Ok, so, as my dad has said, “We’ve been stuck in Galway for a long time.” This is true. I’m back on the Throwback Thursday train and so ready to tell you all about my time at the Cliffs of Moher. I’ve tried to keep my travel section of this blog from just turning into a photo journal mostly because I’m not a good enough photographer to have a photo journal, but it’s impossible to take a bad picture at the Cliffs of Moher. So, fair warning the end of this one is a bit of a photo journal.
This one did not like us.
We agreed after a long rambling walk back from grabbing a Guinness (or two or three) that we would wake up early the next day and drive to the Cliffs of Moher. This was on our to do list for the trip because how could we not visit the Cliff’s of Insanity or for all my friends who aren’t so into The Princess Bride then how could we not go look for horcruxes where Harry found one? So we rolled out of bed bright and early Saturday morning looking forward to the Cliff’s but a little bit dreading the weekend crowd we may run into there!
Panorama from Corkscrew Hill
The drive itself was a lot more relaxing than the drive from Dublin to Galway. For me anyway…I wasn’t actually driving. My dad may tell a different story, though I think we were both grateful that the Verizon guy on the phone helped us figure out what was wrong with the navigation. Our goal was to get to the Cliffs with as few stops as possible so we could spend more time actually hiking around than on the road to hiking around. In that we were pretty darn successful.
It did help that the drive to the Cliffs was gorgeous. We tried to stop to find some caffeine a couple of times. Unfortunately the sleepy towns we were driving through were..well, asleep. After a couple of psych outs involving breakfast signs, we finally stopped to fill up the car and I ran into the station to get some road trip snack food (which we agreed, after we ate half of it, was just as mediocre as gas station road trip snack food in the US) and some coffee. The only other stops we made were for some cows. One of which was giving us some evil eyes which I had to record and another to just get out of the car for a while
between Ballyvaughan and Kilmoon at Corkscrew hill. Yes, you read that name right. It is a particularly apt name for this section of road. We were stuck behind a truck and had a car that wanted to go much faster than we did behind us, so we jumped at the first opportunity to get out of the car, stretch our legs, and enjoy the general splendor of the Burren.
When we finally arrived at the Cliffs we had our pick of parking spots and the day was looking beautiful and windy. I’d expect no less at the Cliffs of Insanity! I glanced around a bit and I saw no six fingered man, Sicilian, Fezzik, or even Inigo Montoya. I managed to hide my disappointment and head into the visitor center to get our bearings. Inside they had a gift shop, a place to pick up some food, and a sort of Cliff’s museum in a cave. I know that last one sounds a little weird but it was
pretty cool and not just because we were in a cave (eh…eh? See what I did there?) It displayed and taught lessons about various histories and evolutions of the Cliffs (Ocean, Rock, Nature, and Man). After a bit of a meander inside to shake the car ride off, we finally headed outside to take in the absolute beauty that is the
The official park of Cliffs of Moher is a nice little hike that follows along the edge of the Cliffs. There is a point in the path where there are signs indicating that you are no longer on official Cliffs land but there is still a hike. Dad and could see a point that looked like a sort of end point and we decided we would try to hike all the to the end and back. When we were wandering around The official park area it had started to fill up with more and more people but the further away from the parks land we got the thinner the crowd got. It was kind lovely to walk along such a gorgeous view and have the area mostly to ourselves. The further we walked the further away that end point seemed to be. We kept thinking if we went just a little bit longer it would start to feel like we were making progress. Somehow our starting point kept looking smaller and
smaller. It felt a bit like the land was stretching out under us as we were walking. Now, we are not quitters but at the same time we are often led by our stomachs and our stomachs were leading us back to the Cliffs official park area for some food.
  Flowers lured me to the edge
I got that sweet sweet wind blown hair look.
Honest to goodness I took this picture because I wanted to show how teeny tiny the purple flowers were…it ended up being more about how gigantic and gorgeous the Cliffs are.
In this weeks Throwback Thursday I talk about our time at The Cliffs of Insanity... I mean Harry Potter...I mean Cliffs of Moher. Ok, so, as my dad has said, "We've been stuck in Galway for a long time." This is true.
