Wednesday September 14th

Today is the day we are taking the bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher & Burren Tour.

 

We were picked up at our B&B and taken to a central bus stop. Here we got the bus for the tour. There were about 50 people on our bus. There were 2 buses with this tour company. Off we set. We passed through the country side along the Galway Bay. The first stop is at the Dunguaire Castle. It is a very well restored castle of this type. It is now open to the public during the summer. Also Medieval Banquets are held each night here. I thought it was privately owned. However it is owned by the Shannon Development Department. One thing about bus tours you have very little time to view something. Especially when it takes about 5 min. for people to exit the bus.

 

We stopped next at the Ballyalbane Earthen Ring Fort. You can see the dirt mounds but they are over grown with grasses and tress. We were told the mounds were three feet higher in the past. It was a safe place for people to live and bring their animals in for the night. It would be like the rock ring fort we saw north in Donegal. Later down the road there is a rock circle fort which we didn't stop at.

 

The Poulnabrone Dolmen is a wonderful portal tomb or wedge tomb. It was built by Neolithic people about 2500 BC. When excavated it was found to hold the bones of 16-22 adults and 7 children. Most of the adults died in the 30's. It was an impressive piece of stone work.

 

Before lunch we stopped at Kilfenora to see some ancient crosses. They are being protected from the elements in an old church. A glass roof has been extracted to protect them. The crosses were beautiful.

 

We stopped in Doolin for lunch. We were all hungry as in was after 1 when we stopped. Doolin is a cute village. It has a pier where daily a ferry goes to Aran Islands. We had a wonderful lunch at a pub there. It was hectic though as both buses on the tour plus a few smaller tours were all there for lunch. We had 45 min. here but did not have much time after lunch to look around the town.

 

The Cliffs of Moher was our last stop. This is a well organized tourist area. They had a beautiful information centre built into the hill side. There were beautiful lookouts and path to walk along. In the main area there were areas there were wall to keep people from getting to close to the cliffs. Soon the paths go along the edge of the cliffs. We were able to see the Aran Islands today.

 

Our trip home followed along the coast line. The French were making a movie along this route. We were stopped to wait for a shot to take place. All of a sudden a boom camera came up and 2 men came off the cliff edge. It was fun to see.

 

The Burren area is full limestone. This makes a very unique landscape. It covers a 320 square km in size. We had a wonderful day.