Day 10 – Galway City to Westport

On the road around 8:30 today for a long driving day.

We drove up through Connemara National Park (30 sq km, opened in 1980)…taking medium sized roads most of the way.

Amazingly, the more remote areas we were in had much better roads.

We saw a lot of peat fields and mountains along with lots of lakes.  The sheep, of course, are ever present.


Peat

We stopped at quite a few pullouts to take pictures.

There was lots of water coming down off the mountains and the rivers/creeks were running full and fast which also gave us views of some really nice waterfalls.

Saw a bunch of Connemara ponies, but only got one shot of a new baby out for the first time with mom.


John moving in for a closer shot.

The sheep are different, darker heads, longer wool…the babies were really cute!


Umm...?
   

This is the first part of the country we’ve seen without stone walls…just wire fences.
Stopped at Kylemore Abbey (built in 1868 and more of a postcard picture kinda place), got a picture, then continued on our way.
Took a stretch (and pint) break at Keane’s Bar in Maum.  Back on the road, and the stone fences are back!
Stopped at Adare Castle, in Cong.

It was originally built in the 1190s and has been added to, dismantled, rebuilt, and restored over the years.  It now appears to have been turned into some sort of resort.

On the way out we drove the wrong way for a while, turned around and found an abbey ruin in the town.

It boasted another cool graveyard along with haunting gardens and a small path out back that led to a monk’s fishing house complete with a trapdoor in the floor to fish through when it was cold.

 

Driving along, we noticed an out-of-place rock pyramid in somebody’s front yard.  Looks new but seems to be way to large of a project for somebody to just do.

Figured maybe it was one guy’s idea to build something out of stone that will still be there in a thousand years so anthropologists can try and decipher the social significance of it…one man’s attempt to mess with the minds of future generations.

A little further down the road we noticed some ruins off in the distance.

Found the next road (dirt) and drove down until we found a place where we could pull off to the side.

 

Cut through a farm field to find a cool old church in ruins.

 

We arrived in Westport - very pretty with Mount Padraig looming in the distance.
 
Westport is one of the few planned towns in the country (by James Wyatt in 1780)…which mostly means that the streets are wider than you find in other Irish towns and traffic patterns seem to make more sense.  The town hosts several festivals throughout the year and is a major tourist draw.
The Carrabaun House B&B is gorgeous with incredible views back into Westport and over Cleve Bay.  Our hostess is a bit fussy…but fortunately not around much. (can’t blame her too much, we did drag some ‘muck’ in on our shoes which she had to vacuum up.)

Unloaded the luggage and headed into town to shop and enjoy pints at both Dunning’s Bar and M.J. Hoban’s Bar & Lounge.

 

We enjoyed a nice walk around the city center past a beautiful church and a nice little riverwalk.
 

 
Erin had been in search of lamb (the cooked variety) for a few days.  Surprisingly enough there aren’t many places that serve it.  We found a little bistro named Madden’s, where Erin had a fantastic rack of lamb with rosemary and shallot jus…and ice cream for desert!  John was content with a delicious plate of spaghetti cabonara (gotta love local bacon).

No late night tonight…we’re kinda beat…so we headed back to the B&B for a quiet night.

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