60 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
60 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: 'Day 8: Killary: Aran Islands and Cliffs of Moher'
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date: 2013-06-15T14:49:53+02:00
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Tags: []
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Categories: []
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---
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## Inisheer and pukie
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Our plan today was to go to the Aran Islands on a boat tour and take a good look at the Cliffs of Moher (preferably from the ocean-view, not
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from the land-view). That sort of, kind of succeeded, but not quite perfectly.
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After breakfast which Mary from Summerville B&B lovingly prepared for us, we took a short drive down from Galway to Doolin. We found the
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harbor just fine, there were several boating agencies happy to push us a trip, but I had already booked us a duo-package (once to the first
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Aran Island, called Inis Oirr (Inisheer in English, and once from that island along the coast line of the Cliffs of Moher).
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I had the foresight to turn on GPS logging this time, so you'll find a nice mytrack on my public Google+ page. The boat trip was not calm at
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all, there were reasonably high waves and we were cruising along at 10 knots (or 19 kmh for all you land-lovers out there). Our boat was the
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Doolin Discovery, a ~40 person small ferry. I stood on the top deck trying not to blow off of the ship, while Paul took a more leisurely sit
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in the cabin with the other non-crazy passengers. I just love the concept of "uitwaaien", but the spray was a little bit wet :-)
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When we got to the island, about 35 minutes along, we had a long time to hang out there (about 2.5hrs to be exact). We decided to walk the
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"green" trail (as opposed to the purple trail). The trail was about 8km long and we know we can ace that, hands down, blisters up. The
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island has three features that I could tell - on the top there is an old castle, called O'Brien's castle. It looked pretty busted up though.
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On the shore, there is a medium sized freight ship that ran into the island, a big rusty memory of more prosperous times (for the captain,
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anyway). And finally there's the mandatory light house.
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We walked over the trail through very wildly divided grass lands - there are these typical walls made of stones, and there were hundreds of
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small (100-250 m2) plots of land. Some had farm animals (cattle, horses, sheep), some had nothing but grass. I took many pictures of the
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ship, we then made our way up to the highest point of the island and the castle thereupon. It's a cube-shaped tower, run down but
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accessible. We hung out in and around it for a bit, and then made the rest of the loop back down, landing at the docks at just before 2pm in
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time for our scheduled departure. All this time during the walk the sun shone and it was rather pleasant, one might even say too hot for our
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coats! When we came back to the harbor, it began to rain, cold, thick and windy.
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Some sausages were consumed, some water was drank, and when a boat came, it turns out it was the wrong one, and we had to wait 20min for our
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Doolin Discovery. When she came, we quickly climbed aboard, anxious to see the cliffs, but more motivated, still, to get out of the rain!
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The ocean was not friendly this time. We all sat inside because of the wind and rain, and about half a dozen people had their little
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sickbags. Paul and I were not seasick, but I have to tell you, seeing this lady gush out vomit into her sickbag did make me burp a few
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times... I never realized that nausea and vomiting was transitive!
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But then came our surprise, we didn't actually go to the cliffs, but rather directly back to Doolin. We thought a bit about complaining
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about this fact, but at this point you could see no more than 100m, and the water was very aggressive, so we figured it would be our loss,
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if we insisted to go see the cliffs of Moher. So off we were to Killarney and the Lios Na Manach B&B for the night.
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We were greeted at the door by a young girl, maybe 10 years old, and she handled the check-in for us. She showed us our room, asked us if
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we'd like a cup of tea or coffee, and when we'd like to have breakfast (8:30 sounds like a good time), and then went back to watch
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Dragonball-Z on the TV. Cute! Perhaps her parents are training her up to take over the B&B later on, but either way, I much enjoyed to be
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lead to my room this way.
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We unpacked the bags and took off for Killarney as it was already 6:15pm. We walked around the town and saw the pubs, main streets and other
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features of the city, and then settled on a restaurant in a hotel, called Killarney Royal. My soup was great, but for some reason I decided
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to order Tagliatelli which really wasn't my cup of pasta. It was full of thick cream and I don't like that, I don't like it at all. Paul
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went for a more accepted steak, and had a cheese platter after - but to his disappointment only one cheese actually came from Ireland, the
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others were German, French and Austrian. Oh well, better luck next time.
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Back at the hotel - I'm going to update Google+ and share the pictures from today. Tomorrow we're going to drive the Ring of Kerry and end
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up in Cork. G'nite!
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**Posted by Pim van Pelt at 1:42 PM**
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