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September 2015 - Near the Cliffs of Moher Ireland

LANDSCAPE

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Week 1 – Patti of https://pilotfishblog.com/
Week 2 – Ann-Christine aka Leya of https://lagottocattleya.wordpress.com/
Week 3 – Amy of https://shareandconnect.wordpress.com/ LANDSCAPES
Week 4 – Tina of https://travelsandtrifles.wordpress.com/ 


The first place that will always come to mind for a challenge like this is the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.

Even if it is raining...and it poured this day in 2015 just when we wanted to show it off to friends.

Lake Louise Canada

Uluru Australia

British Isles Friday Ireland 1991 Part 2

Hosted by Joy's Book Blog.

I've been doing some memory lane posts of trips before digital and before blogging.

I first traveled to England with my Mom in 1960
My parents took us back as a family in 1970.
John and I first went together in 1986 to London.
Continuing 1986 with Oxford and Stratford.
Ireland 1991 Part 1 Dublin
Ireland 1991 Part 2 Around Ireland scheduled
Ireland 1991 Part 3 Around Ireland scheduled
London 1987 - scheduled
Scotland 2001 - scheduled



May 1991 - Ireland

I'm crossing the Irish Sea to Ireland for the next few weeks in no particular order I will start with 1991. Oh how I wish I had kept a travel journal in those days!

After looking through the photos I am going to have to break this post into several parts. So I'll start in Wicklow where my parents lived after they married.

Glendalough is home to one of the most important monastic sites in Ireland. This early Christian monastic settlement was founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century and from this developed the “Monastic City”.

We stayed in County Clare at a delightful B and B. Aran View is still around and the nightly rate now is about $100 CDN.

As we drive towards the B and B.

Sitting outside the house with a cool refreshment.

Who could beat this view?

We certainly had better weather at the Cliffs of Moher than we did in 2015!!

The cliffs take their name from an old fort called Moher, which once stood on Hag's Head, the southernmost point of the cliffs. The writer Thomas Johnson Westropp referred to it in 1905 as Moher Uí Ruis or Moher Uí Ruidhin. The fort still stood in 1780 and is mentioned in an account from John Lloyd's A Short Tour Of Clare (1780). It was demolished in 1808 to provide material for a new telegraph tower. The present tower near the site of the old Moher Uí Ruidhin was built as a lookout tower during the Napoleonic wars

In music, the cliffs have appeared in music videos, including Maroon 5's "Runaway" video, Westlife's "My Love", and Rich Mullins' "The Color Green". Most of singer Dusty Springfield's ashes were scattered at the cliffs by her brother, Tom.

A common sight as you drive.

The town of Doolin.

On the beach at Doolin,

A stop at Monk's in Ballyvaughan. We would rent a house in Ballyvaughan in 2005 and found that Monk's was still there.

Monk's 1991

Monk's 2005

 John sitting outside Monk's in 1991.

Looking across the water to Monk's 2005.

1991

The Burren (Irish: Boireann, meaning "great rock") is a karst landscape in County Clare. It measures approximately 250 square kilometres and is enclosed roughly within the circle made by the villages of Ballyvaughan, Kinvara, Tubber, Corofin, Kilfenora and Lisdoonvarna.

Thoor Ballylee is known as the home of W.B.Yeats and is now a museum to Yeats.

The poet W. B. Yeats was so enchanted with this sixteenth-century tower house beside the Cloon River that he purchased the property in 1916 and restored it. For twelve years Yeats made "Thoor Ballylee" his summer home, which he found "so full of history and romance" that he was inspired to write "The Winding Stair" and "The Tower Poems". He once said: "To leave here is to leave beauty behind", and in a letter to Olivia Shakespeare wrote: "We are in our Tower and I am writing poetry as I always do here, and, as always happens, no matter how I begin, it becomes love poetry before I am finished with it", and remarked "as you see I have no news, for nothing happens in this blessed place but a stray beggar or a heron".

Lest it be forgotten that this was once the poet's home, there is a tablet on the wall commemorating his sojourn here:


I, the poet William Yeats,
With old mill boards and sea-green slates,
And smithy work from the Gort forge,
Restored this tower for my wife George;
And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.

Coole Park

The park was formerly the estate of the Gregory family. Coole House was built in the late 18th century for Robert Gregory. In 1880, Robert's great-grandson, William Henry Gregory married Isabella Augusta Persse, who became Lady Gregory. The walled garden contains an autograph tree, a copper beech that is engraved with initials of many of the leading figures of the Irish Literary Revival who were personal friends of Lady Gregory including William Butler Yeats, Edward Martyn, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey. The Yeats poem The Wild Swans at Coole was inspired by the beauty of the swans in the turlough at Coole Park. Yeats's home at Thoor Ballylee was just 3 miles away; he also wrote "Coole Park, 1929", a poem that describes the park as a symbol for the revival of Irish literature:

"Here traveller, scholar, poet, take your stand, / When all these rooms and passages are gone / When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound / And saplings root among the broken stone."

Into Connemara and we stop to photograph Kylemore Abbey (Irish: Mainistir na Coille Móire) is a Benedictine monastery founded in 1920 on the grounds of Kylemore Castle, in Connemara, County Galway. The abbey was founded for Benedictine Nuns who fled Belgium in World War I.

Next time I am definitely visiting the Abbey and its Walled Garden.

Another traffic jam.

Peat, my favourite smell.

You don't see as many quaint cottages today.

Day 9 Cliffs of Moher

Italics tour company description
Photos are SOOC straight out of the camera, no editing.

September 11 2015

HALF DAY TOUR TO THE CLIFFS OF MOHER AND THE BURREN: After
breakfast at the Castle today you will meet with your driver guide and travel northwest to The Cliffs of Moher - a sheer precipice that stretches for 5 miles along the Wild Atlantic Way. The Cliffs of Moher rise to a height of 668 feet above the Atlantic and is one of the most impressive coastlines in Ireland. In nesting season the cliffs are home to a variety of seabirds. Entrances to Cliffs of Moher Visitors Centre included. T

Breakfast at the "Castle" at 9AM. There is a huge buffet with loads of fresh fruit, cheeses, cold meats, cereals and pastries.
The food is divine and I have the best potato cakes that taste exactly like my mother's, there just wasn't enough of them!!

It is a rather rainy and dreary day not at all what you would want on the day you are headed to the Cliffs of Moher. We dress as best we can for the occasion. Mick manages to procure a couple of hotel umbrellas from the doormen.

Cliffs of Moher
Standing 214m (702 feet) at their highest point they stretch for 8 kilometres (5 miles) along the Atlantic coast of County Clare in the west of Ireland. From the Cliffs of Moher on a clear day one can see the Aran Islands and Galway Bay, as well as the Twelve Pins and the Maum Turk mountains in Connemara, Loop Head to the south and the Dingle Peninsula and Blasket Islands in Kerry. O’Brien’s Tower stands near the highest point and has served as a viewing point for visitors for hundreds of years.

One of my absolute favourite places to visit in Ireland!! On a fine day....not so much today. The good thing is that it is not too crowded.

They are so famous that in 2011 they were included in the final twenty-eight candidates in a global on-line poll to find the New Seven Wonders of Nature.

They didn’t make the final seven but then neither did the Grand Canyon or the Galapagos Islands!

I have been here so many times and they have changed drastically over the years as they have  been commercialized with a vengeance with paved walkways, concrete viewing areas, touristy craft outlets and a visitor centre with restaurants and a gift shop.
Today the gift shop is absolutely packed with wet tourists!

The human story and history of the Cliffs of Moher dates back at least two thousand years as the name derives from a 1st Century BC fort that stood where Moher Tower now stands. The old Irish word “Mothar” means ruined fort and it is this that gives the cliffs their name.

There will also be some time to see the Burren Region a remarkable landscape of Limestone and littered with Neolithic sites dating back 6,000 years.

The Burren (Irish: Boireann, meaning "great rock") is a karst landscape in County Clare. It measures approximately 250 square kilometres and is enclosed roughly within the circle made by the villages of Ballyvaughan, Kinvara, Tubber, Corofin, Kilfenora and Lisdoonvarna.

Karst topography is a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes, dolines, and caves.

Mick picks the perfect spot for a coffee break in Ballyvaughan. We had rented a house here in town in 2005.

The "salmon on bicycle" in the centre of the photo is part of a campaign against the setting up of Salmon farms in Galway Bay, because of concerns for their impact on wild Salmon and Sea Trout and other inshore fisheries

 In the early afternoon you will return to Dromoland Castle for free time to enjoy the castle.

We need to be back for 2:30 as we have afternoon tea booked. Traffic is heavy, we arrived back at 2:15 changed and made it! Lots more photos to come.

We all went back to our rooms until dinner! We were going to nap but we ended up in The Mystery of the Missing Underpants!! This morning's laundry had been returned but yesterday's had not. I called the desk and they were on the hunt. Several call backs and no luck.

We were meeting in the bar at 7 so I stopped by the desk and still nothing. They couldn't understand what had happened to it. then the bellhop steps into the back office and magic! there is the missing laundry.

We have dinner reservations in the Earl of Thormond. Just a sampling here.