Wanderung 34

Drive around Connemara

With the aid of a map provided by our host about the scenic highway routes through Connemara, we plotted out a course of action for a driving tour to the West for a day.

We first had a relaxed breakfast down in the airy, light dining area on the first floor (our rooms are up a small flight of stairs on the second floor). Linda and Jerry were on board with the plan to first visit a roadside store specializing in making jewelry or other artistic objects out of the local green-veined Connemara marble, and then proceed westward to Kylemore Abbey before looping back toward our B&B along the scenic rural roads.

The plan worked out pretty well although it took us the whole day to do it. Our first stop at the marble jewelry store was just a short way to the northwest of Galway on N59, and I drove past it on the first pass as they had repainted the exterior of the shop, I think. But we finally parked out of the way of the tour buses and perused the marble-based jewelry for about half an hour. Monika found a nice necklace and some stud earrings of matching green Connemara marble, Linda also found a nice necklace and earrings of marble, but of a different size and pattern, and I found a nicely polish pebble of the same green marble that had very nice veining, and I purchased that for myself.

We continued on past some rather stunning scenery of shallow lakes and ponds surrounded by pasturelands with a scattering of houses. The pastures held, for the most part, sheep, and I once again had to watch out for sheep on the road as some of the pastures were unfenced, apparently, and the sheep were wandering around eating the grass growing on the shoulders of the roadside. I was mentally prepared for that from my last driving experience in Ireland, but the first sheep I ran across (literally) was still a bit of a surprise as that simply does not happen in our area of the US.

But looming in the background were the Connemara Mountains that are near the coast. They are severe looking mountains because they are barely covered with low-growing grass and brush and have no trees whatsoever, a distinct contrast from/ the tree-covered Smokey Mountains or Blue Ridge Mountains in our area.

We finally drove right through them to the northeast to get to Kylemore Abbey, a beautiful building situated on the shore of one of those small lakes so common to the area (although there may be a dam at one end of this lake).

The Abbey has a rather tortuous history, starting out as the palatial residence for Mitchell Henry and his wife, but then devolving through the ownership of a feckless Duke and his rich American wife, and finally into the hands of a group of Benedictine nuns.

Although the nuns used the property to house a boarding school and day school for the education of girls, and had faithfully preserved the buildings for many decades, the preserved rooms open for us tourists had furnishings mainly from the Mitchell Henry days. We looked at the very fancy living room, dining room, and even the office of Mr Henry, who came from a wealthy family.

But Mr Henry had built, and the nuns had extensively used, a kind of 1/3 scale cathedral just down the road from the main building. We walked over there and had a nice time photographing its exterior and interior, including columns made from the 4 different kinds of Irish marble and a beautiful stained glass window. Of course, this being Ireland, sheep were safely grazing outside.

From the church, we headed back to the main gate to take the shuttle bus to the Victorian gardens. Carefully restored and replanted, the Victorian Gardens were in a large, walled enclosure that is now used to grow flowers and trees in pretty patterns, as well as to grow vegetables that are consumed on the estate. The original gardens had extensive greenhouses with white metal frameworks enclosing hundreds of panes of glass, rather like Kew Gardens in England, I think. Two of those old greenhouses have now been reconstructed, and are sitting in the back of the gardens along with a cute little house that was the residence of the head gardener in the 1800s.

The nuns are now running the place for the tourists and still make chocolate the old-fashioned way.

We were, however, getting hungry by this time, so after walking through the gardens, we boarded the shuttle bus back to the entrance, picked up our car in the parking lot, and headed South to Clifden to try to find a belated lunch. The drive itself was scenic, with the narrow road winding through what we would call the foothills of the nearby mountains, which we could see quite a ways off.

We parked as soon as we could just at the edge of downtown Clifden, and walked into the central area in part to find an ATM machine as our B&B hosts desired to be paid in cash. That was accomplished at the other edge of downtown, and as we walked through the town I began to feel that it was familiar. In particular, the odd, stainless steel obelisk or needle set out on a small plaza right in the center of the town where there is a major intersection of two roads, looked like I had seen it before. Although I'm still not sure what that obelisk means, recognizing landmarks like that always makes me feel more comfortable in a town, so I felt comfortable walking around Clifden.

But we were HUNGRY by this point and returned to the a pub we had seen while walking in from the car. There we ordered beef stew and mashed potatoes, which Jerry also had, and Linda had vegetable soup. The food was good, the service was excellent, and I noticed that they had license plates from the USA nailed up on the wall. They didn't have one from Virginia, however, so I offered to send them one of my old plates, perhaps the "Doc Bob" one.

Re-energized, we climbed back into the car and returned to Galway past another beautiful lake at the foot of the Connemaras. But then we detoured down to the scenic drive along the coast of Galway Bay so that Linda and Jerry could see that and get at least a fleeting glimpse of the Aran Islands that lie out in the mouth of the bay. The seashore was as rugged as I recalled, although there seemed to be more houses built on either side of the road than when we were here last during Wanderung 24.

The drive back was, however, quite slow in part due to following the large tour buses that kept their speed down to 50-60 kph, probably for safety reasons on the narrow country roads, and in part due to taking a wrong turn near Galway and having to circle back on the N56. The new GPS ran out of power and I forgot I had the power cord in my pocket, so that was no use, but Linda had the right map and Monika had her navigational expertise to guide us back on route and back to the Elite B&B. Then we had our scones with tea for a nighttime snack while we figured out a strategy to get down South to see Limerick and the Ring of Kerry. After much discussion we came up with A Plan, and then all retired for the night.