On the edge…

We’re officially in the northern half of Ireland… Well, more or less… Let’s just say we’ve crossed the Shannon and that marks an important step in our journey north. It’s also the beginning of the cliffs (the real ones, the highest ones), and of the Galway region…

Size does matter after all…

We left you last week when we were trapped on our little island, watching the tide rise and quickly cover our only exit point to the rest of the country… Okay, so… in order not to cause too much anxiety, we’ll reassure you right away, we’re fine!… But watching the tide rise and fall fascinated us so much that we decided to stay on our island for two days (that’s four tides… even if we didn’t really see the nighttime ones… 🤓).

It will probably seem silly to those who live near an ocean, but I must admit that for me, it is quite surprising to see the amplitude that the tides can have, and to what extent they change an entire landscape in just a few hours… If we stayed two days on our island, it is also because we discovered an application that gives us not only the tide times (always useful…), but also their amplitude… And precisely, on the second day, the application announced a tide of 5.94m! And indeed, the water rose higher than the day before and even flooded the road that ran along our island. Just before high tide, the municipal services came to close the road until the water dropped below the dike on which the road goes… It may not have been an extreme adventure, but it was still a great adventure to be able to witness all this in person…

On the other side of the Shannon…

So here we are in the northern half of Ireland (more or less)… A small ferry took us peacefully across Ireland’s largest river in about fifteen minutes, and for our first night on the north bank, we temporarily left the Wild Atlantic Way to reach the small village of Kildysart which, while not the most beautiful or largest we’ve visited so far, seems to assiduously practice the art of hospitality…

Kildysart is a very small village, with just a mini-supermarket (a convenience store, at most), two pubs (we are in Ireland, after all), and… that’s about it. Except that the villagers, who are charming by the way, have agreed to leave their pier (on the Shannon) available to camper vans, have had toilets and showers built there, and have organised the place so that gray waters can be emptied and clean water refilled. All this, with a few neighbours who come to chat, explain four anecdotes about the village (and its inhabitants… 😋), or ask where we come from, where we are going, etc, etc, while walking the dogs… In short, a charming atmosphere that really makes you feel welcome in Kildysart, even if the place is not necessarily the most photogenic you can think of…

On the edge…

After our detour along the Shannon, we returned to the Wild Atlantic Way and, at the same time, to the ocean. Our first objective was Loop Head, which marks the northern entrance to the Shannon Estuary, where the river turns into ocean. The coastline on this side steepens dramatically! No more beaches (or very small ones), but rather large vertical cliffs, as if cut with a knife, dropping straight into a raging ocean. The landscapes are spectacular, and the walks are rather… ethereal! (For those who missed an episode, we agreed last year that I was afraid of heights… so it’s a bit… on edge for me at times…) 😱

The problem is that everything is so beautiful that we take dozens of photos in a few minutes, because every cliff, every arch, every islet changes depending on the light or the perspective… We also found a great spot to set up, right on the edge of a cliff, with a large rock right in front of us, colonised by seagulls, and below, in the water, sharks swimming peacefully on the surface… We can see them with the naked eye, when their dorsal fin and the tip of their tail emerge from the water… And they’re huge!… Benjamin looked them up on the internet and they’re apparently basking sharks, the second largest fish in the world after the whale shark (because whales and other cetaceans aren’t fish but mammals, as everyone knows…) 😜). Anyway, if by any chance I had felt like swimming in the ocean, it’s now clear that it’s out of the question for me!… Basking sharks are “filter feeders” and don’t have teeth, but… who knows if a shark of another brand won’t take advantage of the situation to hide among them, eh!?… 🤓

An outdoor geology lesson…

A “different” day today since, instead of heading further north, we did a loop of about forty kilometres before returning to the same spot as yesterday… It must be said that the place is particularly beautiful, and the coastline all around, even more so. Our itinerary for the day took us to the Kilkee Cliffs, and a little further north, to the mini-head of Seafield.

It may not seem like much, but when you stop every 500 meters to take thousands of photos of cliffs, an arch, a cave, an islet, or a rocky point standing there like a candle in the middle of the sea, it takes a long time to cover 40 km! 😁

The most impressive thing is undoubtedly walking a little along these cliffs and seeing the shapes of the rock, folded, creased, undulated, broken, or raised as if they were modelling clay. A true outdoor geology lesson, in fact, where you find yourself standing in front of an immense cliff whose different layers seem to form an almost perfect undulation, wondering what titanic pressure these rocks must have undergone to have been shaped this way…

Disneyland…

Our goal for the day was to reach (and visit) the Cliffs of Moher, world-famous for towering over the ocean from a height of 100 meters or so… So it was probably predictable, and some will say that we’ve just discovered warm water, but… it turns out that famous places attract tourists… Lots of tourists… Far too many, no doubt… Add to that the fact that the Cliffs of Moher have an entrance fee, that entry costs a whopping 15 euros per person depending on arrival time, and that the site only consists of two paved access ramps leading to barriers 5 meters away from the edge of the cliffs (meaning you can’t see down below), one lasting about 10 minutes at a granny pace, and the other 15 minutes, and that there is indeed a visitor center, but it probably hasn’t undergone any renovations (either of its contents or its container) since its construction over 20 years ago, all this leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste of “tourist trap.” It felt a bit like the North Cape, with the “real” North Cape an 8km walk away and the “touristy” North Cape, with its huge car park and paying visitor centre…

A little disappointed, we left a little sad too, not only because of the excesses of mass tourism, but also because we began to think that, for many of the tourists who were there with us, Ireland will be reduced to these overpriced cliffs where everything is so protected, tarred, and manicured that the place no longer has much of a wild feel to it… It’s a shame, no doubt, that they won’t have the initiative to “push a little further south,” where they could see equally beautiful cliffs, without any protection, walk along the edge of the void and contemplate gannets diving vertically to hunt fish, basking sharks swimming peacefully on the surface of the ocean, or guillemots incubating their eggs on a cliff edge…

We had planned to spend the day walking the Cliffs of Moher, but in fact, an hour was more than enough, so to recover from our emotions, we made a quick round trip to Limerick (to pick up Marvin’s third SIM card in two months! 🤬), and on the way back, rather than returning to the coast, we settled on the shores of a pretty little lake near the town of Gort, Ballynakill Lough, where a magnificent sunset was awaiting us…

A cupcake mountain…

A little inland, before arriving in Galway, lies the Burren National Park (and Geopark), a stunning stony desert that stretches for square kilometres and reaches all the way to the ocean. To stretch our legs a bit, we set off to climb Mullaghmore, which offers a beautiful panorama of the surrounding area, and especially of the spectacular Sliabh Rua, right next to it, which looks like it was shaped like a cupcake or a raisin loaf (depending on your preference)… 😉

While the Burren stony desert is impressive, the view of Sliabh Rua from Mullaghmore is simply amazing!

Then we returned to the coast for a brief stop in Doolin, a small village that had been recommended to us but which brought us right back to the feelings of the day before, during the visit to the Cliffs of Moher. To forget all that Disneyland feeling, we continued our journey north to Black Point, at the entrance to Galway Bay, before diverting inland again where we spent the night in a forest! Yes, a forest! We found one!… Well, yes, okay, it’s a plantation, but still… we’re surrounded by fir trees!… 😜

And as a bonus, we got to see how peat is harvested, in a bog located just behind our forest. So, we picked up a handful of peat for Groot… This is also the opportunity to introduce him to you… Groot is our new travel companion… In fact, when we were in Spain and we went to see this 600-year-old oak tree in Navarre, Benjamin picked up an acorn from below that tree and planted it… And it turns out it grew!… 😍

One last dolmen…

A cultural morning today, before heading back to the coast, once again, for our last stop before Galway. We left our forest to visit the Poulnabrone dolmen, a Celtic relic over 6.000 years old (it dates back to 4.000 BC) and which happens to be the best-preserved dolmen in the country. It’s only four stones placed on top of each other, but knowing that these stones were placed there 6.000 years ago, without any mechanical aid, and that the top one alone already weighs 1,5 tons, is quite amazing…

And while we were in the lunar landscapes of the Burren, we also took the opportunity to see one of the many medieval forts scattered throughout the fields. Most of them are only large stone circles amid the grass, that mark to the outer walls, but sometimes some also have remains of interior walls… The one we visited, Cahermore Fort, is simply on the side of the road, on a bend, with just a small plaque explaining that these stones belong to a fort dating back to the year 1000 and that people are kindly asked not to remove or move any of them… 🤔

Finally, we headed to the coast to join back the Wild Atlantic Way and continue our journey north, but first, one last night on Traught Beach, just across the bay from Galway, so as not to leave the beautiful landscapes of the Burren too quickly…

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ON THE CLIFFS, AS UNDER THE DOLMENS, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.