A Bonnie Clare Day

On Friday, Michael and I went to the Irish West Coast, visiting the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, and the fair city of Galway. It was a fantastic day - absolutely stunning views, really cool geology (+1 for me), and some linkage to family history - the Cliffs of Moher are in County Clare, which is my sister's namesake (Lib, I took lots of pictures of things that said Clare) and the O'Brien family features prominantly in local history (probably some 8 times removed relation or something... there are so many O'Briens. There are also SO MANY companies and stores and places named O'Brien here, in general). We did this as part of another Bus tour, which worked for us in terms of getting us to the places, but it was definitely a very long haul. It's about 2.5 hours to the west coast from Dublin, and then it took about 2 hours of driving from place to place, so the amount of time spent on the bus vs at the places was a little much, and it was a very long day. BUT. We are both really glad that we got to see the sights.


The West Coast of Ireland is definitely the inspiration for most of the mental imagery I had had of Ireland - green, quilted pastures with Sheep and goats, low stone walls everywhere, rocks everywhere, little country houses... it was quite idyllic, but I'm glad I didn't have to eke out a life here in the 1800s.

So the bus stopped at this random little gas station as a rest stop on the way in, and it had this whole exhibit dedicated to American Presidents with Irish heritage, including Obama! Obama apparently came to the tiny town of Moneygall because he has a 8 times removed cousin or something here, and the town of 300 people is now very proud of that fact.

The 8th oldest golf course in Ireland looked hard.

Where the Inagh River meets the Atlantic Ocean, very near to the Cliffs of Moher

The Cliffs of Moher were stunning, and I thought they were totally worth the drive. They are gorgeous stratified limestone and shales, and at the shortest point of the cliffs, are 130 m tall, and at the highest point are 250 m. It's a very impressive edge, and we could walk all along it. Not surprisingly, they are a major nesting place for all sorts of sea birds. It was fun to watch all the birds flying (or trying to fly) in the wind.

I have a ton of pictures of the cliffs, and I couldn't really decide which to post, so have them all.

We could see surprisingly far.

Check out those strata! And also O'Brien Tower.

There are a ton of sea birds that aren't really visible in this picture... but a lot of them are Puffins!!!! (You just have to take me at my word)

We had great luck with the weather - it didn't rain on us while we were walking around at all! Just a few times while driving in the bus (and then the Bus' windsheild wipers stopped working, so we had to pull over and wait for it to stop a few times. Fortunately, the weather here has rapidly varying moods)

This was an excellent lunch spot.

It is a rather far way down...

But the views were worth it. It also got a little windy...

At O'Brien Tower. Cornellius O'Brien was the first person to this realize that tourism to the West Coast could help out the impoverished areas in 1835, so he had this tower built on the highest point of the cliffs. The Great Famine caused buisness to tank, but once things recovered, the Cliffs became one of the biggest tourist - and therefore economic - draws of the area.

Did I say it got a little windy? I meant a lot windy. Like blow me over windy on top of the cliffs. We decided to head to slightly less exposed heights so I didn't go flying.

County Clare!

This Republic is very glad to still be part of the EU. Low blow, I know.

 The visitor center at the Cliffs was also pretty interesting, and built into the side of the hill. For some reason I don't have a picture of that, though.

Hey, those are some family names!

My camera is not good enough to spot the actual puffins, but they were there!

As we drove along the coast, there were a bunch of old ruins of Norman Tower houses, which were basically rectangular castle houses built by the Normans a very long time ago.

 Our next stop was at the edge of The Burrens, a major national park that just looked incredible. Unfortunately, we only stopped there for 15 minutes, because I think I was probably one of the only people who thought it was totally awesome, because most people don't think that rocks are as cool as I do. But, The Burren is a huge region of limestone mountains and crazy erosional landscapes, a little bit like the Badlands in the Dakotas but also pretty different in terms of the shapes and features. The land is incredibly rock, and it's hard to image anyone making a living out here... but of course, this is the area where the Protestant English sent the troublesome Catholic Irish when they came to settle in Ireland, so people did the best they could.

The limestone outcrop is 250 square kilometers - just mountains and mountains of the stuff. And it looks like the moon. Sort of, I guess.

Watch your ankles!

Where it met the ocean was beautiful.

Limestone is a very easily eroded rock, so you get all sorts of weird shapes.

Also Fossils!!! This is why I thought this place was awesome, but I don't think that any of the other tourists bothered to actually look at the rocks. Their loss.

You can see Crinoids (weird sort of plant sort of animal things), gastropods (basically clams), a bunch of corals and I think some sea urchins, all in this rock!

After stopping at the Burrens, we drove along the Coast to Galway. The views were just gorgeous.

So rocky! You can see some of the many rock walls that were all over the place. Most of them were built not to separate anything, but just to put the rocks somewhere other than the fields.

More Norman Tower houses, although this one is a little more castle like with the court yard wall.

The last stop of the day was in Galway, another of the large cities in Ireland, and I guess it's sort of the Irish Cultural Capitol - most of the native Gaelic Irish speakers live around Galway, and it was a major center of the Irish cultural reclamation in the 1850s and 1900s. Under English rule, Irish speakers could not get an education, a job, own property... basically they were trying to force assimilation. A big part of the Irish Revolution, (which started 100 years ago, incidentally) was reclaiming Irish heritage. The tour guide took us on a short little walking tour, and then Michael and I took a break in a lovely little cafe for a bit to escape some of the crowd, and then walked around the harbor. It was quite nice!

Galway was kind of crowded.

But the streets were cute (although a little touristy).

Apparently Galway was founded by a coalition of 14 major Irish Clans, so all of their standards were represented in the town square.

Galway is also a major port and fishing town, so the harbor was kind of neat.

Overall, it was a long day, but very worth it! I'm very glad that we got to see this part of the country, and it was a lovely day.
West Coast Best Coast!