Thursday 16 May
The morning dawned with sunshine and blue sky - hurrah! After a hearty full Irish breakfast at our fabulous, great value B&B, Neily chilled out and I ventured forth for a little light shopping. Westport is a pretty town, with brightly-coloured Georgian buildings and a pleasing range of small shops as well as a tree-lined avenue. On my return we picked up the car and drove out to Westport Quay for a little boat trip out to Clew Bay.
There are apparently 365 islands in the bay, though many of those are just rocky outcrops (some of which are home to imported sheep grazing happily on the lush grass). Our Westport Cruise took us past Achill Island (where much of the Banshees of Innishiren was filmed), and scene of a disaster in the eigteenth century where a boat bound for Jamaica full of Irish slaves escaping the famine capsized and all on board were drowned.
Clew bay is beautiful in the sunshine and is home to seals and jellyfish. The southern coastline is dominated by the mountain Croagh Patirck (a place of pilgrimage for devotees of St Patrick). In the 17th century the population of the islands was around 2000, and they were covered in oak and hazel trees.
There's a Beatles connection - Inisraher was bought back in the 1960s by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a centre for transcandental meditation. John Lennon then purchased the nearby Dornish islands (two linked by a granite causeway) in 1967, only to gift it to his friend Sid Rawle (later a founder of the Glastonbury Festival) in 1970. Rawle founded a hippy commune that lasted two years before being disbanded following a supply tent fire. Yoko Ono sold it after Lennon's death for £30k, which she then donated to a local orphanage. Allegedly it's now worth around 2 million euro.
One of the main islands is St Clare, which was home to the infamous female trader and pirate (known as the Pirate Queen of Ireland), Grace O'Malley, who met Elizabeth I to discuss (in Latin) her ill treatment at the hands of English settlers and won a number of concessions. I bought a book about her - it's high time someone made a biopic, as not only was she probably Ireland's first feminist, she spoke several languages, had at least 4 children, led armies of men (including those of her late and ex husbands) in undertaking her exploits, and lived to the ripe old age of 73, cashing in her chips in 1603, the same year as Lizzie the first.
After disembarking from our lovely trip and paying a visit to said Tertulia bookshop (run by a chap from Battersea, who moved to Westport after working on the movie Saving Private Ryan), we ate a sandwich at a picnic bench in the sunshine (surrounded by crows, who were no more sinister than the locals) and got back into the car to take the scenic route to Galway via the Aasleagh Falls and Leenane.
It was so beautiful with glorious weather - and then we hit Galway, an unexpectedly busy modern metropolis, and very heavy traffic. We were clueless about how big the city is and its rush hour was just like anywhere else!
After arriving at our accommodation - which is a stupidly expensive B&B that's just like living in Brookside Close among myriad other B&Bs in a large huddle of substantial 1980s houses AND we have to share a room - we found our way into the city by bus, had a Guinness and a gin at 13 on the Green (another friendly welcome), then finished up with an excellent dinner at McSwiggins, a restaurant of Tardis-like proportions and which we highly recommend, before finding our way back again on the bus. A guided city walk is scheduled for the morrow.
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