Heading west to Galway- Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Today was our latest start yet, mainly because we had to wait until 11:00 for our laundry.  We took our time getting up, had hotel breakfast, and then shopped for stuff for a picnic lunch at the Sainbury's in the shopping plaza nearby.  We stopped to pick up our laundry where we dropped it off yesterday, only to have to stop at a second location where they had sent it, but we got on the road after that.

Up until now, nearly all of our time has been in County Antrim, except for a brief time when Sean took us into County Down to see the Giant's Ring.  We crossed County Derry and entered the Republic of Ireland and County Donegal at about 12:20.  There was no large sign or customs to go through, but the signs on the road certainly changed.  Now there's Irish on top of the English, and speed limits are in kilometers per hour instead of miles.  The Irish tricolor was not to be seen yet, though.  Instead, we saw many variations of flags with green and yellow,which we assume are the colors of County Donegal.  

We passed through the glens of County Leitrim with the dramatic scenery of the high surrounding hills.  In Leitrim, at the little village of Glencar, we stopped at a beautiful spot for a late picnic lunch, at about 2:20.  We ate at some benches with a flock of sheep in front of us, a large tranquil lake slightly beyond them, and a great hillside as a backdrop.  This is the region that the poet William Butler Yeats is from, and he described the waterfalls here as a place where faeries dwelled.   After lunch, we took the short walk into the woods and found the pretty waterfalls themselves.  It wasn't hard.  After the long hauls we had yesterday we were expecting a big hike to get to this spot, but even Emma said, "That's all?"  when we realized how short the walk was.  We didn't see any of the faeries though, unless they were disguised as a chicken that we saw as we were leaving the woods.  The girls believed they saw the same chicken twice in different places.

After passing through into county Sligo, we found ourselves on the N17.  That's a road that's featured in a song that Rush the Growler covers.  "I wish I was on the N17, stone walls and the grass is green."

We followed the N17 into County Mayo, where we had a bit of a scavenger hunt, based on the song, "Kilkelly, Ireland."  The song is an amazing one, based on real letters that the songwriter has from his ancestor's family.  It takes place through the last part of the 1800s, and if you listen very closely, a whole family's story seems to be told.  John, the son, is the person to whom the letters are addressed and has emigrated to America.  The father and other family members write to John about what is happening to the family back in Kilkelly and the whole song covers over 33 years of the story.  To write the letters, the father has the help of the local schoolmaster, named Patrick McNamara, who also ends up marrying John's sister, Catherine.  He's an important character in the song.  With the help of some pictures from the Internet, we found the school that Pat McNamara taught it, as well as the graves of Pat and Catherine.  They were at the cemetery at the ruins of Urlaur Abbey, a peaceful place along a the shore of a small lake.  We played the song there as the girls sat in the car. (Emma was freaked by the cemetery.)   We continued through the tiny community of Urlaur and found what was the actual home of family of John Hunt, the father in the song.  It is one of the many run down, abandoned farmhouses that dot the landscape in this part of Ireland.  This one story stone house is so overgrown, that we were only able to look in one window. (There was a chair and some other debris in it.)  As the line in the song says, "The house is so empty and sad."  Nearby is the house that we're pretty sure was the house of Patrick and Catherine.

It was after seven, so we really needed a dinner.  Just before we left Coutny Mayo we stopped at a Pappa John's (which also had a Tim Hortons with it).  We entered County Galway and continued down N17 past the stone walls and green grass into the city of Galway, where our bed and breakfast is for the next two nights.  It's a very nice place overlooking Lough Atalia, the loch which enters into Galway Bay.

Today ended up being a day with a lot of "car time" because we had to travel across the width of Ireland.  There was a little bit of bickering in the car as we went, but the day had it's highs too.