A picturesque pharmacy shop, obviously converted from a warehouse
Flannery's Bar where we popped in for a drink the previous evening
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We stayed the night at a B&B on the main square in Ballinrobe which was quite a pretty market town.
A picturesque pharmacy shop, obviously converted from a warehouse
Flannery's Bar where we popped in for a drink the previous evening
We then went on to visit Ashford Castle, in the village of Cong just outside Ballinrobe. Unfortunately it's now a very expensive American-owned 5-star hotel, but we parked up anyway and had a wander round the attractively-landscaped grounds.
Ashford Castle from the outside
The impressive (although not authentically ancient) entrance to the castle grounds
Ashford Castle
Just outside the castle, at the centre of Cong village (where The Quiet Man was filmed) is the ruins of Cong Abbey.
Cong Abbey
A celtic cross in the graveyard at Cong Abbey
Another celtic cross in the graveyard at Cong Abbey
A tunnel of doors
After Cong we headed West following the shore of Lough Mask (a favourite for fishermen) past the Partry Mountains towards Westport. This is part of the Connemara peninsula but the northern part is known as Joyce's Country, as the author spent a lot of time here.
Spectacular scenery was visible everywhere
For some reason quite a number of churches were built in this style, which I
always think of as being typically Spanish
More stunning scenery
Looking back towards Lough Mask
The view from the village of Srah, showing one of the small rivers feeding into the Lough
To the extreme right of this picture in the distance, is sacred
Croagh Patrick mountain,
forming the shape of a perfect pyramid
We stopped briefly at the small town of Westport, before heading out along the scenic coastal route towards Louisburgh.
Westport is a small but attractive town
A closer view of the pyramidal peak of Croagh Patrick
A short way along the coast road we found a beautiful beach close to the village of Murrisk. Looking out onto Westport Bay, the one thing that the camera couldn't capture was the way that the colours of the sea seemed to change almost every minute, flicking between deep blues to greens and back again before your eyes.
Fantastic views out over the bay
An unusual cloud formation taken from a nearby area
After Louisburgh the road turns south and heads through the Dhulough Pass, a bleak but beautiful high pass through the Mweelrea Mountains. At the southern end, a mere 10km away is the village of Delphi, but that short distance proved lethal to the 600 men, women, and children who died there of exposure and starvation in the 1849 Dhulough Tragedy.
You can't escape the beauty of nature in Connemara
Heading for the hills -- and the clouds!
The Dhulough Pass
A stone dedicated to the victims of the Famine as well as the "Hungry Poor" around the world
Doo Lough, halfway along the mountain pass
Memorial to those who died in the Dhulough Tragedy
Fin Lough, at the southern end of the Pass
Soon after leaving Dulough Pass the countryside becomes far more hospitable again. Crossing the Erriff River we saw signs for a waterfall which we decided to go to see.
Me doing the Titanic thing at the waterfall
As you enter the southern part of Connemara, Kylemore Abbey is nestling very attractively on a wooded hillside next to Kylemore Lough. We wandered around the grounds but didn't go into the Abbey itself.
The classic shot of Kylemore Abbey
After this we headed through the town of Clifden, on the edge of Ireland next to the Atlantic Ocean. There were a couple of castles we were hoping to visit in this area but after a couple of hours driving around we didn't have any luck seeing them. It did mean that we took some tiny roads across some very bleak but stunning boggy landscape though!
In the end we gave up and headed straight for Galway City, where we found a B&B to spend the night.