A tour of The Burren

Hello family and friends and Ranger! We miss you! and we miss hoppy beer. Please send us some. Or come visit with some!
We've been traveling along the west coast for 11 days now, and despite the incessant rain, it's been absolutely amazing. We've learned a few lessons the hard way - such as never trusting the online bus schedule because you might end up walking that bus route (12 miles!) in the rain, and when you ask someone how much the B&B costs, make sure it's the person who is going to serve you breakfast because the charge will increase (this lesson is also known as, stay in hostels and meet cool people).

We're currently in Donegal town, waiting on a bus to take us to Glencolmkille where we hear there is a beautiful hostel built into a hillside with a woman named Mad Mary O'Connell running it. We can't wait! There are two great hikes there - one is a loop on the coast and the other is the Slieve League Cliffs (at just under 600m, the highest seaside cliffs in Europe!) and now that we both own rain pants and rain jackets, even the rain can't stop us! But maybe the wind can...

Over the last ten days, we've been to the Burren, Westport and Achill Island (our favorite stop so far!). We started our travels in Ballyvaughan, a small town at the north of the Burren and one of the main starting points for the Burren Way, a beautiful hiking path we spent a few hours on one morning.

Cow and a beautiful stone church. We see about 90,000 of both of these a day.

More views from our hike along the Burren Way.

And more!

A wall with ivy! Each area has its own way of building walls and since Zach is now a wall-building veteran, we take notice of these things.

From Ballyvaughan we had aspirations to take the bus to Lisdoonvarna, a town about 10 miles south of Ballyvaughan, and then walk to Kilfenora, which has no bus service but is renowned for the music and dancing on Thursday nights - so we had to get there. Much to our dismay, the bus schedule we had was wrong and the bus we needed had come an hour earlier than we expected. So, around 1PM, just as the wind and rain started to pick up, we set out to walk the 12ish miles to Kilfenora. Despite the weather, we had a wonderful time. Since we were walking, we took a different route and walked by the Polnabrone Dolmen, which is something I've been telling Zach about for years, so it was great to see it.

The Polnabrone Dolmen! It was built in 4000ish B.C. and the capstone weighs many many tons (it was raining and cold so we didn't take too much time to read about it - yay for google!)

The other side of the Polnabrone. You're supposed to say it like your whole mouth is full of cookies. Try it.

After leaving the Polnabrone Dolmen, we continued our walk to Kilfenora where we stayed in a great hostel and participated in the Ceili dance that night! Ceili dancing is a type of step dance, very similar to Contra Dancing or Square Dancing, except there is no one calling out the steps, making it nearly impossible to follow along. For best results, I suggest finding an older Irish person of the opposite sex and asking them to teach you to dance.

I danced with the wonderful Irishman in the tan shirt, while our new friend Delphine (in the white shirt) danced with another man. Zach sat on the bench and took lots of pictures with flash, making us all rather dizzy.

There is lots of cheering and clapping in Ceili dancing. It's great.

The band! We hear the band on Wednesday nights is even better, so we'll have to go back!

From Kilfenora, we walked and hitch-hiked and bussed to Doolin, a great costal town that is famous for its proximity to the Cliffs of Mohr and the wonderful traditional music you can hear in the pubs almost every night. We camped right on the coast and hiked to the Cliffs of Mohr the next day where both of us and Herb had a wonderful and windy outting.

The main strip of Doolin. We walked from here to the Cliffs. Our campsite and the coast is just to the left of this photo.

The Aille River, which runs right through the heart of Doolin, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.

On our walk!

The O'Herbs used to live in that castle. Herb was rather sentimental.

The Cliffs of Mohr!

The Cliffs of Mohr and Goat Island in the foreground. One of the Rangers (the people kind, not the dog kind) let us use his binoculars so we could see the puffins on Goat Island!

Us on the Cliffs. By the time we got there the wind was blowing about 25 miles and hour, it was rainy and about 10,000 people had just got off their tour buses. It was great, but since then we've been to some much more beautiful (read: more remote and better weather) cliffs.

Herb - in awe of the beauty. He wanted to claim the Cliffs of Mohr for America but we told him not to.

After leaving Doolin, we went to Inish Oirr, a small island off the coast of Doolin, for the day and night. It was a beautiful sunny day so we rented bikes, had lunch on the coast, wandered around a rusty ship wreck and spent a few hours on the beach reading and attemping to play mandolin.

The view from the peer on Isish Oirr. Right when we got off the boat there were men with horse and carriage asking us if we wanted to take a tour of the island but for some strange reason Zach wanted to bike around instead.

The beach! The water was more clear than any we had ever seen. Also, there was a dog on the beach who kept bringing us a deflated soccer ball to throw him, which made our afternoon.

Almost the entire island looked like this. According to the brochures we read, many of these stone walls are over a thousand years old.

O'Brien's Castle sits at the high point of the island.

The shipwreck we discovered on our bike ride!



In the morning, we left Inish Oirr and took the boat back to Doolin and headed up to Galway for more adventures on the West Coast!