Cong and Connemara- Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013

We had a delightful breakfast at the place where we are staying.  Our hostess seems very friendly, and when she found out where we were going, she gave us a map and many suggestions, which we used.

We headed north into County Mayo again, and were soon in the "Hills of Connemara," (like the song!).   Our goal was to get to the little village of Cong.  It was the place where John Ford filmed the movie "The Quiet Man," starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.  As soon as we got into the village though, we heard a horrible, loud metallic screeching coming from underneath our car.  It sounded like something was being destroyed.  We managed to get to a place to park the car, and the noise hadn't stopped.  

Our first problem to solve was finding a phone.  The phone booth on the corner was very cute-  green, with telephone written in Irish Gaelic over the top- but it had no phone in it.  The woman at the information centre sent us to Ryan's Hotel, a short walk away.  (Luckily, the whole village is only a few blocks, because we would cross it several times today.)  The staff at Ryan's was very, very helpful and not only let us use the phone but took messages for us when we needed it.  

The next problem was getting the rental car company on the line.  Julie figures that she probably tried five different numbers from the car's paperwork before she finally got to talk to someone.  Then it took about 90 minutes for them to call back.  Meanwhile, Emma and Anna took some leftover bread from yesterday's picnic and fed a flock of ducks in a nearby stream.  Julie finally took a break from phone duty and we all visited some of the gift shops on the street there.  

Once we returned, the car company had given the local mechanic the authorization to work on the car.  He was the owner of O'Connor's service station, only a few doors down, by the stream with the ducks.  After taking two wheels off, he found the culprit.  A small pebble had lodged itself in the front left wheel and was making the horrendous scraping sound we were hearing.  At least it wasn't a mechanical problem that might come back to haunt us or require us to wait for a replacement car.  They'll probably never read this, but we'd like to thank the people at Ryan's Hotel and O'Connor's service station for all of their kind help. (Though Julie didn't like that as the mechanic popped the pebble out, he had to show it to "the man," in spite of the fact that Scott had barely said anything the whole time and Julie was the one talking to everyone and trying to get things solved.)

Once we got a chance, we explored Cong with a little more enthusiasm.  Julie has always loved the movie, "The Quiet Man," partly because it stars her favorite actor, John Wayne.  The movie is set in the fictional town of Innisfree, but many of the exterior shots were done in this little town of Cong, in the summer of 1951.  Much of the town has been made to look like it did back then.  Immediately recognizable are the cross in the middle of town and the nearby pub called "Pat Cohan's".  The actual house that plays a central roll in the story is in ruins now, but there is a house around the corner from Pat Cohan's that is made up to look a bit like it.  Inside it is "The Quiet Man Museum" and a gift shop, of course.  The museum has rooms that are made up to look very similar to interiors used in the movie, but all of the real interiors were on Hollywood sets.  There is a bicycle built for two that we think was the one in the movie, and the reigns used by the real "Napoleon," the horse.   We watched a short video (with an Irish song about "Big John Wayne") and enjoyed the setting.  Even though it was "fake," it was nice to see a place that looked lived in after peeking in the empty shell of a real house from "Kilkelly" yesterday.  Scott also had a Guinness in Pat Cohan's pub.  One corner of it has been made up to resemble the pub in the movie, and even in the "modern" section, there are Quiet Man pictures and memorabilia on the walls.

We then drove on through the "Hills of Connemara."  Our hostess at the B&B had suggested a scenic route, and said it was, "Like another country!"  The countryside in Connemara certainly is very dramatic.   There are high round stoney hills, higher than and much steeper than we expected.  The weather had been sunny through the morning, but a few clouds were rolling in by this time.   We were treated to the very odd site of one hill to the left of the road being complete enveloped in ominous looking clouds while the hill to the the right of the road was sitting in bright sunshine.  There were also sheep all over.  We've seen a lot of sheep in the British Isles, but these sheep were able to cross the road freely and graze right by the roadside.

At our hostess's suggestion, we stopped for lunch at the Kylemore Abbey.  It was almost 3:00 when we finally had lunch, due to our car problem this morning.  We didn't tour the abbey, but we did admire it's castle-like building as it was reflected in the still water in front of it, and the apparently tiny (but probably very large) bright white figure of Christ way up on the mountainside over the abbey.

We continued on through Connemara and found more dramatic countryside and more sheep.  Julie and the girls wanted to get out and hug one of them as they were grazing near the road, but Scott didn't think it was a good idea.   We saw some places where we think peat had been dug, and in at least one place saw the bricks of peat laid in little pyramids to dry.  We also found the arched stone bridge that was used in the "Quiet Man," and had to stop to examine it.  Julie had her picture taken as she was doing her best to imitate John Wayne's pose on the bridge.   After a day out in the Connemara countryside, we then made our way back to Galway.

We wanted to see Galway Bay, even if we were't going to stop and "watch the sun go down" on it.  We drove towards the water and let the girls throw stones in.  We watched one very large ship called the Galway Fisher setting out from where she was docked and were amazed at how fast she backed up and made it out into the bay.  (The Internet tells us she is 91 meters long and is an "oil products tanker" headed for Whitegate in County Cork.)  After we watched her set to sea, we were ready to go other places.  Emma wanted to keep throwing stones and said, "Aw, don't be a downer!  Have some fun!"  It got two passing college guys laughing.  We drove along the bay past the Sand Hill area.  We might have stopped along the promenade there, but there were lots of people and not much parking, plus we needed to find dinner soon.  It was after 7:00, so we went back to near our bed and breakfast and went to a nearby McDonald's to make it quick.  After dinner, Scott and Anna enjoyed the pleasant weather on the porch, where the WiFi signal seems to be stronger.

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.