Emerald Isle, Celtic stones, more ruins, and seafood to die for (or at least mortally wound)…

Day five, 

Today, we decided we would have a nice, relaxing drive.  We were told that the city of Westport was worth having gander at, and we were also interested in doing a bit of driving along the coastal roads past Galway.
So, we thought, why not try to combine the two, and do a coastal drive towards Westport.

First we had to get to Galway.  Along the way we stopped at old ruin of a church.  There wasn’t any marking or anything to tell us which church it was once, so we can’t tell you much of the place, other than most of the graves were overgrown.  It looked like someone came round every now and again to trim back some of the more recent plots.
We noticed that it was rather common to find ruins of churches with still used cemeteries.
Anyway we had a quick look, and moved on.

 The church ruins

We also came across the Turoe Stone.  This stone is basically a rock with Celtic carving all over it.  The establishment that has been built around it  seem to be a petting zoo / play area, which the stone as an additional sight.  The stone itself was probably carved a good 1900 years ago (long before organised petting zoos).  No idea what it was for, but it was pretty to look at.
I guess I should mention at the time they had build a small hut around the stone to preserve it.  Unfortunately the hut didn’t have much in the way of windows, so it was a little hard to see.
We looked, and moved on.

 The Stone

 A representation of the patterns on the stone

Beautiful weather ensured that the coastal drive was really enjoyable (apart from the cold winds), and the scenery was just as so.  I should note that we ran into a problem we found when we travelled to Wales.
Around Ireland, all signs had Gaelic written under the the English.  As we travelled north of Galway, the Gaelic took precedence to the English, and then, the English was discarded altogether.  So for a good part of our drive, I could have been driving down one way roads down the wrong way and not even know it.  We sort of started understanding a word or two, but mostly, we had to rely on faith that they had the same road rules as what I’ve learnt.  It turned out alright, and we had a good time.

 Galway Bay

 A beach on the bay

 Stoney beach (The seaweed was a bit rank)

At about afternoon tea-ish, we stopped for something to eat at the small town of Spiddle.  We found a lovely little cafe/restaurant which had some wonderful mussels and seafood chowder.  After that delightful meal, we continued on.

One thing I should mention is that we had a slight miscalculation with how long it was going to take to go from Galway to Westport via the coastal roads.  After a good number of hours of driving along, with the sea on our left and very thin, windy roads ahead, we discovered that we hadn’t really gotten far.  In fact, we hadn’t even really started going north, just sort of west-ish.  It didn’t help that we couldn’t read the signs.
With the day rapidly coming to an end, We thought it would be wise to abandon the Westport destination, and head more back inwards (guesthouse-ish).  We did find some eye catching castles, thatched roofed houses, and got a little artistic with Celtic crosses and the sunset, but apart from that, we basically headed back to the guesthouse.
We will let the pictures do the talking in this part.

 Thatched roof houses

 Rocky Shores

 A sign we had a good laugh at (and paid good attention to)

 Owl Housing (clearing for grazing land has taken large areas of Owl habitats, so accommodation has been arranged for some)

 Burren like hills

 Pretty lake

 another pretty lake

 Ice cold waterfall

 ice cold rapids

 Castle on an island in the middle of a lake

 The lake with the island with the castle

 Ducks

 duck

 A bridge house

 Ashford Castle (its still in use)

 An example of Irish Cottage architecture

 The sunset crosses

 more sunset crosses

That’s about it for this day, Tune in for the final installment of our Emerald Isle capers, which include the 5 crosses of Kells, the Hill of Tara, and almost another night in Ireland.

Til then, Love you all, missing you all more every day, and hope to talk to you all soon.

Kathleen and Keith