Clifden

Spending four nights in Clifden gave us plenty of time to explore this beautiful area of the country.  The scenery was very different on the Western Coast of Ireland as you will see from the many pictures I am posting today.  I'll comment on some of them, but for the most part you can just ride along with us and enjoy the scenery.

 Another example of an Irish road.  Not much traffic on this one though, other than sheep.

 

 

 

There are cemeterys everywhere. 

 Aasleaigh Falls

 

 



 

Kylemore Castle/Abbey

Although this castle looks like one out of a fairy tale book it was built by an Englishman in 1867 as a residence for his family.  His estate provided many improvements for the local area which was recovering from the Irish Famine.  In the early 1900's he sold the castle to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester who lived a lavish life style they couldn't afford and only lived in the castle for a few years.  In 1920 the property was sold to the Benedictine Nuns who ran a boarding school for girls from 1923 until they closed their doors in 2010.  American actress Anjelica Houston attended school at the abbey. 

 

 

 Johnny and Hannah are standing in one of their favorite spots in Ireland overlooking Doolough Lake.

 

In 1849, over six hundred starving people made their way into the town of Louisburgh in search of food. They met with the Receiving Officer at the Louisburgh workhouse. He told them he had no authority to grant them food or a ticket, but they could appeal to two of the Board of Guardians, Colonel Hograve and Mr. Lecky, who were meeting the next day at Delphi Lodge, located twelve miles south of Louisburgh. Delphi Lodge was a hunting lodge and was located on the other side of Doolough Pass, a mountain pass that runs between the Sheffry Hills and the Mweelrea Mountains.
The crowd spent the night in Louisburg. Weakened from their trip, many of the 600 men, women and children who slept in the streets that night died. The next day, five hundred of those that remained trudged through the mud and rain along a goat track in the direction of Delphi Lodge, crossing the Glankeen River at flood stage and through the mountain pass. Still more died of exhaustion along the way. They arrived wet and cold at Delphi Lodge the next afternoon.
The Board of Guardian members were at lunch when the people arrived and amazingly, they could not be disturbed. The starving crowd was told to wait. A few more died of exhaustion while waiting. When they had finished their meal, Hograve and Lecky decided to meet with the great mass of starving people.
The crowd was advised to return to Louisburgh. Without explanation, the two Guardians refused to give them either their three pounds of corn or a ticket to enter the workhouse.
Disappointed, the group headed back to Louisburgh over the same bleak and dangerous path they had just taken. A strong south-west wind blew up carrying with it showers, freezing rain and hail stones. Their journey took them back through Doolough Pass. As their journey continued, the crowd continued to leak a trail of dead behind them as hypothermia and exhaustion took its grim toll on the starving band. They soon reached a spot in the pass called Stroppabue which was a cliff overhanging the lake of Doolough.
At this point in the pass, the cold air funneled across Doolough and churned into a screaming vortex of wind and hail. Weakened by starvation, disease, and exposure, the heavy squall swept many of the starving crowd off the cliff and into the lake. Many drowned in the icy waters. Others managed to reach the bank of the Glankeen River, but fatigued by the hardships of their journey, there they died.
It is unknown how many of this group of starving people met their death in the waters of Doolough. Accounts of the tragedy place the death toll at anywhere from 100 to over 400.
The next morning, the Receiving Officer at Louisburgh heard of the tragedy and took a group of men along the goat track to Delphi and buried the dead where they fell without coffins or ceremony. It is recorded that the path from the Louisburgh to the Glankeen River and from the Glankeen to Delphi was covered with corpses “as numerous as sheaves of corn in an autumn field.”
When the burial group reached Doolough, they found so many dead that they dug pits and buried them together in a nearby glen. Many bodies that were blown into the freezing lake were never recovered. Some call the dead victims of the Great Hunger; others refer to them as martyrs.
In May of 1994, a marker was erected in the Doolough Valley by Action From Ireland (AFrI), a famine relief organization. The stone marker topped with a stylized Celtic cross bears the inscription (and a quote from Mahatma Gandhi): To Commemorate the Hungry Poor who walked here in 1849 and walk the Third World today. “How can men feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings?”

(this is such a sad story that I copied it from the internet so I wouldn't get it wrong)

The town center in Clifden

E.J. Kings where we spent a couple of evenings listening to some great Irish music.

 

 We had been eating some great "pub grub" the past week but we decided to treat ourselves to a nicer dinner and sample some seafood.  I ordered shrimp scampi, which wasn't anything like our scampi.  The presentation was very nice though.

 As we were eating we noticed some commotion outside the window of the restaurant.  The president of Ireland was in town to open the Clifden Arts Festival week and was getting into his motorcade to go to the ceremony.  We saw a lot of garda (police) and official looking people, but never did see the president.

 After dinner we decide we were going to hit some pubs and listen to music.  In the states it would have been called "bar hopping", but in Ireland we did a "pub crawl".

 Hannah looks like she's part of the group.

 

We were told by a woman on the street that there was some incredible music being played at Griffin's bar just down the street.  We squeezed ourselves into this tiny pub and had an unforgettable night of local music.  There were two young men, one played the fiddle and the other a melodius mouth organ.  An older gentleman was playing the bodhran (irish drum) and the spoons.  Occasionally, a bar patron would break into song, a young girl danced the Irish jig and the violin player joined her in one dance.  This was one of my favorite nights in Ireland, an experience never to be forgotten.