Ireland – Galway and the Cliffs of Moher

Monday morning, we take the train to Galway (pop 85,910 in 2022). Our quick reconnaissance of this compact town takes us from dinner on Dock Street, around Galway Bay and the River Corrib, to the Spanish Arch. On the other side of the Arch is a small park, the Wolfe Tone Bridge, and the entrance to the Latin Quarter. The waters rushing under the Bridge look mighty swift.

Latin Quarter is packed. Seems like everyone in Galway is trying to get dinner on this one strip. From Quay Street to High Street, then Shop Street: look down the alley, there's no one, look back to the street and there are performers, tourists, diners, and shoppers fighting for space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The crowd breaks when we turn left at St Nicholas' Collegiate Church (Anglican, fourteenth century). The remains of the old vicarage and the 'Lynch Memorial Window' stand on one side of Market Street, with this inscription:

This ancient memorial of the stern and unbending justice of the chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch Fitzstephen, elected mayor A.D. 1493, who condemned and executed his own guilty son Walter on this spot, has been restored to this its ancient site A.D. 1854 with the approval of the Town Commissioners by their chairman, V. Revd. Peter Daly, P.P. & Vicar of St. Nicholas

Further along, on Prospect Hill, at the top of Eyre Square, is another salvaged window above the 'Browne Doorway' (seventeenth century).

 

 

 

 

On Tuesday, we join a tour into County Clare and out to the Cliffs of Moher, which includes several stops. First, the bus parks at the end of Kinvarra Bay, near a group of thatched-roof houses, and we cross the street to Dunguaire Castle (sixteenth century) – very picturesque.

 

 

 

Our next stop is Corcomroe Abbey (early thirteenth century), the ruins of a Cistercian monastery. We recall the Cistercians, an ascetic order with a knack for agronomy, from the monastery in Alcobaça, which dates from the same time.

The (timber?) roof is gone, but the stone vaults over the altar are intact, with the type of modest ornamentation preferred by the ascetic orders. The site is remarkably well-kept, and there are fresh flowers on many of the graves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

For one more appetizer, the bus stops at The Burren, or more specifically, the coastal feature locally known as the Baby Cliffs of Ballyreen. This is a pitted, checkerboard limestone plateau striped with grasses and tiny wildflowers, primordial and gorgeous.

Back on the bus, we are off to lunch is in Doolin.

 

 

 

 

 

But the main event is the Cliffs of Moher, where the bus stays for the afternoon. The cliffs vary in height, with layers of dark stone capped by fields of bright grass. The cliffs turn to the northwest and the North Atlantic; but they dip and undulate, so that Liscannor Bay is visible to the south. The parking area is near O'Brien's Tower, a small folly built in the nineteenth century – the little Tower perfectly echoes the profile of the Cliffs (top image). The cliff-walk takes us to the southwest, where we can just make out another tiny, vertical structure (Moher Tower).

The trail is pinched-in by the local grazing lands, with warnings of electrified fences inches from our elbows. On the other side, a wall of limestone planks makes two-way traffic extremely tight. Another annoyance is the presence of biting gnats and midges at the cliff's edge; it's bug season.

But the views are spectacular, especially where the sea foam and the heather provide a visual flourish.