ROUNDSTONE

=ROUNDSTONE and the Connemara= After negotiating Galway’s traffic (stop start in mid afternoon – heaven knows what its like in peak hour) we wound our way to the little fishing village of Roundstone where we have a very comfy apartment for four nights. It’s right across the roadway from the small harbour (and about 50 metres down from O’Dowd’s pub which has good food and great beer).
 * [[image:IMG_1448.jpg caption="The harbour at Roundstone"]] || [[image:IMG_1560.jpg caption="same harbour in sunlight - viewed from front door"]] ||


 * We came here to use Roundstone as a base to explore the Connemara region – a wild area of bogs, mountains and a rugged coastline. The bogs are particularly interesting – they cover a huge area, with many small lakes? ponds? waterholes? scattered everywhere as well as the expected very wet marshy ground. We drove along the appropriately named “Bog Road”

The gathering of peat for fuel is still common and piles of drying peat can be seen alongside houses and the smoky scent from house fires is commonly smelt. || || The mountains are all around and seem to constantly change as they are bathed in sunlight, then fog, then misty rain and back to sunlight (if you don’t like the weather just wait a few minutes and it will change!) The main mountain group is called the Twelve Bens – they rise dramatically from the bogs.
 * [[image:IMG_1467.jpg caption="the Roundstone Bog"]] || [[image:IMG_1505.jpg caption="peat stacked outside a house ready to burn"]] ||
 * [[image:IMG_1521.jpg]] || [[image:IMG_1493.jpg]] ||


 * In the middle of Connemara is Kylemore Abbey that, besides being an eyeopener, has quite a story. Constructed in the 1860’s by Mitchell Henry for his wife, it developed into a model estate with the largest walled garden in Ireland containing 21 glasshouses heated by a network of water pipes.

After his death in 1910 it had several owners until 1920 when it was acquired by a group of Irish Benedictine Nuns whose abbey in Ypres, Flanders had been destroyed during the Great War. The Irish nuns of this order had been forced to leave Ireland during the Penal Laws period of the 17th and 18thC and had attracted other Irish women to their Abbey. A Papal order transferred the “duties” etc of the Ypres Abbey to Kylemore and they settled in. Sadly their highly respected school closed early this year. || ||
 * [[image:IMG_1487.jpg]] || [[image:IMG_1502.jpg]] ||


 * Another drive took us though Clifton and out onto the Sky Road which offers some spectacular scenery overlooking Clifton Bay and the offshore islands, Inishturk and Turbot. || [[image:IMG_1480.jpg]] ||
 * [[image:IMG_1473.jpg]] || [[image:IMG_1478.jpg]] ||




 * A “local” trip was around the Island of Inishnee that is connected to the mainland and opposite Roundstone.

A rugged coastline and an equally rugged road! || ||
 * [[image:IMG_1554.jpg]] || [[image:IMG_1545.jpg]] ||