Ireland: Back to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren

Trip Date: August 7, 2011

For as small of a country as Ireland is - it's just a little bigger than West Virginia - it takes a long time to get anywhere! Mostly this is due to the narrow, winding roads, but it's also due in large part to the fact that the transportation infrastructure is dictated by the topography and Ireland is a very mountainous country! For these reasons, we got up early, finished packing, took showers, ate a quick breakfast, and prepared Agma for our departure. With suitcases packed as orderly as possible and everyone tight on space, we left Bantry shortly after 9am.

It took us a while to get back on to any major sort of highway, but we joined the big one just near Killarney and kept driving until the little town of Adare, just southwest of Limerick. It was a cute town with some neat ruins and churches and thatched roofs, but all in all, the few restaurants that were open were ex-pen-sive and I immediately got the feeling that this was the town where wealthy people from Limerick come to play golf... We stopped in Limerick, too, albeit very briefly for a late morning meal which we got in a restaurant beneath a parking garage after getting lost a little bit. I don't think anyone else was too psyched about stopping there but we didn't see much else open. The restaurant was big, however, and had a lot of large TV screens showing an Irish Hurling match.

Hurling is a game that goes back almost 4,000 years! It's central to Gaelic culture and each county in Ireland has a team. The players are all amateurs in the sense that none of them get paid, but being on a team is highly respected, and there is no way I would want to go toe to toe with any hurler. Hurling is a hybrid of soccer, rugby, lacross, and...well...quidditch (yup, I went there). Players on each team use their hands and a hurley (a type of stick) to hit the sliotar (ball) between uprights at the opponent's end of the field for a point or into the goalie-guarded net below the uprights for a goal (worth three points). There's a lot of smashing and grabbing and throwing and bouncing, but we caught on pretty quickly. The national championships are all played in Croke Park, a stadium in Dublin. Croke Park is interesting because it was here on Bloody Sunday in 1920 that English officers entered the stadium during a football match and started shooting into the crowds in retaliation for the murder of other English officers earlier in the day by Michael Collins. While the stadium is the third largest in Europe, only traditional Irish games administered by the Gaelic Athletic Association can be played in the stadium. All other sports that appear to have a direct competition with Irish sports, including rugby and association football, must now obtain special permission to use the facilities after a total ban was recently lifted.

Back on the highway after getting our fill of food and hurling (the sport), we were one our way back up to where I first came with Ryan and Sarah, to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. Britta and Carl, while having been to Ireland before, never got up to this part so this was especially exciting for them! We once again parked in the over-crowded, touristy parking lot at the cliffs and walked over. It was much better weather today than it was when I was here with Ryan and Sarah. Lizzie and Rob wanted to take photos like Sarah, Ryan, and I had done out on the adjoining private property, so we went off and let Dad, Britta, and Carl do their own thing. Dad watched Britta and Carl go up on another trail close to the cliff edge and while he enjoyed the views, he couldn't take the heights and went back to the car.

Beautiful Cliffs of Moher

Lookout castle at the cliffs

Clear view out to the Aryn Islands

Lizzie and Rob 400 feet up!

Me 400 feet up! (ocean for scale)

We found Dad back at the car and soon we were all packed in again, ready to head to the Burren, but not before taking a nice country road into the town of Doolin, famous all over the world for its traditional Irish pub music. A lot of people now say that Doolin is too overrun by tourists and non-traditional, non-Irish musicians that it's lost its charm. Just don't tell that to the people a Gus O'Connor's Pub because they seemed to be having quite a good time!

Neat castle on the road to Doolin

Irish group playing their tunes for no one in particular except themselves!

But this little guy was enjoying the music, too!

And another group in the room next to ours. Fantastic music!

Dad outside of Gus O'Connor's Pub

The last time that my family was in the Burren it was rainy and everyone was wet so the windows were fogged up and it was dark out, so we never really got a good chance to experience the Burren. That was in 2001 and I had the pleasure of already being here on this trip, so I brought them back to through the Burren by way of the Poulnabrone Portal Tomb. It started spitting a little bit so we didn't linger long and while one the road through the Burren we came across some good luck. We found the END of the rainbow!!

Back at the Poulnabrone Portal Tomb

Rob, Lizzie, and me

The rainbow ended right in that field!! If only we stopped to see if there was really a pot of gold there..

While you can see a lot of grass in the photo above, the Burren is much more rocky with extremely little vegetation of any sort, especially as you get closer to the shore and the town of Ballyvaughn. We drove the coastal route and pulled in to the town of Oranmore right around 9pm, found a cheap hotel, and then brought fish 'n' chips back to the room while playing a round of cards. And the next thing we knew, we only had one day left in Ireland.