Hangovers aside the plan for the day was to get in the car for three hours and drive to the west coast to the town of Doolin. Before the drive I wanted to get some food and I had scoped a hipster breakfast spot a couple blocks from our airbnb while on my morning run. We checked out of our Airbnb and walked over to the café. I had a delicious mushroom toast and egg thingy and a mocha which appeared to have an actual chocolate bar melted at the bottom and on the sides. That's right. An entire chocolate bar. Joseph had a cornbread toast with poached eggs, garlic yogurt, greens and hot peppers. After filling our bellies we set out for the three hour drive to Doolin with me in the driver’s seat.
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| A herding job well done |
The first two hours were fairly uneventful highway type
driving with pretty greenery in the backdrop. The last hour was country roads of
which the width would have been questionable for a one way road, let alone a two
way road. But the scenery was beautiful and dotted with cottages and numerous castle
remains as one would expect from a rural Irish road. At one point we noticed
about 10 sheep and lambs baaing at a gate with their friends on the other side.
The road was narrow and curvy and I feared for their safety. So we stopped the
car and I unhitched the gate though when I did this the sheep from the pasture
threatened to get out. I told a skeptical Joseph to get out of the car and
herd the street lambs into the pasture as I cautiously opened the gate to
prevent the pastured sheep from escaping to the road. It wasn’t clear how they
had got into the road in the first place but later when we told the story to
our Doolin bed and breakfast owner she explained that the weather had been bad lately and they
had probably escaped to find better grass. Given their distress on getting
stranded in the road it turns out the grass truly is not greener on the other
side of the fence.
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| A random and beautiful lake on the side of the road. |
Eventually we arrived in Doolin, a very small seaside town which would
serve as a gateway to the Cliffs of Moer hike and the next day as a gateway to
the Aran Islands via ferry. Our inn was run by a young woman and an older woman who had lived on the property her whole life. We later found out the young woman was the daughter of the older woman. We also found out that the inn was the oldest building in Doolin and dated back to the 1700's.
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| Ivy Cottage Cafe |
We grabbed a quick lunch in a quaint little cottage next door and then set out for the 6K cliff walk of Moher.
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| View of village of Doolin from beginning of path to Moher Cliffs |
The cliffs of Moher hike was one of the best hikes of my life. We lucked out with a warm and sunny day which I would later discover was the warmest day in an Irish April in 17 years. Throughout the walk we noticed an official path and a riskier path option closer to the edge. We did a little of both and eventually encountered another group of walkers. The leader of the pack, a British man asked if we wanted to be on the official path and pointed us in the direction of it warning us that if we continued on the unofficial path we would encounter some "dodgy bits". At first we laughed until we found that this was a bit of an understatement. I soon found myself jumping from stone to stone on a cliff edge and suffering a mild panic attack while yelling a mantra of "dodgy bits".
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| Beginning of the cliff walk |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Joseph snoozing on the cliffs of Moher |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| This is a picture of our b&B which I'm leaving here in the middle of cliff pictures because it's too painful to move photos on Blogger. |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
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| Cliffs of Moher |
As the pictures indicate I was and am a little obsessed with the cliffs of Moher. We arrived at the end of our walk about three hours later. While there were no access points to roads throughout the hike, at the end there was a road and parking lot. We had missed the last shuttle to Doolin and were advised by a bus driver going in the opposite direction of Doolin that our best bet was to "hitch". So I hit the road and after about a dozen cars passed us we were picked up by a local couple. The husband a devout lover of Ireland, the wife a transplant of England who agreed Doolin was nice but got old when it "rains in sheets". They were a pleasant pair who teased each other throughout the ride and then conveniently dropped us off right outside our cottage.
We grabbed a dinner of seafood and stopped in a little chocolate shop afterwards. I don't know if I've mentioned this but the Irish are seriously chatty. The owner of the shop was gabbing to two fellows but switched to us when she realized she was ignoring us. Somehow in a five minute chocolate buying transaction we learned that the chocolate lady goes to see Bruce Springsteen AKA "the boss" every time he comes to Ireland, which is annually. One night the chocolate lady was at a pub dancing her ass off to the boss and got to dancing with an American lady. The American lady noted that the chocolate lady was really into the boss and asked her if she liked Bruce Springsteen. Chocolate lady then told American lady with a straight face, and a serious voice that she recreated for us "I fucking love him". It turned out that American lady was pretty wealthy because she later sent chocolate lady a plane ticket to New Jersey and a ticket to a Bruce Springsteen concert. This was one of the best things that ever happened to Chocolate lady. I could manage to get myself to quite a few boss concerts if I had the desire but I don't. I'd rather be selling chocolate in a quaint cottage across from the Cliffs of Moher. The good news is that both the chocolate and me are happy with our general lot in life even though she'll be telling people about her trip to New Jersey until kingdom come and I will be telling people about the Cliffs of Moher for the foreseeable future. But for the record, as the pictures demonstrate, the cliffs of Moher are way greener than the garden state.
Did the sheep on one side of the fence have the same markings as the sheep on the other side of the fence? Have you ever seen Brokeback Mountain? There's a serious sheep mix up in that movie.
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