The next day started with rain again and so we asked our driver to bring us 3 km further as drop of point to cut down the distance. The original distance would have been 17 km with a walking time of 4 -6 hours.
After we were walking a while the rain stopped and we had to get out the sun blocker again. That route was definitely my favorite and I finally regret leaving the camera in the luggage (due to the rain) and only working with pictures from the iphone.
We finally ended up in Moher House where we were welcomed with fresh baked scones and homemade strawberry jam. We directly felt at home. Lovely room, nice hosts and as we were quite early they offered to drive us to Westport for the evening. A driver service brought us home for 10 Euro in the evening. Whoever is near that spot should definitely try to spend the night in Moher House!
Today’s trip would have been more relaxed. The distance was 15 km with only an ascent of 100m. But as it was raining all day, and we got seriously sunburnt yesterday so we joined our bags and drove to Leenaun. Time for some shopping in the wool mill and an incredible dinner at Portfinn Lodge.
Day 2 of walking…from Maam Valley to Lough Inagh. Distance 15 km , ascent 310 m , approximate walking time 4 – 6 hours. We needed nearly 8 in sunny weather. Got really sunburnt in the mountains.
We’ll spend the night in Lough Inagh Lodge Hotel, which was a possible upgrade from the normal B & B. We had an excellent bar dinner, followed by a incredible „Middleton Very Rare“ in the lounge.
Today we had our first walk from Oughterard to Maam Cross. The distance was 21 km and an ascent of 120 m. The walk was said to be 5 – 7 hours. It took us a little more to get to our collection point, but we had perfect weather and no need to hurry. The description told us that at the end we had a 3 km boardwalk. At that moment we had no idea what this was going to be. We learned it was walking through bogland on wooden boards and actually I would have been glad if the hint was given to go pee before you go on this 3 km 🙂
At the collection point Marion from Tiernakill Farmhouse picked us up and took us to the B & B. She made us wonderfull dinner….time to rest…
We took a City link Bus from Dublin Airport to Galway where we had two hours time until our Bus to Oughterard left. The price for the CityLink service was 28 Euros and we had nearly 2 hours time in Galway and left our luggage in a little shop and went into the city which is a short walk from the coach station.
When the bus dropped us in Oughterard we had a walk of about 15 min to the B & B. We could have called for pick up, but thought that a short walk would be good after the sitting in the bus.
This year I’ll be back in Ireland for walking. This time it’s gonna be a tour without a guide, but the tour itself has been organized by a company named Hillwalk Ireland. On their homepage http://www.hillwalkireland.com you can choose various tours and different levels of difficulty and they take care of
booking the Bed & Breakfasts
prepare maps and travel information
luggage transfer between the walks
Now that it’s close to leaving I can say that so far the work of those fine people has been awesome. The package with our information that arrived is very detailed and they have so far been extremely nice and helpful with everything. I’m really looking forward in doing this tour.
We’ll be doing a six day tour through Connemara starting on 25th June.
The walks will be as follows:
Oughterard – Maam Cross, 21 km, Ascent 120 m
Maam Valley – Lough Inagh, 15 km, Ascent 310 m
Lough Inagh – Leenane, 15 km , Ascent 100 m
Leenane to Drummin, 21 km, Ascent 560 m
Drummin to Westport, 19 km, Ascent 280 m
I’ve checked the B & Bs that were booked for us and so far they all look extremely cosy and nice…
I’ll try to report from the road, but doubt I’ll have WIFI everywhere…so we’ll see (I know the attached picture is Cliffs of Moher…I’ll replace that after the trip trough the best shot of the tour)
a once in a liftetime shot…I have this cat for 15 years now and this is the first picture I was able to take without her closing her eyes or running away..
Last week I set up a calendar for 2013 which is mainly black and white besides every picture is limited to a third color. I used a new online service for this one which turned out to be pretty awesome and they provided a link where anybody can order the calendar for the next 4 weeks.
