics. 

Saturday Market at St. Nicholas Church

We had a great apartment for exploring this very walkable city. A few blocks away was Eyre Square, site of the 13th-century English castle (now gone) and still the hub of the city. A few blocks beyond that was the heart of the old medieval city where some of the taverns have been operating since the 15th century! We happened to be exploring on a Saturday morning and got to take advantage of the Saturday Market there.

bank of the Corrib

A bit farther on and we were at the Spanish Arch on the River Corrib, site of the docks where the Spanish merchant ships used to unload their cargo during Galway’s heyday. The River Corrib is Europe’s shortest river. Four miles in length, it runs from Lough Corrib north of the city to Galway Bay. And they make use of every inch of it. It was the main transit system back in the day, and today has a nice riverwalk along its banks where young kids gathered to soak up the sun during our week of fantastic weather.

And just upriver we discovered a warren of great bars and restaurants in an area on the river that once housed several busy wharves and warehouses. Galway is known for its good food—the best we’ve had so far—and we took advantage while we were there. Lovely city!

The river is so clear we could watch the swan eating!

The Burren

the Burren

We were driving from the Cliffs of Moher through typically Irish, rolling, green pastureland on our way to our next stay in Galway when we came across this. Are we still in Ireland? What sort of geological mash-up is this?

the Burren, up close

This is the Burren (in Irish, Boireann or “great rock”) Great rock, indeed. Weird rock, as well. The limestone “pavement” has been eroded into large rectangles, or clints, with long, narrow fissures, called grikes, between them where the softer rock has eroded away. So weird that the rock eroded along gridlines!

clints (blocks) and grikes (grooves)

Today we hiked in Burren National Park, our third of six national parks in the Republic of Ireland. I had to get out in it and see it up close. We chose a short loop-walk to the monastic site of St. Cronan. And guess what I discovered there. My first holy well!  St. Cronan’s Well. Who knew?

Sure enough, there was a shrine to St. Cronan next to the well and faded strips of cloth hanging from tree branches overhead. [Serendipity] I felt like I had just won a scavenger hunt I hadn’t realized I was playing. Now I understand one reason people go in search of the wells; they’re spiritual geocaches. The thrill of the hunt may be what gets people out there, but it’s even more fun finding something you didn’t know was out there to find!

In the 17th century, English Parliamentarian Edmund Ludlow, who served under Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, observed that the Burren “is a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him…… and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”

in the grike

He is absolutely right. Rainfall disappears quickly into the grikes between the clints and makes its way into the limestone aquifers below. There is essentially no soil on the limestone pavement for living organisms to establish themselves. What grass and trees there are grow in small plots of soil between the clints, yet the grikes themselves are a haven for all manner of tiny plants from Mediterranean to alpine to arctic in habitat, all living side-by-side. They are miniature, terrarium-like ravines in a network of barren rock; I could explore them all day. 

Very interesting terrain. Not at all what I expected. This, my friends, is exactly the reason I travel.