Wow, its hard to believe we’re more than half way through our trip. Time sure flies when you’re having fun. Today we landed in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare. We’re in The Burren. Actually we’re only about an hour south of Galloway, our destination for tomorrow.
Panorama in the ocean swell
We’re staying at the RathbaunHotel tonight. Its more like a public house though. Rooms upstairs and pub downstairs. The coolest part is they have live traditional Irish music every night. We’ve just returned from almost two hours of dinner and music. It turns out that our room is just above the stage, so the music continues for us until 11:30.
Shannon Ferry crossing the River Shannon
I’m writing this after consuming a couple pints of Smithwick’s, so I may ramble more than usual tonight. After a false start this morning (heading south to Cork instead of north to Galloway) we got back in the groove. To save a bit of time and traffic we caught a ferry at Tarbert and into County Clare. On the top of our list today was to see The Cliffs of Moher. After driving for way too long we arrived in the little town of Doolin.
Another one lane country road
I hate to complain about roads again, but I think google has something against me. Maybe there is a special algorithm taylor made for me that sends us to the least developed roads in the country. Several times we were instructed to exit onto remote, narrow lanes for five or ten kilometers only to rejoin the same road we had been on. What’s with that? I thought today we’d get a break and just follow the nice wide “N” road all the way. I mean there is one that goes directly where we wanted to go. But no, we were all over the countryside. The scenery may have been nice, but the hedges are just high enough to block the view.
Herding the sheep to their pen
Keeping the sheep in their pen
Caherconnell advertisement
Cutting out a sheep
OK, enough whining. I still love Ireland and it really is very pretty. In Doolin we had lunch and re-grouped. Karen suggested that we may want to go on a sight seeing cruise to see The Cliffs of Moher. Since the cliffs face roughly west, we booked the 5:15 cruise so the light would be better. Since it was only 2:00 we decided to skip to the next thing on Karen’s list of musts.
On the edge of The Burren
We drove 30 minutes (yes, on narrow lanes) to the Caherconnell Ring Fort, where they give sheep herding demonstrations. This turned out to be better than I had hoped for. OK, I love dogs so that helps. A Shepard and his three dogs herded sheep basically anywhere the Shepard wanted them. The dogs followed simple whistle signals and knew just what to do. It was fun to watch.
Cliffs of Moher
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Cliffs of Moher 2
Cliffs of Moher 3
Another tour boat at the Cliffs of Moher
The Cliffs of Moher 4
We returned to Lisdoonvarna to check into our hotel and then made our way back to Doolin, without googles help I might add. The cruise was well worth the money. The view from the water is truly spectacular. If you ever have the chance to see The Cliffs of Moher I recommend the cruise (be sure to do it in the late afternoon or early evening on a sunny day). Good luck!
Ireland must be suffering from drought by now. They haven’t had any measurable rain since we arrived. I wonder if we brought it with us? The other day I thought the weather was changing, but the sun has come back. I’m not complaining, it’s making our trip nicer than expected.
Tomorrow we plan to go out exploring The Burren. This is a very unique environment and is a world heritage site. Generally The Burren has very little soil and is mostly limestone rock. There are also many ancient ruins and artifacts that go back as much as 6,000 years. It should be fun to explore.
Until tomorrow then,
Jim
This featured blog entry was written by olytrains from the blog Adventures in the Emerald Isle.
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