Connemara
Today I was taken on a tour of Connemara; it seems there is enough in this area alone to enable me to stay here for the month. The area is just outstanding with magnificent mountain ranges and fantastic white beaches, when it comes to nature this place has it all, Loughs, sea, mountains, fantastic landscape, wonderful history.
I have seen so much in a day I’m not sure where to start, probably best to start with the area I am camping and the places I went to yesterday. I have pitched my tent near Connemara Golf club, a fantastic and wild landscape, the golf club is one of the finest in Ireland and I have been introduced to many people who are part of its charm, the President was chatting to us today about his term of office coming to an end and I have met a few of the ladies who don’t live in the area but have a caravan on the nearby campsite and come down to stay for the summer season to play golf and generally enjoy the area.
On the way here yesterday Gary the lovely man I met at the hotel in Clifden told me so much about the area, he took me on a bit of a trip on the way to the golf club and told me all about Marconi having a communications station at Derrigimlagh, it performed the first commercial transatlantic wireless transmission of Morse code across the Atlantic in 1907.
In 1919 John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown made the first transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to Ireland. They landed at Derrigimlagh, making it the first European site to connect directly with North America by aeroplane. They landed in this area because from the air this looked like the ideal place to land, being open countryside, but when they landed they realised how soft the landscape was and ended up with the nose of the plane dipping in the marshy bogland. There is a 5K walk around the site with the exact spot marked for prosperity. On a hill nearby you can drive up to the top where a monument made to look like the tail of a plane marks the extraordinary feat and points in the direction of the landing.
While I was in Clifden I visited the two churches there which both have spires and can be seen for miles around, they were built around the 1870s, one is Roman Catholic and the other for other denominations. They had beautiful stained glass windows which I have mentioned before as I love stained glass. On the other side of the road to St Joseph’s church is a graveyard where many victims of the great famine are buried.
The Abbey Glen Castle hotel where I went to try and find work was built in 1832 by John d’Arcy of Clifden Castle, it was used in earlier times as an orphanage for girls which then became a mixed orphanage, and it fell into disrepair over many years and was later bought by the Hughes family in 1969. They developed it into one of Connemara’s premier hotels.
After visiting the hotel and being taken on a little tour of the area, I went for a drink in the local pub called Tom Kings pub, I chose this pub because they had the tv on and the Scarlets v Munster game was being watched, I shouted through the pub door, “Come on Scarlets”, this made everyone stop and turn around to see who was shouting, I ended up going in for a drink and having my first taste of real Guinness, I have tried it before many years ago when I was pregnant as advised by the doctor to help my anaemia but this time it tasted much better, so smooth, I ended up having a couple more and enjoying the Craic with the locals, a very friendly bunch with some colourful characters. The Scarlets who are from my home town lost so the locals were pleased, apparently only one of them supported Munster the rest support Connacht which is the area we were in.
After all the excitement of the day I made my way back to the golf club and set up my tent for the night in a beautiful spot overlooking the sea.