Ireland Day 7 - Athenry to Ennis

We had a relaxed departure from Athenry, and our first sniff of rain!  Our first stop was at Dunguaire Castle. Irelands answer to Eileen Donan! Loads of buses and tourists so we stopped to take a photo and drone on

Photo needed

We stopped at Ballyvaughan, a lovely little village on the coast, complete with Saturday market, local oysters (which we tried), thatched cottages and 2 donkeys!

We then entered The Burren, a dramatic landscape of County Clare. It’s a karst landscape of bedrock incorporating a vast cracked pavement of glacial-era limestone, with little vegetation. It includes the Cliffs of Moher which was our destination for today. It was raining by the time we were entering this tough landscape. However we stopped for a couple of photos….

…and then ran into parking issues on the really narrow road at Dolinn. There was a funeral, we think, so the narrow road had cars parked along it. Luckily the locals had known to leave a gap or two as there was simply no passing space with cars coming in both directions. We got through it eventually, and onto the Cliffs of Moher. We drove in, could see that fog was obscuring the cliffs, but paid our tickets, and hoped it would clear. However we were reassured that if it didn’t clear we could come back tomorrow on the same ticket. Well it didn’t……

Disappointed, we left and of course we had clear weather by the time we had driven a mile down the road. The fog was just hugging the coast. We drove on to Ennis, about 45 minutes from the last, where we had booked a really nice Air B&B. Ennis itself had a reputation for good music and so it turned out. We strolled round the town in the sunshine! Howard even found a Murphys along with traditional music at the Cruises Bar. and sat outside in the shade at The Old Ground Hotel in town. We ate dinner in The Poets Corner, the pub of that hotel,  whilst watching England play Argentina in the Rugby World Cup.