"Is it called Galway because you have to Galway there?"

I don’t know what happened to me but this has taken a month to write so bear with me and settle in for what may end up being a pretty glib post.

I’ve wanted to take a cross country road trip for as long as I can remember, possibly longer than I’ve wanted to go to Europe. A tall dream for someone who doesn’t drive and gets crazy anxiety when they’re in a car but where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ve always been drawn to the American West; it’s sheer vastness and seemingly endless isolation. Not that I’m drawn to it because I want to be alone but rather that feeling of like “we’re the only ones here.” You know what I mean? Also, the romance of it all. Less Brokeback more On the Road. Every book, movie, or show romanticizes the idea of a cross country road trip. Dropping everything you’re doing to drive to essentially nowhere for no reason other than to experience something life changing. On a quick related note, I’ve never seen Crossroads. I know. I’m sorry. Anyways, maybe that’s why I’m drawn to it, because that’s what I’m always doing; going towards something I don’t know and won’t know until I find whatever it is. With all these notions about the perfect cross country, westward road trip that I had imagine my surprise when my first one ended up being across Ireland to Galway and Achill Island.

I’ll rewind a little.

Since I arrived in Ireland, Derek has talked about Achill Island and how he hoped that I would get the chance to go. His family has a house there and he spent many a summer there growing up. When I got back from my few days in Dublin, plans were made and it was agreed that during the week of Easter, Veronica and I would head up to Achill with a little stop over in the city of Galway. We found an AirBnB in Galway and after some slightly terrifying talk from Derek’s dad about how people constantly fall to their death on the mountains of Achill because of the sudden drop offs of the cliffs and because they only wear tennis shoes (which is all I had so cue the panic) we got the keys for the Achill house and headed off.

You can feel the romance oozing from Mutton Island

The road to Galway was much of the same view as I’ve seen before. Country roads, rolling hills, woods, fields of bright yellow rapeseed, etc. I was looking forward to seeing Galway. I had seen a lot of images from the city and posts about it’s history and things to do and see. Fun fact; Claddagh rings (you know the ones) originated from a fishing village with the same name in Galway. I read one post by a girl who spent a couple days in Galway and in it she mentioned Mutton Island (lovely name, no?) as one of the spots to visit. She mentioned that the walkway out to the island is very romantic and the perfect proposal spot (I don’t remember the entire post but I do remember this much of the quote) “so if you’re with your man, be prepared girls!” which made me so violently angry I almost threw the computer across the room. By the way, said walkway is like a mile long concrete walkway that dead ends at the gates to the water treatment plant on the small island. Swoon.

The Claddagh

I can’t say that I wasn’t disappointed by Galway. It was a nice city but very… touristy feeling. It is a university city so the overall population is very young and there’s a lot of 90’s style hippies (you know what I’m talking about). The West End was cute and less touristy. Full of coffee shops, galleries, pubs and a used book store/ record shop where I picked up an Oscar Wilde book and a vinyl copy of a Psychedelic Furs album. The rest of the city was very… I don’t know. New? The Claddagh was cute but it was literally just one street with a row of colored houses and behind them was a giant apartment/condo complex. The main shopping/tourist/restaurant had the same feel, as if all the old buildings that were there were fake. Like a path in Busch Gardens or something. I’m not saying Galway isn’t worth a stop or anything but just be prepared. I did have some amazing pizza at Dough Bros. So, at least go for that.

After two nights in Galway, we turned on the “This is Madonna” playlist on Spotify and headed off to Achill. Derek’s father had sent us directions for the most scenic route out to Achill which we spent a good amount of time trying to plot out on Google Maps. Before this drive, I thought the best drive I had been on so far in Ireland had been along the Wild Atlantic Way after visiting the Cliffs of Moher but this quickly overtook that. One of the reasons I mentioned driving through the American West at the beginning of this post is because driving through this part of Ireland reminded me so much of driving through Colorado a couple years ago. The single road weaved through open plains with large mountains and hills in the distance. Stark white houses popped up here and there, standing out against the brown and tans of the mountains and grass that surrounded them. There were horses, cows, and sheep dotted the fields while power lines divided the landscape. I was shooting continuously as we drove. We made a brief stop at the Killary Fjord while it was at low tide and walked out a bit before heading back on our way to the island.

Check out the gallery titled Road to Achill to see images from the drive.

Achill Island is a relatively small island and it close enough to the mainland that there’s a small bridge connecting the two. There’s one grocery store on the island that comes off as more of a convenient store or a bodega than a full grocery store. I’m fairly certain that the sheep on the island outnumber the people. They are everywhere and are basically free to roam about wherever. You’ll see them on the side of the mountains with no other sheep in sight, in the middle of the road, and in people’s yard. The house was quite literally surrounded by sheep. Achill is also mostly made up of bog. I also assumed bog was just a fancy name for swamp which like.. isn’t completely wrong but it’s wrong if you’re picturing like a Florida style swamp. Which I kind of was. To oversimplify it they’re actually just wetlands basically made up of peat, which people cut up and burn for fuel. There’s also ancient bodies in them, which I was hoping we’d stumble upon but we didn’t. We did discover some sheep skeletons though so technically we kinda found a bog body.

After we settled into the house, we walked up to the kind of town center of sorts for lunch. There’s only a handful of restaurants and like I said only one grocery store which is back at the entrance to the island. The walk to lunch didn’t seem quite as far when we drove. Nor did it seem as hilly. We learned very quickly we were wrong. So after resting a bit, we drove out to the store later in the day to get groceries only to find out they closed early (for Good Friday I’m assuming) so dinner consisted of fast food from the local take-away place. We spent the rest of the night watching that Beyonce documentary on Netflix. It was a lovely, quiet night.

The next day, I joined Veronica on a hike up to the ridge behind the house. It was a hike that Derek used to take all the time when he would visit the island so it was a particularly special trip. It took less than an hour to get to the top but it seemed longer as we had to walk through bog and walking through bog is similar to walking through deep, heavy snow drifts. Including moments of stepping on what you assumed was relatively solid land and ending up knee deep in a hole. I assumed the bog would stop at the base of the ridge because I don’t know.. physics or whatever but nope. That damn bog went right to the top. Needless to say my legs look amazing after all the hiking I’ve done in this country. The view from the top was amazing and sure enough, the cliffs really do just drop off. It caused quite a bit of anxiety for me. There was a small beach down at the bottom and we started to hike down to it. Well… Veronica decided she’d just go down the sheer side of the cliff on her butt while I shouted “I’m pretty sure there’s a bit of a path over here that doesn’t lead to certain death” She relented and my anxiety thanked her. We got maybe about half way down the cliff before we realized that we’d have to climb back up the cliff on our way back. So we decided it’s not worth it and turned back. There were a few terrifying moments of slipping and falling but obviously I am alive so it all worked out in the end. I just had to keep telling myself that I’ll be damned if I die on a cliff in Ireland. All in all I think the hike only took about 4 hours. Maybe less. And despite the heart attack inducing moments, the view was totally worth it.

Afterwards, we finally got to the store to stock up on food. And by food I mean a frozen pizza, garlic bread, cheese sticks, cookies, chips, a melon, and a loaf of porter cake that was 99% sultanas (fancy raisins). As one does after they climb a mountain. We rested for a few hours then headed over to Keem Bay. This is when the part of the “tallest sea cliffs in Europe” come into play. To get to Keem, you have drive up the side of a mountain with the drop off right there to your left. I was fine at first but it got to a point during the ascent that I couldn’t look out the window and just stared off to the right. It was worth it in the end though. The beach is a real stunner, it’s just this small little rock covered beach surrounded by huge cliffs and the bluest water I have ever seen. It was unreal. We left the beach and headed back up the mountain to see what Veronica called the scariest lake ever, Lough Acorrymore. It is a bit foreboding, the water is practically black so you can’t tell how deep it is and there is no plant life on the mountains surrounding it. Just black rock. It had a very “ sacrificial ritual spot of a bog witch coven” kinda of vibe to it. In other words, it felt like home. We didn’t spend much time at the lake as the sun was setting and Veronica didn’t want to die by whatever undead evil existed in the lake. We spent the rest of the night eating Oreo ice cream sandwiches and watching Lunatics on Netflix (highly recommended.)

We left the island the next morning, a rainy and cold Easter Sunday. We kind of lucked out with the weather while we were there. It wasn’t ideal (cloudy, bit chilly) but at least didn’t rain. Our first day there, a lady working at the restaurant we had lunch at said “Were you here yesterday? It was lovely yesterday.” The weather broke about halfway home and was 70 and sunny the rest of the day. Which was nice when we sat outside of a coffee shop eating out Easter feast of sandwiches purchased from the Tesco across the street.

Achill was an amazing time and something I’ll remember forever. Did I mention we found 3 sheep skeletons? If you ever have the opportunity, you must go.