Ireland day 9 - Monday 13th June

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A relatively quiet day today. Our original plans had been to visit Galway City and the Connemara National Park, but we had a bit of a slow start and didn’t really fancy the 2 hour-ish drive over to the national park, so we had a look at the map and decided to head to the Cliffs of Moher.

Susan took the first shift driving and off we went. The most exciting part of the trip was ascending Corkscrew Hill, a series of 4 big hairpin bends. The view at the top was pretty good, but would have been stunning if the weather had been sunny!

The Cliffs of Moher were, well…cliffs. It’s fair to say that they are quite high (702 feet) and, as advertised, they’re vertical. They do have a bit of a story behind them. Cornelius O’Brien, an MP in the early 19th century owned the land which included the cliffs. He was way ahead of his time, and saw an opportunity for tourism, so he built a folly on the cliffs, now called O’Brien’s Tower. He used it to entertain important men and to entice visits from women.

His tourism plan for the cliffs certainly caught on – there is now a large visitor center, you have to pay to access the cliffs, and there was a huge number of tourists from many different countries there.

We had a bit of a walk along the cliffs, spotting some of the 30000 breeding pairs of seabirds, including kittiwakes, guillemots, black-backed gulls and puffins. There were a couple of skylarks singing above us too; it always amazes me how loud they sound when they’re so far above me!

There was a fabulous view to the Aran Islands and across the Galway Bay, and we nattered about knitting Aran jumpers.

Once we’d taken on some refreshment in the café and visited the souvenir shop, we headed south and drove a loop back to Kinvarra, stopping for fuel on the way. We’d passed about 3 fuel stations checking out the prices, when we stopped at one the same price as the first 3 – surely they’re all going to be the same in this area? If only we’d waited until the next one, which was 3 cents less per litre; ah well! The actual price we paid was €2.17, similar to the price in the UK, but about 90 Canadian cents more than Susan would pay at home.

We had a quiet evening in the cottage with Susan planning our next few stops and me writing Sunday’s blog.

Today was around 12000 steps and 7.5km.

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