July 28, 2024

July 28, 2024

We awoke to great weather again. During breakfast we made a reservation at a nearby British National Trust site. We finished eating and then drove east along the beautiful Antrim coast. We only make one stop to photograph Dunseverick Castle. Like Dunluce, it sits on a shoreline crag, but very little remains. We park at Carrick-a-Rede and make the long hike to this island. The name is Gaelic for Rock in the Road. Fishermen used to net spawning salmon returning through the narrow passage between the shore and the island. They would erect a rope bridge each year to reach the island. The fishermen are long gone, but the swinging bridge is now a tourist attraction.

Aimee crosses the bridge first. She doesn’t want me anywhere close, thinking I will jiggle the swaying span. We walked around the little island enjoying the coastline view. We are early and the crowd is thin.

Back at the parking lot we hike in the opposite direction to visit Larrybane Quarry. It was a limestone mine. Now it is on the tourist map because a scene from Game of Thrones was filmed here.

Keeping with that theme, we next stop at the Fullerton Arms Hotel in nearby Ballintoy. The pub has a dragon door from the Game of Thrones.

We then drive the winding road down to Ballintoy Harbor. There are no empty spots in the tiny parking lot. Instead I double parked and quickly explored leaving Aimee to mind the car for a minute. Too bad. It is a stunning harbor of mangled rocks. I would love to hike around. I have to laugh though as I see dozens of people filing out all dressed in medieval outfits. They are on a Game of Thrones tour.

Giant's Causeway is mobbed with tour buses. We bypass it and instead visit Old Bushmills Distillery. We check out the gift shop but forgo the factory tour. We have done that too many times. Besides Aimee’s mom used to buy me Jamesons, the other famous Irish Whiskey from County Cork. Bushmills may be the oldest licensed distillery, but Whiskey production in Ireland is far far older. The word Whiskey comes from the Gaelic for water.

We also spend some time walking around the little village of Bushmills. The town is decorated with British and Northern Ireland flags. It also has lots of banners about English history. This is clearly a Unionist Protestant town. The owner of one of the shops we visited had a huge Bordeaux Mastiff. We had to take a photo.

We spent the afternoon back at our guesthouse. There are just too many tour buses during the middle of the day to venture out. While Aimee slept, I caught up and drank whiskey. Not Irish whiskey but the Kentucky version I brought from home. 

In the evening we drove over to the Causeway Hotel for dinner again in the bar. Afterwards we hiked the Giants Causeway. This time we walked along the clifftop. This beautiful view reinforces that the actual causeway is a very small part of this park; just a tongue of rock sticking out into the sea. Somehow I had the idea that the hexagonal columns stretched over a larger part of the coastline.

After a mile this trail then zigzags down to the shore. We stop and photograph a boot-shaped rock.

We then spend an hour at the Causeway hoping for the tourists to leave. The crowd dwindles but there are too many die-hards waiting for sunset and enjoying the great ambiance. I cannot blame them for spoiling my photography. It is a beautiful and very unique spot.

The local economy lives off Causeway tourism. On the way back to our  B&B, I noticed the paving tiles were all hexagons. Aimee then pointed out our toilet paper was even hexagonal.

July 27, 2024

July 27, 2024

After breakfast we walked another section of the city walls. Derry is called the Walled City for good reason. The walls are the most intact of any Irish city. They protected the original rectangular town center, but now they are swallowed up by the greatly expanded city. We walked the western section overlooking the Catholic neighborhood called the Bogside. It once was the swampland bordering the island-city of Derry.

We exited our city wall walk at Bishop’s Gate. Here the street has a modern “Peace” wall alongside to separate the feuding Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

We walked down into the Bogside neighborhood to look at the murals adorning the buildings. This was a peaceful way of protesting. Later the Bogside was barricaded, and a "Free Derry" mural painted to proclaim independence from English Protestant rule. It helped ignite the Bloody Sunday massacre where peaceful protesters were gunned down by British soldiers. There is a memorial to this tragedy. I must have been lingering too long as I got put to work repainting the mural.

We returned to our hotel and checked out, leaving our bags in the car. We stopped in the nearby tourist office where we learned Amelia Earhart landed here on her solo Atlantic crossing in 1932. With the church spires and river she mistakenly thought she had made it to her planned destination of Paris.

Next door is the Tower Museum housed in a replica tower house. This excellent museum covers the long history of Derry with a good balance of movies and storyboards. The one item of note in the Christian era was a colorful Celtic High Cross. It is a reminder that just like Greek statues, the crosses in Ireland were also likely painted. With color the Bible stories illustrated are easier to comprehend.

The museum goes on to cover the plantation of Scotch Protestants, its name change to Londonderry, the building of the walls, followed by the famous Siege of Derry in 1689 during the Williamite War. The town famously was saved from destruction by a group of apprentice boys who barred the city gates. Londonderry became a bastion for Protestants in a hostile sea of Irish Catholics.

A major theme running through Derry history was emigration. People left throughout its history. Even Scotch-Irish Protestants emigrated. The parents of Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson were some of the most famous Scotch-Irish emigres. In the industrial era, Derry became a center of shipping and shirt making.

The last history section was the Troubles. It was the result of a Protestant minority wanting to maintain control using laws to limit housing, voting, and jobs. The persecuted copied our Civil Rights movement. It turned bloody when the Army showed up.

There is another whole wing about the 1588 Spanish Armada. After losing the battle, the Spanish ships retreated around the British Isles. Most ships were lost off the Irish coast. One was salvaged just offshore in 1971. Divers found lots of artifacts.

We retrieved our car and left Derry. On the way out of town, we stopped in the Unionist neighborhood to see the Protestant murals. One recalls the Apprentice Boys closing the gates of the city that we just learned about.

We drove east to our next guesthouse in Bushmills, near the Giants Causeway. Its too early to check in so we drove west along the Antrim coast to Royal Portrush Golf Club. The British Open will be played here next year. We saw Rory McIlroy's scorecard when he shot the course record of 61 here at the age of just sixteen!

Our next stop is just east at Dunluce Castle. It is in total ruins but it dramatically sits on a crag off the coast. The sun is in the wrong direction. We wait a few minutes until some cloud cover rolls in to get a better photo.

On our way back through Bushmills, we find a car overturned in the middle of town. We can't imagine how this happened. Either way this is going to shut down tourist traffic in the area. It is already backing up. No bus is going to make it past. We will have to find another spot for dinner.

We checked into our guesthouse and our landlady gave us a good dinner recommendation. She said to park at the Causeway Hotel on the coastline. The parking fee will be deducted from our dinner bill. It was a great suggestion. We ate in the bar on overstuffed chairs. Both the food and drinks were great and the lunch crowd was long gone.

After dinner we hiked the long sloping walkway down to the sea. Its almost a mile to the Giants Causeway. This is a huge peninsula of hexagonal basalt columns that juts out into the sea. They formed when a large block of lava slowly cooled, contracted, and cracked. Giants Causeway is the most famous example of this cool phenomenon.

We spend the next hour stepping over these flat-topped columns finding good spots for photos. Even though the tour buses are long gone, there are still too many people for the best photos. Aimee and I are both underwhelmed. We have seen these basalt columns now in numerous places around the world. They are not rare at all. This would be a really cool site if we were the only ones here.

July 26, 2024

July 26, 2024

From County Mayo in the northwest of Ireland we made the long drive to the Ulster counties in the North. I am shocked how good the roads are. This cannot be Ireland. The modern road while only two-lane is ultra-wide and straight making the drive a breeze. We only have to slow down as we go through towns.

Our first stop is an hour later outside Sligo at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery. Ireland has lots of ruins of Stone Age civilization. But here is the greatest concentration of burial sites from Neolithic times 6000 years ago. The New Stone Age started when man began farming and settling down in communities. Here they started a practice of building stone memorials for their deceased. Their ritual was cremating the body on a pyre and then interring the remains under a rock platform. A Stonehenge-like set of boulders was assembled around the burial box. This was repeated dozens of times in the immediate vicinity. Most were pilfered years ago for burial goods. One preserved site had bones and ashes from an estimated fifty burials.

Of the many burials in this site only one had a cairn built atop the burial box. This became the norm in the later Neolithic Age. We have reservations to see Newgrange, the largest of that type next week.

Back on the highway we passed through County Leitrim and made a stop in the town of Belleek outside the city of Ballyshannon. Aimee has a small inventory of their pottery. A factory was built here because the local hills contained the right minerals for fine pottery. The owner though had to smuggle craftsmen here from England. Belleek is famous for its Celtic Basket Weave designs. We pass on the factory tour and instead browse the gift shop and museum.

Our next stop is Donegal City. Donegal or Dun na Gal means Fort of the Foreigner, implying it was founded by the Vikings or Normans. Our route is blocked by a Gate1 tour bus loading passengers, so we park and walk into town. We start our visit at Donegal Castle, another Tower House. It was owned by the O’Donnell clan. O’Donnell was one of the earls that lost the Battle of Kinsale and fled Ulster to France. The English replaced him with the Brooke clan and opened the area to plantation settlement by Scottish Protestants.

From the castle, we browsed the small town center stopping in the gift stores. One shop had Aimee’s mother’s maiden name. She had to buy something in it.

Continuing north we crossed into Northern Ireland. This is a separate country, part of Great Britain; it uses Pound Sterling instead of the Euro, and distances are miles instead of kilometers. We finish in Derry finding our hotel on the edge of the town center. It is crowded and I can’t find parking. Aimee dashes in the hotel and comes out flustered. She said she couldn’t understand the clerk's accent so she made him write the location down.

After checking in, we walked to dinner. We took the long route atop the northern corner of the city walls, past the Guildhall, and then across the new pedestrian Peace Bridge spanning the broad Foyle River. We crossed Ebrington Square which during the Troubles held the local Army Barracks. Next to it is a Brew Pub.

Surprisingly we have a very tasty meal of Indian Dal. Dal is a Curry dish made from yellow Lentils. Our dinner didn’t start well though. Neither of us could understand a word the staff was saying. In particular, the waitress told us the Soup of the Day was “Cart”. You know that orange vegetable Carrot. The Derry accent has to be the harshest and most unintelligible I have ever heard.

July 25, 2024

July 25, 2024

This morning we hung around the Crossmolina area. Our first stop was Gortnor Abbey, the boarding school that Aimee’s mom attended. It is on the shore of Lough Conn. We drove south for a long walk on the grounds of the Enniscoe House estate. It is also on the shore of the lake.

After a lunch of tea and Irish Soda bread, we drove to the farmhouse that was Aimee’s mom’s family home. It is now owned by the cousins who have renovated it to modern standards. Humorously they have a semi-pet fox that comes daily looking for a food handout. He is a little shy with strangers around.

We went for a long walk into the surrounding bog lands. They are common areas where the locals go to dig turf. While the cutting is now done mechanically, the rest of the process is hard work. The turf pieces must be stacked into little piles for drying. Later they have to be collected, transported, and unloaded. Worn out, we return to the farmhouse for a nice lunch.

Aimee's cousins all have a strong affinity for the fields they each own. The zeal for land must be an inherited national legacy from a century ago when only 3% of native Irish owned the farms they worked.

July 24, 2024

July 24, 2024

From Crossmolina in County Mayo, Ireland, Aimee’s cousin Mary drove us south to Cong, on the shore of Lough Corrib. It is nice having a break from the stress of driving Irish roads. In Cong, the guard opened the gate allowing us to enter the grounds of Ashford Castle, an exclusive luxury resort. Last time we visited, we hiked onto the grounds through the forest into the backyard. This time we are driving up through the front gate past a beautiful golf course. We park opposite the bridge to the castle. We grab a coffee to-go and have a nice morning walk through the park-like setting of the castle grounds. I can’t believe how expansive it is.

We have access to this exclusive property because we signed up for a Hawk Walk with their Falconry School. This zoo has 37 raptors, most of which are Harris Hawks. We have encountered them before at the Desert Museum in Tucson. Harris Hawks are one of the very few social raptors. They hunt in packs and are more amenable to interaction with strangers. We are given leather gloves and instructed how to release the hawks and how to signal them to return.

We take the hawks out into the forest surrounding Ashford Castle. For the next hour, we release the hawks to fly up into the trees. Dozens of times during the next hour, our handler places a mouse piece onto our glove and our two new friends instantly fly back to us dodging branches on the way to land on our outstretched fist. We have a great time. This is such a unique experience. Intimate animal encounters are always our most memorable vacation highlight.

Unbeknownst to me Falconry was a common skill in Medieval times. It was far easier to have your hawk buddy catch your rabbit lunch than trying to do the same with a bow and arrow.

Leaving Ashford Castle, we parked in the adjoining town of Cong. It is famous for being the main filming location for The Quiet Man. We had lunch and then walked around the little village. Besides The Quiet Man statue, we also visited the ruins of Cong Abbey and saw some more Harry Clarke Stained glass in St Mary’s Church.

On the way back to Crossmolina, we drove through the town of Ballinrobe. In 1880 an English estate manager drew the anger of the local peasantry. They reacted uniquely, refusing to harvest his crops or sell him anything. Charles Boycott's name is now infamous around the world.

Farther north we visited Ballintubber Abbey. This 800-year-old "Church that refused to die" was used roofless for 236 years during the Penal Law Era. We also stopped at the Addergoole Memorial. This little park is dedicated to 14 Titanic passengers from the local area. Sadly only three of them survived.

For dinner, we drove into the big city of Ballina and had dinner with three of Aimee’s Irish cousins at a former Salmon processing plant turned restaurant.

On the return to Crossmolina, we stopped at the cemetery to see Aimee’s departed relatives. While they did that, I amused myself with the elaborateness of some grave sites.

July 23, 2024

July 23, 2024

We left Oughterard, Ireland this morning to explore the Connemara, the western coastal section of County Galway. We don't make it very far before stopping at an old bridge for a photo. This spot had a cameo in John Wayne’s movie The Quiet Man, one of my favorites.

We made slow progress because it is a nice day and the scenery beautiful. This part of Galway is striking for its mix of mountains (called the Twelve Bens) and numerous lakes. Because the wind is calm, I am seeing many opportunities for reflection photos. The Irish must have seen me coming. One stop has a humorous monument with the inscription, “On this site in 1897, Nothing happened.”

We left the main road to follow the coastal route around Errisbeg peninsula. It was probably a mistake. We ran into a traffic jam of cars and bikers. The increase in tourism is due to the successful "Wild Atlantic Way" marketing campaign. This year is the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of this 1600-mile West Coast road trip. Eventually we leave the crowd behind. The coastal area is filled with rock. But instead of Burren smooth it is mostly filled with giant boulders.

Just south of the main city of Clifden, we make a short stop to see the Alcock and Brown Landing Site. This duo was the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean nonstop. They did it in an old biplane in 1919 at the end of WWI. They flew from Newfoundland landing here to claim the £10,000 prize. They thought they were landing on green grass. It turned out to be a bog and they went in nose-over.

I thought we could drive to the marker but the road was blocked. We had to walk the last mile. The trail was filled with hikers. This is also an historic Marconi Site. It was the eastern end of the first commercial transatlantic wireless telegraph service starting in 1907. We visited the western station in Nova Scotia in 2009. For me this turned into a Three-fer. Besides the two historic sites, this bog is an active Turf production site. We see the equipment used to cut the peat out of the old bog. We see it stacked for drying and accumulated in large transport bags. Turf was the traditional home heating fuel.

With this delay, we are running short of time. We quickly stop at another memorial to Alcock and Brown. It is wing shaped, sitting on a hill, just off the road. We find the city of Clifden very crowded.

We continue on to Connemara National Park, It has a long winding parking lot, but it is completely filled with cars. I don't relish hiking with a horde so we keep driving. A few miles past is Kylemore Abbey. Its lakeside postcard setting is one of the iconic views of Ireland. I thankfully took the shot on our last trip. I think we were the sole tourists then. Today there is a huge parking lot filled with cars and busses. We press on. Humorously just a hundred yards past, I pull off the busy road and get a nice shot of Kylemore and great views all around.

Aimee is getting annoyed by my frequent stops, but I just can't help myself. The reflection photo opportunities are endless. Ireland is so beautiful when it is not raining.

We follow the road along the southern shore of ten-mile long Killary Fjord and then cut north across country. We can see the backside of Croagh Patrick and the peak is clear. On our last visit we didn't climb it because of the weather. This is our chance. We hit the coast at Westport, turned left and found the parking lot. We join a large crowd hiking this sacred mountain.

The climb is relentless and slow going. I wish we had gotten here earlier. Aimee is thinking she should have exercised harder. After an hour we only make it to the saddle of the peak where we can see to the other side of the valley. The view over Clew Bay is astounding and better than I remember.

Back at the bottom, we drive into Westport, one of the nicest towns in Ireland. We stop at Westport House, an old Georgian country house situated on a beautiful lake. It is filled with tourists, walking the grounds and riding Swan boats on the lake. We stop for a photo of Pirate Queen Grace O'Malley. She ruled this area in the late 16th century battling to keep the English out. On our way north in the cute town of Newport, we ran into another statue of her.

We continued our journey north. We were stymied a little by a road closure that forced us off the main route and onto a tiny lane where we have to dodge oncoming traffic. We ended our journey at the home of another O’Malley, probably a long, long descendant of Grace. She has a castle ruin in her backyard and also happens to be Aimee's cousin.

July 22, 2024

July 22, 2024

Last night we turned the TV on for the first time. The final All-Ireland Hurling Championship is being played in a Dublin Stadium. The contest is between County Cork and Clare. Clare won by a single point in a close match. Hurling is uniquely Irish and is like a cross between hockey and rugby.

From Galway City we drove due West along Galway Bay for thirty minutes until we reached Connemara Airport. We are early but as soon as we arrived the airline said they were ready to board our flight. After weighing both of us we joined seven other passengers and climbed inside the tiny plane. The plane is just wide enough for two skinny people. Humorously the staff also added a handful of Amazon packages in the back.

We took off and nine minutes later we landed in Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands. The pilot must not be instrument rated as we flew very low keeping above the ocean but below the low clouds. We were met by a van driver who drove us and the next planeload into the main village of Kilronan. There we arranged a tour of the island.

Our first stop is on the opposite side of the island at the top of a low hill. From the entrance we have a twenty-minute hike up a rocky slope to visit Dun Aonghasa, or Fort of Aonghas. This is probably the most spectacular of all the ancient stone forts in Ireland.

While this hill fort is also a ring of dry-stone construction, it is only a half circle. However it straddles the edge of a 300-foot ocean precipice! I am generally not afraid of heights but even I didn’t get too close to the edge. The wet slippery stones are too dangerous. This is just the opposite of the Cliffs of Moher. There are no barriers whatsoever to prevent a catastrophic fall. The view in both directions is impressive. This whole side of the island is a sheer cliff.

It is believed this fort was first constructed three thousand years ago. The danger must have been severe to place this fort at this location. But to add to its defense, the approach to the fort is spiked with upright stones to make an attack difficult. This is a rare addition to Irish Stone forts.

Aimee and I are happy we decided to fly versus taking the ferry. We arrived an hour earlier than the tourist horde and pretty much had this exquisite site to ourselves. We had a mid-morning cup of hot chocolate while we waited for our van driver to return.

For the next hour, our driver gave us a tour of the rest of the island. It was slow going as the narrow one-lane roads are clogged with vans, bikers, and walkers. It is also drizzling now. The most impressive feature of the island is its resemblance to the Burren on the mainland. The majority of the island is a vast stretch of limestone pavement. Despite the rough terrain, surprisingly six hundred people live on the island.

Back in the main village, we tried to have a quick lunch. Despite picking easy entrees, we waited a long time to get our food. With the arrival of the ferry passengers, tourists are overwhelming the infrastructure of this tiny island.

While waiting for our driver to return us to the airport, we got a call saying the clouds are too low for flights to take off. We are diverted to the nearby ferry. This must happen frequently as Irish weather is so unpredictable. Forty minutes later we are on the mainland where another van returns us to the airport so we can collect our car.

We then drive forty minutes north to our next accommodations in Oughterard. We have dinner in a traditional thatched hut pub. Aimee selects the Irish Stew. This is her comfort food that her late mother made for her as a child.

After dinner we shopped in the cute town, and then made a drive-by visit of Aughnanure Castle. This is another medieval Tower House. It looks in great condition. Unfortunately the flight cancellation meant we arrived too late to tour it.