County Clare

We left Limerick this morning and headed north into County Clare. It's a rural area with lots of green, and little towns like Lisdoonvarna and Ballyvaughan. The GPS has been a real blessing in several ways, one of which is that it gives us the ability to get off the highways and take a lot of the country back roads. We get to see a part of Ireland many people never see... today, we drove through an area with cattle and donkeys and followed a farmer in his pickup truck with the dog hanging out the window for about 5-6 km.

By late morning we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher on the Atlantic.

The cliffs run for about five miles along the coast.

At their highest point, they're just over 700 feet above the water below.

As you can see, the views were amazing. The day was quite clear, and off in the distance we could see the Aran Islands, where we'll be visiting tomorrow.

After we finished up on the coast, we headed back inland to the Poulnabrone Portal Tomb. This was an interesting portal tomb constructed between 4200 BC and 2900 BC.

The capstone is 12 ft long and 7 ft wide, and the two portal stones supporting the capstone are 6 ft tall. In this area just south of Galway Bay, much of the bedrock limestone is visible and provides a very different landscape than other parts of Ireland.

You can see that in this picture too. The hill on the left side of the road appears white from the limestone outcroppings.

The result of this limestone and some ancient erosion is another cool cave though, and we stopped in there next. This is Aillwee Cave, which goes back more than a kilometer into the mountain. The tour only goes about half way back, but we were able to see evidence of the underground river that created the cave (at the top of the photo).

There was also a pretty substantial waterfall inside the cave, though it didn't show up well in our photo.

After the cave tour, we headed around the bay to Galway. It's the fourth largest city in Ireland (behind Limerick), so we hit a bit of traffic coming into town. After checking in at the bed & breakfast, we headed into town for some dinner and enjoyed a nice walk along "the Prom" (promenade).

Looking across the bay to the south, you can see back over to Ballyvaughan and the limestone mountains.