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 didnt really fancy the 2 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, wellcliffs. Its fair to say that they are quite high (702 feet) and, as advertised, theyre vertical. They do have a bit of a story behind them. Cornelius OBrien, 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 OBriens Tower. He used it to entertain important men and to entice visits from women.
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, gulls and puffins. There were a couple of skylarks singing above us too; it always amazes me how loud they sound when theyre 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 wed taken on some refreshment in the caf and visited the souvenir shop, we headed south and drove a loop back to Kinvarra, stopping for fuel on the way. Wed passed about 3 fuel stations checking out the prices, when we stopped at one the same price as the first 3 – surely theyre all going to be the same in this area? If only wed 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,
We had a quiet evening in the cottage with Susan planning our next few stops and me writing Sundays blog.
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