Sunday, 10th August     GALWAY BAY - CONNEMARA

Robyn writes: Today we decided to explore Galway Bay and hopefully to see as much scenery as possible while avoiding other tourists if possible....

After a delicious breakfast provided by Mary, our hostess, we headed out a bit after 9 and drove west from Galway along the top of Galway Bay. It's very hard to get your head around the geography here, as the bay is so huge and there are so many inlets and little islands that you lose track of which way is up! The road followed fairly closely along the top of the bay right to a series of islands connected by little stone causeway / bridges, and we went to Lettermullin, in the last of them. Unfortunately at that stage it was raining fairly constantly so our visibility wasn't so good. Luckily it didn't last too long. From there we went inland and went across the countryside and some spectacular mountains to Oughterard, on the shores of Loch Corrib, a massive inland lake. We went through lots and lots of little villages along the way. One thing we noticed is that up here, the Gaelic language is much more prevalent - a lot of the signs are only in Irish with no English translation, so you're left hoping it's not something too important....

White cliffs - rather like Dover!

Beautiful beaches at the top of Galway Bay

Rain squalls kept coming over

Mountains and lakes

Then we headed west again, past lots of little lakes until we got to the Renvyle Peninsula in the north-west. We stopped at Peacock's Hotel near Maam Cross for lunch, and stopped to look at the extremely impressive Kylemore Abbey, a late 1800's abbey built for the Benedictine Nuns. There was of course a huge Sunday afternoon crowd there so we didn't line up to go in; just navigating the parking area was enough of a challenge! We also drove along the edge of the lovely Connemara National Park.

Kylemore Abbey



Looking  out from the Renvyle Peninsular

We've never seen so many stone walls!

Mountain roads

Killary Fjord

Coming back, we went past the Killary Fjord then to the north of the lough through "James Joyce" country and along to a cute little village called Cong. From there we came south back into Galway and back to Barna, where we are staying, just before 5. We were mostly lucky with the weather - some heavy patches of rain but for most of the day it was fine. It's the most changeable weather we've seen so far in this area - it changes from one hour to the next. (And quite often one minute to the next!) We were also reasonable lucky in avoiding too much touristy traffic, until we were on the road heading south into Galway where it got quite heavy again. And of course it goes without saying that we saw some spectacular scenery along the way.

We had a cuppa and put our feet up a bit before heading out to find tea. We went first to the "Salthill" area just a few kilometres away - lots of nice restaurants and pubs and sea views, but NO parking! We fairly soon gave that up and decided to head into the CBD instead. We didn't have much trouble navigating our way in, but of course finding a park was interesting. In the end we were lucky and found an on-street park next to the harbour which only cost us 4 Euros for the evening.

The Latin Quarter in Galway

Then we walked the few blocks into the city and found the Latin Quarter - a lovely narrow lane full of noisy people, shops and restaurants, many of which were packed to the rafters. We had a lovely meal at a restaurant, Busker Brown's, there just off the main street, so we were able to get a table straight away. I had a wonderful Guinness pie and Lex really enjoyed his baked salmon. They really pride themselves on their seafood here in Galway Bay!