Bob:

The first leg of our morning trip was the by now well-known drive to Leenane at the head of the fjord. But there we swung around the head of the fjord and followed the North bank for a while. It was marked as a bicycle route and we did encounter bicyclists, which I expected, but we also started to encounter ewes with young lambs wandering around on the road, which I did not. The young lambs were, of course, clueless about what to do about a car rumbling down the road at them and their mothers, unfortunately, were equally clueless but more sanguine, quietly cropping the grass on the shoulders while their lambs were threatened with annihilation. Makes you wonder how sheep have survived as a species!

We turned North away from the fjord and started cutting across the peninsula toward Louisburgh, and the scenery became very rocky and severe. But it was still apparently good enough to serve as pasturage for sheep, so I had to keep occasionally dodging ewes and lambs as we drove along.

Monika:

Bob:

One highlight of the day was stopping to see a megalithic wedge-shaped stone tomb. It was, in fact a Cadillac of stone tombs, quite fancy as such things go and constructed in the final flower of the stone tomb building period in Ireland.

This one was, fortunately right next to the road so it was easy to just park the car and walk around it. We found a neat double row of stones stuck in the ground in a rough "V" shape with a remarkably thin and well-shaped capstone covering the whole edifice. That capstone was rectangular and so regularly shaped at about 6 inches in thickness that with very little work it could have served as someone's dining room table!

On the rear corner of the stone slab that roofed the wedge of stones I found an incised cross, a memento of the hedgerow churches that the Irish had to resort to when the English outlawed the Catholic religion during their occupation of Ireland. I also saw the remains of the trunks from an ancient forest in the nearby pond, a remnant of the Stone Age when Ireland was nearly covered with oak and pine forests.

Monika:

Bob:

Continuing to Louisburgh, we stopped for lunch and to see a museum dedicated to the time of the Irish potato famine, which started around 1847 and had disastrous consequences for the Irish. Approximately 1 million starved to death and another 1 million emigrated, mostly to Canada and the United States. Since that was out of a total population of 8 million, the effects were devastating and many villages were essentially deserted as we had seen on the Dingle Peninsula during our previous visit to Ireland on Wanderung 9.

However, it turned out that the museum had another floor entirely devoted to the life and exploits of Grace O'Mally, a pirate queen who lived at the end of the Gaelic era and the beginning of the English domination of Ireland. Her life was roughly contemporaneous with Queen Elizabeth I, and she was quite a woman. She rustled cattle, ferried Scottish mercenaries to Ireland, built forts to guard her sea kingdom, buried one husband, divorced another, and was still leading pirate attacks when she was 67 years old! It turned out that we had seen the remains of her first husband's fort, which she had defended from attackers after her hubby was ambushed and killed while out hunting.

Monika:

Bob:

We also stopped to check out Croagh Patrick, a curiously pyramid-shaped shaped mountain where St. Patrick had reputedly fasted 40 days before setting out to convert the pagan Celts. But having failed to climb Diamond Hill and knowing that Croagh Patrick was a full 1,000 feet higher at a total of 2,500 feet, we decided not to attempt to scale it until we were in better shape! Embarrassing to give up without a fight, though.

Monika:

Bob:

Continuing into Westport, we turned left onto Quay Road as we entered town and found a string of B&Bs. The second one had rooms for us, so we signed in for 2 nights and then walked up the street to the octagon and statue of St. Patrick in the center of the town.

Monika:

Bob:

I was fascinated by all the vividly colored and carefully maintained shop storefronts. The entire downtown area, about 2 blocks square, was filled with that type of storefront and it really made a cheerful impression.

Monika:

Bob:

Lois headed back toward the B&B while Monika and I mosied along doing some shopping. I found some 3-for-1-Euro postcards, which is about the cheapest going rate in Ireland, and picked the 3 nicest ones to send back to our family back in the States and friends around the world. We had a map of a walk in Westport that listed sites and suggested a route along the Carrowbeg River, so we decided to follow that back to Quay Road just to see a different part of the town.

Well, we DID see a different part of the town, and the river walk was wonderfully scenic. We saw beautiful waterfalls, a great blue heron fishing, and stone walls and buildings perfectly reflected in the calm waters of the river.

Monika:

Bob:

But as it turned out, the doggone map was just plain wrong so we ended up getting lost and wandering around the back parking lot of Westport House in search of a cut-through road that simply did not exist! Arrgh! And I had of course decided not to bring the GPS as the route was "too simple" and we had a detailed map to use! Double Arrrgh!

Monika:

Bob:

Finally a lady exiting the parking lot took pity on us, told us the correct road across the river lay another mile or so further on, and even invited us into her car for a lift along the way. Awfully trusting of her, I'd say. After all, we could have been ax murderers! We thanked her and continued walking along until we exited the grounds of Westport House almost at the end of Quay Road and then trudged back up the hill to our B&B, stopping off to buy some groceries en route.

By this time Lois had already been back for a couple of hours and she was just starting to wonder where in the world we had gotten to, so she was glad to see us. We settled in for a late evening snack and read and worked on the computer until bedtime.

Monika: