WELCOME TO IRELAND
WELCOME TO IRELANDToday was another bit of backtracking, as we went to visit some of the archaelogical sights and ruins on the Burren in Clare county. My favourite by far was Poulnabrone (Poll na mBrón), a large tomb monument that when excavated was shown to have 33 bodies in there! Here are a few photos.
Having started fairly early, we were able to beat all the tour buses along this part of the Burren, and so continued on to the Caherconnell Stone Fort, believed to have been built somewhere between 400 and 1200 AD. Incredibly, a new prehistoric chamber was found only last year, and so we saw the start of the dig.
After a nice lunch of warm soup at the visitor's center, we continued our long drive to Dingle, which included a spectacular drive across the Connor Pass. Here are the photos.
Having arrived in Dingle, we began our clockwise drive around the famous Dingle Peninsula, which will be part of part 2!
08/18/09 by visitEarth
Today began the grey, overcast drive from Galway to Doolin near the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. It was kind of an odd driving day, as it took much longer than I'd thought, and we ended up backtracking and even retracing our steps inadvertently.
Most of the real excitement came as we finally got into the Doolin area, which is probably the largest town near the famous Cliffs of Moher. Along the way, there were several ruins (as usual), including this cool castle looking down into the Atlantic.
And of course, Elizabeth couldn't stop when we passed these donkeys!
We decided to try to head straight to our destination first, the Atlantic View B&B in Liscannor, which is within walking distance from the Cliffs. Mary and Daniel were our hosts, and they were great help - Daniel even drove us up to the Cliffs to avoid the 20-minute walk. One thing about the cliffs though - while they are pretty, they're nowhere near as large as the Slieve League near Donegal, nor arguably as pretty as the Causeway in Northern Ireland. Plus, it is a really popular tourist destination, meaning it's quite built up and is overrun with tourists. Given how many tour buses were there, and how busy the 8,00 Euro parking was (free if you walk), I'd suggest trying to show up either really early or really late. Regardless, I still took several photos.
We didn't spend that long, and retraced our drive back to Ballyvaughan, where we met up with Shane Connolly, a rather reknown tour guide for the Burren. The Burren is a huge expanse of mostly desolate limestone that is home to an incredible array of flora due to its unique environment and ecosystem - tundra flowers thrive hear, as well as near tropical ones. Having grown up in and around the Burren, Shane led us up one of the huge expanses and gave us a great 3-hour tour explaining the local flower, the history of the Burren and how over thousands of years. What was most fascinating is that the Burren is the result of both human actions in tree-cutting and farming thousands of years ago, and natural actions in eroding the landscape. Scientists suspect that many of the stone walls and even the old stone road we walked along have been around for several thousands of years! Our tour culminated near the top at an old stone fort.
By the time we returned near Doolin, it was dinnertime so we had some nice soup, chips (french fries) and salad at the Stone Cutter's Kitchen. Then it was off to bed at Atlantic View and ready for the next day!
08/18/09 by visitEarth
Since I'm running a bit behind on the postings, I'm going to combine Friday August 14th (Elizabeth's birthday) and Saturday August 15th into one posting; this kind of makes sense anyways, since theses were exclusively horse days for both of us.
August 14th
This morning, I followed the group on foot as we went through the hills and pine tree forests of the Oughterard region, just west of Galway.
The highlights were extended canters on the dirt and gravel trails, with me doing my best to keep up by running on foot, catching up with the rest of the herd when they recovered with their walks. I was also followed and passed by a couple of renegade Connemara ponies that hopped their stone fence and left their grazing field; and I was chased by two male goats down the road for several increasingly worrying minutes!
Overall though, despite intermittent mist, we covered about 20 kilometers in just over 3 hours, and had a great time. For the last hour, I returned back to the Wellfield B&B after hitchhiking with an older Austrian couple, while the rest of the group finished off with a muddy mountain pass, getting caught in the rain. Their highlight on the way back was a riderless pony running into the middle of the road, resulting in Willie on his pony and a truck driver yelling at each other on the road while traffic was stopped in both directions. Here's Elizabeth on one of the particularly misty periods.
We had a lovely dinner across the street again, featuring chocolate birthday cake for Elizabeth, then several of us went into Oughterard city center for a Guinness at the local pub.
August 15th
Today was a visit to Willie's Dartfield horse museum and professional cross country course, which is the only museum dedicated to Irish horses. Of course, for Elizabeth the highlights were new and challenging cross country jumps, while I again followed on foot with camera in hand. Here are some highlights of Elizabeth's day, including swapping horses to find a good one.
The day ended up with riding/running into several of the fields with the wild ponies; as with any herd of wild animals, they moved en masse, and also kept an eye on us together as well. This was really a great way for Elizabeth to end her horse riding week.
When we were done, we headed into Galway for dinner and photo sharing at the Meyrick Hotel in Eyre Square, then off to bed after a tiring day.
08/17/09 by visitEarth
Today turned out to be a glorious weather day, full sun and hot! Since the rest of the riding group was going to be scaling some rough mountains, decided that it was perfect timing to explore the Aran Islands, a group of three islands off the western shores of Ireland; the most popular (and largest) of the islands has the most to see, called Inishmore.
So after a quick and uneventful breakfast at the Peacocks Hotel in Maam Cross, I drove down to take the 40-minute ferry ride to Inishmore (Inis Mór). It's a bit of a weird island, with the ferry entrance feeling much like a Caribbean port entry, packed with tourist shops, 4 or 5 different bike rental outfits (visitors can't bring cars across), guided horse carriages, small tourist vans and places selling the world famous Aran wool sweaters.
The best way to tour the island is on bicycle, and with the weather cooperating, I was one of many tourists on a 10 Euro per day rental mountain bike. The interesting thing is that once you leave the immediate vicinity of the harbour, things settle down into island living pretty quickly; ironically, given how heavily the island is promoted, some of the tourist hotspots aren't that well marked, nor are directions that clear. Regardless, I did manage to visit the Seven Churches (Na Seacht dTeampaíll), monuments and bike through local villages. Here are a few photos.
The largest attraction, however is Dun Aengus (Dún Aonghasa), a large prehistoric fort perched on a cliff. It's visually extremely stunning; however, on a warm, sunny day like today, the place is overrun with tourists.
I finished up with a nice picnic lunch overlooking the ocean and crashing waves, before taking the ferry back and meeting up with the rest of he crew at Wellfield Farmhouse B&B in Oughterard, Galway. The host Mary met me, and after settling into I went to our room, went for a short bog on the gravel road through the peat bog out back. Once everyone came back, we walked across the road to Mary's brother's B&B, where we had a lovely pasta dinner. Finally, although we were all beat, some of went to Faherty's Bar for a Guinness - with that it was back to the B&B and straight to bed!
08/15/09 by visitEarth
Woke up this morning and had a nice hearty breakfast at the Beach House before jogging the guesthouse dog down to the beach one final time.
At this stage, Elizabeth and I will separate for our daily activities, so in this post I will relay my day. I packed up and headed out to Connemarra National Park in Letterfrack on the west coast of Ireland, first passing through Clifden.
The park was free admission, and I followed the 3.7km hiking tour up and around Diamond Hill at 442 meters in elevation (about 1470 feet) which was a nice hike, a combination of gravel path and stone steps. Gorgeous view down into Barnaderg Bay, feeing from the Atlantic Ocean. Here are a few shots from my morning warmup.
And then a roadside castle on the way to my next hike.
Then it was quite an adventure - first of all, I really wanted to hike within the famous Twelve Bens, a series of peaks that starts at Connemarra National Park then heads inland. It took several false starts and false instructions, but eventually I parked at a youth hostel and began the hike up.
Let me first start by saying that I burned just over twice the calories on this hike than I normally do running! The first 2.5km was straight up Benlettery at 577 meters (1920 feet) - but it was the most challenging terrain I have ever hiked. There is no consistent trail, let a long any marked trail, so almost the entire climb is done making your own way over bog, sliding rocks and small rocky streams. For this first Ben summit, it was well worth the view at the top.
Having covered the 2.5km in a whopping 50 minutes, I decided to tackle a second Ben - this time there was a faint outline of a path, but it was unclear whether it was a sheep path, an actual hiking path, or just a natural rock path from streams. Regardless, it was slightly easier going down and back up to Bengower at 664 meters (2213 feet), this time over nothing but loose rock. By this time the fog was starting to roll in slightly, but still good visibility.
Feeling in good shape, I decided to take on a third Ben which involved descending almost 200 meters (666 feet), then climbing another 221 meters (737 feet) to summit Ben Breen at 691 meters. This stretch became more difficult, as the steepness increased, while the footing became more difficult. By this time, the fog had started to roll in quite heavily, enough so that not only could I not even make out the 4th Ben, I didn't even know which direction it was - each side seemed to plummet over the edge.
So I thought I'd take it safe and head back in the direction I had come, just reversing my path on a simple line - except the fog really started to roll in and I quickly lost all sense of direction. I ended up wandering around from edge to edge, made some false descents and ascents, and finally had to descend beneath the fog in some points, get my bearings, then climb back up and retrace. I had to do this several times, and at one point had resigned myself to waiting in a rock shelter until the fog had passed or morning arrived.
Fortunately, I was able to find a few key landmarks and was finally on my way back down; keep in mind, throughout this entire trek, I didn't meet a single person although there were plenty of sheep. By this time I had expended a lot of nervous energy, but still had a few climbs and one big descent left. I did manage to finally work my way down, and the 9km hike took just under 3 hours, or about twice as long as a normal hike would.
I was completely exhausted when I reached the car, muddy and mentally drained. Overall I would classify this as an extremely challenging and exciting adventure, but not terribly fun. I think with better conditions and real full-on hiking boots, the entire circuit of the 12 Bens would be great; but my 3 Bens were plenty on this day...
08/14/09 by visitEarth
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