Connemara

Connemara, Ireland, is a mythic place. It is wild and gorgeous, with bogs, rugged mountains, sheep, and homes made of stones. We drove the length and width of it.

After leaving Westport, we passed picturesque Ashford Castle...

and stopped at the Visitors Center at Connemara National Park to get educated about the flora and fauna of the area, including bogs. Gaelic is still spoken in this area, and most signs in Ireland show both languages.

Western Ireland is one of the few places in the world where bogs remain. They are formed when a high water level prevents organic matter from completely disintegrating. It remains in rich, black layers 20 or more feet thick, a substance which looks like dirt but can be burned like coal.

Bodies have been preserved in bogs and retrieved a thousand years later. We saw some bog bodies later in a Dublin museum.

Jewelry is carved from bogwood--trees encased in the rich, dark bog so long that the wood becomes black.

We drove past waterfalls, lakes, and inlets. The landscape was mostly deserted in the off-season.

There were sheep everywhere.

Even as we appreciated the beauty, we remembered that Connemara is traditonally one of the poorest areas of Ireland and was one of the areas hardest hit by the potato famine of 1845-50, when 3 million out of 8 million Irish inhabitants either died or left the country.

This sketch shows a tiny house with rock walls, like so many we passed by.

We drove to Clifden, the main town in the region, and stopped for a raisin scone...

and then drove onwards through Galway and into Ennis, County Clare, before traveling to our condo on the Ring of Kerry.

We stopped in Ennis for a luscious dinner of salmon with a sun-dried tomato sauce and a side of mussels from nearby Clew Bay.

I thought of the old Irish folk song about Molly Malone selling "cockles and mussels."

We so enjoyed the food of Ireland, from the salmon and mussels to the scones and marmalade.