Wednesday 23 January
Galway to Connemara
Tour
A great bus trip and one to fill in my day while awaiting the bus leaving for Dublin at 1.15a tomorrow morning. Went to Kylemore Abbey which was a beautiful house built by Mitchell Henry for his wife, who died a few years later. He was distraught so built a small beautiful church on the grounds in her memory and there is even a mausoleum with all the family residing now in the grounds.
http://www.kylemoreabbey.com/ OR http://www.gardensireland.com/kylemore-abbey.html
just for a bit of info. It is a beautifully designed church and has marble, different types and all from Ireland in the inside pillars . Connemara marble is a light green and gorgeous. Bought by the Benedictine Nuns for £45,000 in about 1920s they repaid the loan within 12 years – pretty good going – must have been a fortune then.
Then to Connemara, past the only fjord Slatibastfast didn\’t design for Ireland called Killary Fjord, etc etc and then through Costello, Inverin and Spiddal where all they do is build walls out of stones – the landscape is littered with small fields all surrounded by stone walls – magnificent to see an almost unbelievable maze. The weather cleared a lot during the day and although still cloudy no rain and the view of Galway Bay was clear. The promenade along the Bay is longest in the place (UK even?) at 3kms and is v busy during the summer months. With all the narrow roads and narrow streets in the towns, the traffic would be a nightmare in summer.
Landscape
The landscape changed quite quickly from peat bog which is dug and dried in the summer weeks and then burned for heat etc during the winter – black chocolate looking soil. I saw it being harvested on the way from Dublin to Cork but didn\’t know what was happening. The deeper they go, the better the peat and there were acres being bulldozed in the midlands. Oh and some of the houses, particularly older ones, are thatched and still repaired with thatch except now that is reeds and the reeds are now imported from Turkey – quite an expensive exercise because the insurance on these cottages is about 20% higher than normal. But they look good. Put this way, as against the modern straight-sided, aluminium, stone and glass with slate roof houses being built, they are a charm.
Still got about 45 minutes to wait until I get onto the bus. The night is quite fine, a little rain and I went to an Irish pub with a friend I met on the bus tour today. They had a \’jam\’ session; 1 banjo mandolin, mandolin, flute or drum, 2 squeeze boxes of different types, couple of violins and the spoons – think that was the total – great music and a good evening had by me.