Connemara Region 🇮🇪

Back out on the road again venturing from our home base near Galway. This time we wanted to take in the Connemara Region, including Connemara National Park. It's a mountainous region to the North West of Galway.

Not knowing the area well, we thought maybe we should just join a tour as that would go to the best spots, right? But, we thought, we have a car and we can do it at our own pace. So, what do we do to make sure we see the best sites? We steal the itinerary from a tour and do it ourselves.

We plotted our way points into trusty Google Maps and we were off. All was going well until we started to get into the very remote, very boggy areas to the southeast of Connemara. First stop was to be the town of Screebe. It looked like a driveway to a small village inn so we took one look and said no way, that can’t be it.. only to drive about a 1/2 mile down the road and appreciate the strange coastal lake. We stopped to take some pictures that frankly didn't come out that well. After we got cell signal a bit down the road we looked up Screebe and found out the reason that the tours stop there is this famous picture of a fisherman's hut. Since we didn't get the shot, here's what it looks like...

Picturesque huh? Another lesson learned. If you are gonna steal someone's itinerary, at least you should know why you are stopping at the designated spots!

This was our picture...

The drive was long but beautiful and full of all different types of landscapes from craggy coastlines, beaches, bogs, fields full of sheep, goats and lamb, lots of little lakes and streams, dense forests and decent sized mountains that were barren of any trees.

One other thing we noticed on the drive was the amount of castles. It seems like if there was a difficult place to live, they built a castle there. I'm sure it was for protection but man it had to make everyday life pretty difficult.

Connemara National Park

The visitor's center at the park was interesting and small. The most interesting part to me was about how Ireland's early inhabitants had such a big impact on the creation of the bogs, first by clearing the land for grazing and cultivation, heather grows turning the soil acidic, undecomposed peat builds up on higher ground and the remaining trees get killed off by waterlogged plants. The whole cycle repeats and gets worse. We learned later in the trip that there are some pretty significant efforts underway to try to reverse these bogs in certain areas.

We saw many areas where people were cutting the peat and stacking it so that it would dry and there were large piles of peat by the road. They burn this for heat in the winter. We also learn that practice is starting to change. We did enter a couple of villages on a cool day and you could smell the peat burning which as actually really pleasant.

We took a short hike to about the mid-way point of the highest mountain in Connemara National Park. I think we would have needed emergency evacuation if we tried to climb to the top.... although there were people up on top (in far better shape). I don't think they appreciated the heavy rain we got at the end of our visit.

Kylemore Abbey & Victorian Walled Garden

We motored on from the Connemara National Park, stopping for a quick snack and some coffee. Shortly after that we stopped at the Kylemore Abbey. The Castle at the Abbey was built in the late 1800's by a wealthy businessman named Mitchell Henry. Inspired by the love for his wife, hopes for his beloved Ireland, he created an estate boasting all the innovations of the modern age. Today, the Abbey is owned and run by the Benedictine community who have lived there since 1920.

The gardens looks spectacular but by the time we got to the Abbey we were pretty wiped out and didn't think we could take on another big tour. We snapped a few photos we could get for free and headed out.

As we motored past the beautiful lakes and mountains I realized that so far the entire trip I haven't been able to fly the drone. Either it was restricted, rainy or windy. This was a great place. It was beautiful, no one around except for sheep and it would be a pretty place to show off. As a result, here's a quick clip so you can get a sense of the place.

Hopefully I'll have many more opportunities to get the drone up and my flying and video skills will improve.

The Duke Did That?

The last stop on our stolen itinerary was down another single-track road to see a beautiful old bridge, in fact the “Quiet Man” bridge. Apparently, John Wayne filmed a scene from the Quiet Man on this bridge. Being touristy, I had to do my best impression, which was pretty bad.

Although it was a long day and a lot of driving, we enjoyed our adventures in the Connemara region.