Today’s adventure took us westward to Clifden hugging the coastline in a clockwise direction. Not quite a Ring of Kerry but the landscape was very different from other areas we’d seen in Ireland with the land seemingly to comprise of large rocks and weather worn boulders with small patches of soil in between.
We visited Costelloe, Lettermullan, Carna before stopping at an arts and crafts village at Roundstone for some refreshments and souvenirs.
I’ve included the pictures of peat above and below as this is still used as a source of fuel in Ireland. When we were in Waterford, I had rememebred a number of houses near our accomodation continually blowing a dark and foul smelling smoke from their chimney stacks. I hadn’t considered they might have been anything other than pet crematoriums at the time but yesterday during our visit the Kylemore Abbey, peat was being burnt in the head gardener’s cottage and it was blowing black smoke and it smelt. Mystery solved!
From Roundstone we contined onto Clifden via Ballyconneely. The views of the Atlantic Ocean from the headland high above Clifden were impressive but don’t present very well on a scrunchy blog post!
We returned to Galway for our last night in Ireland having seen another aspect of Ireland’s rugged yet beautiful west coast.