County Claire

After a 7 am breakfast at the Four Winds B&B in Kinsale, we had a long drive through Cork and Limerick with the final destination of Galway (where we're staying for two nights). On the way, we stopped at the Cliffs of Moher - a 650-foot sheer drop to the Atlantic Ocean created millions of years ago by tectonic shifts. Atop one of the cliffs stands a viewing tower built in 1835 by Cornelius O'Brien - a descendent of Brian Boru (the Irish king from 1002-1014). The wind gusts and crashing surf were impressive - but did not deter hundreds of birds from nesting alongside the cliffs and effortlessly sailing on wind gust.

Then we drove through an extremely remote area of the country known as The Burren. It is scarred with limestone across the entire landscape, making it seemingly uninhabitable, yet there are neolithic burial monuments from over 4,000 years ago and still today the panorama is lined with endless walls made of fieldstone to keep cows and sheep herded in. Many of the roads we took through The Burren were not wide enough for two vehicles in most places, luckily, we only encountered a handful of cars in the three hours we were there, and all at junctions wide enough for two vehicles to pass. We also stopped at the Aillwell Cave in The Burren, a 2 million-year-old cavern discovered in the 1940s, created by underground water flow through the limestone bedrock. The Ailllwell Cave featured bones of European Brown Bears - extinct from Ireland for the last 1,000 years - which used the cave to hibernate.

We still had an hour-long drive after Aillwell Cave to our bed and breakfast for the night - Marless House in Galway. The location of Marless House is great - right across the street from the sea and not far from downtown Galway. Tomorrow will mark our exploration of the coastal towns of our ancestry, which we'll begin with a stop by the Galway genealogy center.


THE CLIFFS OF MOHER





THE BURREN




For more information on The Burren, click HERE.
For more information on The Cliffs of Moher, click HERE.
For more information on Aillwee Cave, click HERE.