Kanga And Wombats Adventures

Day 14

Settled about 5pm yesterday into our home for the next two nights with our host Bridie. She has a lovely home, with yet another amazing view, in an area of west Galway called the Connemara.They all speak Irish around here, not Gaelic! This is our bedroom and breakfast view.

Bridie loves animals and besides her cat Ronnie (who climbed in our window last night and scared the living daylights out of us), she feeds various stray cats and the 4 donkeys next door, all called ‘Bessie’.

The scenery is more rugged and wild here, and it feels quite isolated. The boggy fields are dotted with white stones and the occasional startlingly white cottage, the land criss-crossed with low stone walls either built vertically up steep bare mountains or gently rolling down to one of the hundreds of little lakes or inlets.

Wherever you drive, the backdrop is dominated by the Maumturk Mountains, or the Twelve Bens as they are called.

There are so many little lakes it is hard to determine if they are actually lakes rather than the sea. The kelp was a good indication it was salty water, a thriving industry in these parts.

Just south of Clifden is a newly developed walking path that takes you 5km across blanket bog land to the site of Marconi’s transmitting station. Ireland seems to have claimed Marconi as one of their own, with signage and literature all saying he was an ‘Irish Italian’.

In its day, it was highly secretive and therefore highly guarded. A more bleak and remote place is hard to imagine. But it is fascinating. There is not much of any of the buildings remaining these days, besides their foundations, but they had these clever telescopic gadgets that when you looked through them, showed you the scene as it would have looked like when the transmitting station operated as a small community. The whole site was pretty big. There were piles of peat bog everywhere!

It was a good walk, and we must have spent about two hours looking at everything. Just us and the sheep!

Heading north to Clifden, we followed the ‘Sky Road’ out to the coast, a beautiful drive that hugs the hillside past hidden bays and inlets until you hit the ocean.

About an hours drive east brought us to Cong, actually just over the county line into Mayo. Cong’s claim to fame is it’s setting for the iconic (apparently) movie ‘The Quiet Man’ starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.

So in Cong we have ‘The Quiet Man’ museum, ‘The Quiet Man’ pub, ‘The Quiet Man’ cafe, ‘The Quiet Man’ tearooms……..get the idea?

Of course there is a ruined Abbey, with this little building thought to be where the monks fished.

Placed above the water, they could fish through a hole in the floor of this structure whilst still keeping warm by the open fire!

We walked through the woods by the river, past lots of blokes standing in the middle of the stream fishing, and we stumbled upon what we thought was a castle….turns out it was, since turned into a swanky hotel and golf course costing €840 per night to stay!

Our ‘local’ tonight had live music, a trio of young ladies who sat in the dining room playing guitar, squeeze box and fiddle, looking like they were just waiting for their meal to be served.