Castles, Bogs And Bikes

You've got to hand it to the Irish. They're a strange lot. Take roadworks for example. The country roads are very narrow, generally with stone walls on each side as shoulders. Often its hard to get two cars from opposite directions to fit through. So you'd think that people working on the roads would have warning signs and guys with lollypops to make them as safe as possible. Well, we came around a blind bend today, and hit the brakes hard, as there was a group of 6 workers slap bang in the middle of the road. Actually one was shoveling tar, one was raking tar, one was rolling tar, and the other 3 were watching, so that's the same as back home. Yes, they did have one guy with a lollypop. He was standing in the middle of the group, and he was leaning on it, with the 'go' facing us, but upside down at road level. Eventually the guy raking the tar moved out of the way, and waved us through. The lollypop guy didn't move from leaning on the stick at any stage.

Or perhaps you'd organise a professional bike race with ten teams of six riders, each with a support vehicle, marshall's cars, police, ambulance, and tour director's vehicle, and then assemble them all in the middle of a small country village, in the middle of the only road, and keep them there for half an hour before the start to see what would happen.

Or perhaps you'd organise a special festival week to promote tourism in the region while everybody is enjoying one of the four good weeks of weather for the year. How about a food and wine week. No. Perhaps an Irish country music festival. No again. I've got it. Lets hold "Connemara Bog Week". Already we are planning to come back next year!

Anyway, today we drove the famed Connemara Loop NE of Galway. Actually, it was stunning, picturesque and beautiful. We saw limestone mountains, a patchwork of stone fenced fields, beaches, coastline, sparkling lakes and huge bogs. Some of the roads were again very narrow tracks, but most were lovely country roads.

Also stopped at the Kylemore Abbey, built by some starry eyed husband for his wonderful wife in 1870. Kind of puts a bunch of roses to shame. I can imagine his explanation - "well dear, I took out a $5 million loan to prove how much I love you".

Later in the afternoon we beetled up the motorway to our hostel in Sligo (sly-go), a working class town off the tourist trail. Still lots of Irish charm about the place. Tea at a local pub.