After bidding goodbye to all my fellow travelers from the first week, I took a cab to the main train station in Dublin and attempted to figure out how to buy a ticket. Good thing I allowed myself plenty of time! Turns out you have to buy them from vending machine-looking things located in the main part of the station. I watched a few people buy tickets and wasn’t sure I understood it, so I approached an older teenager who had just bought hers and asked if she could help me. As was absolutely everyone I came into contact with in Ireland, she was very sweet and gracious and happy to help. Ticket purchased and directions given for how to tell where and when my train would depart from, I headed for the platform for the train that would take me to Galway.
What I didn’t know until later was that the trains issue specific seats to people who make reservations ahead of time, and the rest of us have to try to find a seat that doesn’t have someone’s name above the seat on the little electronic reader board. I wasn’t sure how it was all supposed to work, so I followed an older couple that had big bags onto the train to see what they did. Turns out they were from Alabama? Tennesee? Georgia? Anyway the American deep south, and they didn’t know about the reservation thing either. So they took one side of a table and I took the other where a young man had just left, and then a woman across the aisle told them that they had her seat, but that was OK she’d just sit where she was. Then the young man came back and told me I was in his seat, but that the one next to him didn’t appear to be reserved. So we four had a jolly time chatting, turns out he was from South Africa and had moved to Ireland for work about a year prior. No one came to kick any of us out of our seats, fortunately, and it was a pleasant trip to Galway.
At the station in Galway I asked directions to the bus station, having seen on the map that it was close by, and headed out on foot and glad I had packed light—a backpack and a small roller bag. Turns out the bus station I’d been directed to was the wrong one; it was the commuter bus station. But a kind person working there told me I just needed to go down the block and I’d be at the right place. Turns out one pays the driver of the bus when one gets on, and it’s best if it’s in cash. I had called the B and B I had reservations for in Doolin for two nights and they told me to get off the bus at the Hotel Doolin and then text and they’d come and get me.
I stayed at the Twin Peaks Bed and Breakfast, which was named for the twin peaks of the house, not the old TV show.
It was off the main road and up a hill, surrounded by a couple of other houses and lots of fields with cattle and horses in them. And an old castle ruin in the back yard. These ancient things are literally everywhere!
I stayed two nights there and reveled in the quiet and solitude after 7 straight days of cities and driving and people. I had dinner at the famous Gus O’Connor’s pub and that’s where I had my first Guinness, although I ordered a non-alcoholic version. O’Connor’s pub is famous for, at one time, being a center of Irish music in County Clare, which is known for it’s musicians. Apparently, according to the locals, it’s become more of a touristy thing now, but they still do have live music many nights. I was going to come back for the music but another guest at my B and B told me that there was to be a wedding reception in there that night so I decided that I didn’t want to squeeze in with that many people, especially since Covid was still circulating to some degree. The next day I bought some lovely Irish smoked cheese that was a lot like mozzarella called scamoose and finally got to taste a sausage roll, which are always talked about in all the Irish detective novels I’ve read. I hiked out to the ferry terminal and spent time taking pictures on the Burren land there.
There are lots of plants found in abundance there that aren’t found in very many other places; the locals told me that the cattle were all much more muscular and bigger there too because of the high limestone content in the rocky soil.
I have to say that the cattle WERE very stocky and well-muscled; many had Charolais blood in them which was the breed that we raised and showed at the University of Idaho lo so many years ago. They certainly did produce very fine steaks and Guinness beef stew! That night I had the BEST seafood chowder I have ever had, even taking into account what I’ve eaten in Alaska. And then on to O’Connor’s pub where I nursed a glass of Guinness for about three hours and only actually drank about 1/3 of it. I met two young women there who had grown up in the area, and one was a musician herself (played the accordion) and had sat in on the session there before. She knew everyone and was really feisty and funny! She told me that 3 or 4 of the musicians there were paid by the pub, and the rest were just sitting in. It was wonderful music—fiddle, mandola, banjo (which was the first time I’d seen how they play it with a flat pick like a mandolin instead of like in bluegrass), Ullian pipes, flute, guitar. The place was packed, and I felt lucky to even have a place to stand up at the bar across from where the musicians were playing.
The next morning my hostess drove me to the ferry in the pouring rain, and I set off for the Aran Islands. They are on the west coast of Ireland, part of what’s known as the Gaeltacht which is the part of Ireland where most people still speak Irish in addition to the English that the whole country speaks. I thought it was interesting that all the official signs (road signs, etc.) were in both English and Irish even though it’s a small number of people who actually speak it fluently and regularly.
There’s some groundswell to promote and teach the language more widely, just like with the Alaska Native languages, although almost all school kids go to Irish language summer school for a couple of weeks every year. In the Aran Islands though, Irish is the first language and they all speak it to each other when they aren’t talking with someone who only speaks English. I noticed on the Islands that all the signage was in Irish, and not necessarily in English at all.
I got off the ferry at the island closest to the mainland and the smallest of three islands, Inis Oirr (anglicized spelling is more or less phonetic: Inishear) meaning small island. It was still pouring down rain and by the time I dragged my luggage the three blocks to the little hotel, I was dripping from all surfaces. I had a good set of Goretex rain pants and jacket and hiking shoes, but water was streaming down my face and neck and I was quite bedraggled. But by the time I had lunch in the pub that was part of the hotel, the sun had emerged and I went out for a walk. Not many people live on Inis Oirr; and as many rock walls as there are enclosing medium to very small pastures, I’m not sure there’s room to build any more houses.
There is, of course, a set of ancient ruined castles on a hill top, but I didn’t get up there as I went in search of the promised well (that I never found) on the other side of the island and probably walked a good 5 or more miles.
The rock walls are incredible! They are all drystone stacked walls, and many of them have the upper course of stones turned sideways so that nothing except a small bird could sit on top of them, or climb over easily which is probably the real point.
Some are clearly VERY old, but people are still keeping them up. I was told that the looser, dry stacked walls don’t get blown over as easily as the walls with mortar. And that they began less as demarcations of property but more just to get them out of the way so that they could build soil by hauling and layering seaweed and sand. The soil is still pretty thin, but what a massive undertaking that must have been!
This little hotel had the distinction of having the most bizarre shower plumbing of my entire trip; you will, I’m sure, remember my almost-rant about the Irish plumbing and electrical systems from part 1. This contraption was, I’m sure, intended to be the apex of luxury and style, but it failed miserably in my book. First, when I tried to turn on the hot water, the thing shot water out into the room via six oddly placed nozzles that pointed straight outward. Slamming the shower door, I reached my arm in just enough to twist a few more levers and handles, and eventually got hot water coming out of the top nozzle. Things were fine until I finished and tried to turn it off and again the horizontal nozzles shot ice cold water out, but this time hitting my body instead of the floor. Glad I only had to use it one night. The village and the island were charming though, and I wouldn’t have minded spending more time there. Just not in the shower!
After breakfast I walked back down to the ferry dock and waited for the ferry to take me to Inis Mor, the big island. The dock crew and deck hands were all speaking Irish to each other, which has a lovely sound. I could only catch one or two words, but it was nice just to hear it. I got to sit outside the inside area on top of a cabinet of some sort that the roof extended over and shielded from the wind by the inner area, facing the stern. It was sunny but windy and a little cold, and the views were spectacular of the mainland across Galway Bay. We skirted the middle island, Inis Meain, which was the one I really wanted to go to since it is the least touristy of the three islands, but my travel agent was talked out of it by the ferry operators who said they can’t reliably get in and out of the harbor there.
I was to stay at a bed and breakfast on Inis Mor, and I could see on a map that it was a bit of a hike from the ferry dock, and steeply uphill, so I asked one of the sight-seeing bus drivers, Bertie Mullins it was, if I could take his tour around the island and have him drop me off at my B and B. He agreed to do that and it was a good tour, him being born and bred on the island, if a bit nutty. Inis Mor is substantially bigger than the small island but still has a lot of stacked stone walls and ancient ruins and churches and ruined churches just like everywhere I went in Ireland. They had two woolen goods stores there, the Aran Islands being famous for their knitted goods, and I bought a few things and had them shipped home since space and weight were at a premium in my luggage.
Being as it was downhill to the ferry dock and the morning was grand, I walked down to get the ferry back to Doolin. The ferry was about an hour and a half late, and I feared that my ride might not be able to wait for me, and I had no way to contact him. But he was there, a very nice gentleman named Richard, who often drives people around to and from places that don’t have good public transportation. He was a bit older than me, very gentlemanly, and had lived on Inis Meain for some years in his 30’s. He told me that I really should come back and go there, because it was the best of three islands! We chatted non-stop all the way to the little town of Kenmare, where the actual owner of the car service, Johnny Finegan, took over the driving to take me on the last leg of that day’s journey to the tip of the Beara Peninsula.
I stayed two nights in a nice little B and B there just outside the small village of Alihies.
They have a wonderful museum there that is all about the copper mining history of the area. Above the town is the old mine which not only was mined extensively in modern times (until it played out) but there are very old prehistoric digs where people were digging up the copper and presumably using it somehow. It turns out that when the copper played out, nearly all of the miners from there went over to Buktte, Montana to work in the Anaconda mine. I had heard that Butte had a big Irish popuIation but I didn’t know why or the extent of it. I hiked up to the mine which is surrounded by a chain link fence, but you can get right up close to what’s left of the main building and see where the shafts started.
There is a great network of hiking trails on the Beara Peninsula that traverse along the coast as well as up and over the middle of the peninsula; there is even a “National Bridle Trail.” The trails traipse across the landscape, with easily-spotted trail markers and well built steel stiles for climbing over the many fences. I actually heard cuckoos there! They do sound like the clocks!
Johnny came back to fetch me after two nights and took me to the train station in Kilarney, where I picked up the ticket that I had reserved online and ended up chatting the whole way with a woman a bit older than me who had a lot to say and said it so quaintly that it was a pleasure just to listen to her. When I got back to Dublin I took a cab to my hotel which was in the area of Fleet St., famous for it’s shopping and nightlife. I had already made an online appointment for a rapid Covid test, which I needed in order to board the plane the next day, but it took me over an hour to find the place, addresses being another unfathomable system to me. Fortunately, the test was negative and the results came in via email.
The Dublin airport was such a nightmare—four hours of standing in lines just to check in and go through customs. You also had to upload your Covid test results and two other forms for US Customs into your phone, fill them out, and be able to show them to various people along the way. It’s a darn good thing I hadn’t had any coffee yet and was a little dehydrated, because the first line took over 2 hours to get through. By the time I got to my gate I figured I was never going to leave the country again if it was this hard to get back!
All in all, I had a wonderful time. It really was the trip of a lifetime. I don’t know if I will ever have an opportunity to go back, but I would go again in a heartbeat. But I would spend my time on the west coast and chasing music, not in the cities. Only maybe fly in and out of Shannon airport instead of Dublin!
