Today would have to have been our highlight in Ireland so far. We are in Killarney National Park and we got a boat ride, in a small open motorboat, through three lakes and up a river – about 1 ½ hours and really pretty as well as lots of points of interest along the way: a ruined 6th century abbey on an island; the remains of a cottage where an estate once existed, complete with ballroom; and some lovely bridges.
After the boat ride we had scones and coffee at a tearoom conveniently located at the end of the lake, then took our bikes (which had also been transported on the boat) and rode over The Gap of Dunloe which is a really beautiful mountain pass, complete with lots of lochs or loughs along the way.
We were also taken with these two houses, real doer uppers?
This third house looks like it can talk to me, even Gus saw what I meant after I pointed it out. We then biked back to camp, about 20 more km’s, a full day but we really enjoyed it and the weather behaved itself all day!
We drove up to the Cliffs of Moher today; on the way we crossed a wee piece of water on a small vehicle ferry. We were ready to drive around if it had been too expensive or too much of a wait, but we managed to drive up about 5 minutes before it was due to depart – pure luck as we had no idea. It does leave every ½ hour but we were still very pleased with ourselves.
Since we’d saved so much time by taking the ferry, we decided to drive down to Loop Head for the views of the cliffs. It took us about 20kms out of our way but they were very spectacular cliffs. Unfortunately of course if you’re standing on top you don’t really see cliffs at their best advantage. For that reason we are tossing up about seeing the Cliffs of Moher from the bottom, by boat, will decide in the morning because the sea is pretty rough at the moment – they’ve just gone out anyway, hmmm, we’ll see.
In the evening I went down to the beach, the rock formations were quite fascinating – all natural but look like they’ve been cut in lines.
No, far too rough for our delicate stomachs! We drove to the cliffs instead and were pleased to find that there were really good viewing areas. The Moher Cliffs are a very well known tourist destination here; there were coach loads of irritating tourists :-) by the time we left. The Lonely Planet calls this ‘Check-off tourism’, quite a good term I think! Luckily we’d arrived relatively early so didn’t have to share with too many others. But, like many of the main tourist spots, the cliffs were really spectacular and well worth seeing – I guess that’s how these things get to be popular with the tourists in the first place! It’s difficult to see in a photo how huge they are, at 203m high, but notice the tower – it’s about 4 storeys high and is completely dwarfed by them.
The Burren region was like a moonscape from a certain point up – it looked like normal grassland then only a few feet up it was suddenly barren rock. A very outlandish looking, bleak land, it is close to the sea too and not far above sea level, so not like it’s above the tree line in the mountains.
Today we went for a walk in Connemara National Park, after looking around the Visitor’s Centre. The walk could have potentially been to the top of this hill, Diamond Hill, but Gus has a bad knee at the moment and is having to take it a bit easy, so we just walked around the base instead.
Along the way we saw bogs and these peat workings. It’s obviously still a major source of fuel around here. People we talked to in Killarney National Park were saying that peat cutting has been restricted in a lot of Ireland now as it takes thousands of years to form and so is declining with all that has already been cut over the years.
I was quite intrigued by some of the stories in the Visitor’s Centre about the Bogs. One story was about how there used to be safe paths through the bogs that were sometimes difficult to follow in the dark. Sometimes lights would appear out in the bog to lead unwary travellers astray. If you saw one of these lights you were advised to turn your coat inside out to protect yourself from the enchantment...
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