#1 | A Galway Girl... - "Pre-trip" to Ireland

September 2023

Ireland. The green island. Rain. Sheep. 5 million inhabitants. Dublin.

I wanted to go there with my Dresden cousins Lisa and Anna back in 2020. It was supposed to be our first trip abroad together, after we had already cycled the Elbe cycle path together and hiked across the Bavarian Alps.

Corona first throws a spanner in the works, then later it's the different holiday periods. In December 2022 we will start planning again and finally 21 days in September have been decided. I had a little doubt beforehand - after all, I had originally planned to start my trip to South America in September. At this point I didn't realize that it wouldn't have worked anyway.

So we set off early in the morning on September 5th from Berlin Airport towards Dublin - one of the reasons why we missed the 5-hour flight after almost missing it

Completely overslept on the bus ride from Dublin to Killarney.

At the campsite in Killarney we put up my brand new tent for the very first time - which I quickly christened Killi - and fall into bed, dead tired... on the sleeping mats.

The next morning we explore the approximately 200-year-old site and its ruins, are recruited directly by Jehovah's Witnesses at the cathedral and finally collect our backpacks from the campsite to take the bus to Killorglin and later to Glenbeigh. The man at reception tells me that a “kill” in a place name has Irish roots and usually refers to a lake – like Killarney is on Lough Leane.

In Glenbeigh, an idyllic coastal town, we meet Laura at the campsite. She skips the small talk when we meet her in the kitchen house and starts our conversation with "Ummm, what do you actually think about pain?" As the conversation continues, she is extremely open-hearted and tells us about the universe and her affair with the lead actor of a series in which she starred 20 years ago.

In the port town of Dingle on the peninsula of the same name, we camped on the meadow next to the Rainbow Hostel - a combination that we will like best on the trip, as the campsites are already empty at this time of year (at least as far as tents are concerned) and are usually a bit lonely . In the hostels, on the other hand, we camp comparatively cheaply, but are still allowed to use the hostel kitchen and common rooms. In this way we make one or two acquaintances and can exchange ideas.

At John Benny Moriarty’s Pub in Dingle we chat with some Canadians, listen to the live music and try our first (and last, I suspect) Guinness.

Unfortunately, Anna has to leave the next day for health reasons. For this reason it's just the two of us, so we set off to walk a day's stage of the Dingle Way, which takes us over roads, beaches and field paths in the drizzle. On the way we lose our way once when we miss a turn-off and suddenly find ourselves in a dead end bordered by the sea.

During a break, two Irish women passing by called us “two lovely pixies!” and in the evening, after a visit to a fairy and elven site and a huge cliff beach at the westernmost bar in Ireland, we took the minibus back to Dingle to the hostel. A beautiful tour, the entire route is definitely worth seeing.

Via Tralee, Limerick and Ennis we reach the fishing village of Doolin by bus, a famous starting point for the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands. Again we camp in the garden of a hostel, right by the river.

For this reason - and because we want to avoid the crowds of tourists - we drive a little further to Liscannor and walk the approximately 20km long route along the Cliffs of Moher back to Doolin.

We are rewarded with fantastic views during the breaks in the rain and reach our tent in the evening soaked and with washerwoman's feet. It's raining. A lot.

The last stage will be very strenuous again.

Our shriveled feet are chafed in our wet hiking boots, it's raining, it's foggy, we're exhausted... in short, we can hardly believe our luck when the hostel and our cozy little tent finally come into view. We spend the evening in the common room of the hostel reading, writing and chatting with Sina and Andrea, two other German backpackers from near Heidelberg.

The next day the sun shines from the cold blue sky and seems to mock our decision to use yesterday's rainy day for hiking.

We take the bus to Lisdoonvarna, a small town nearby. The Matchmaker Festival, a kind of singles exchange in real life, takes place here for a whole month every September.

Young people come together in bars and hotels, dance, drink and have themselves entered in the famous book of the matchmaker who will find the right partner for them - or so the hope is. The parents of a professor from Lisa's university met here and he highly recommended the festival to us.

When we get off the bus, there is little to see of young, marriage-minded people. Instead, retired couples populate the small town with its garlands and colorful houses. We look at each other perplexed. Not exactly what you expected from the famous Matchmaker Festival!

We quickly find out: The big party takes place mainly on the weekends and then of course in the evenings. On a Tuesday morning, swing, waltz and foxtrot are popular on the dance floor instead.

Since we're here, let's make the most of it and go to some of the dance bars. The pensioners are all incredibly good dancers, so it's great fun to watch, even if we're the only ones under 60.

At the Rathbaun Hotel we talk to Maura and Abina, two ladies from Dublin. When they find out that our trip will end in Dublin and that we haven't found accommodation there yet, Abina quickly offers us to stay overnight in her garden house. We enthusiastically say yes.

A day later we are sitting on the ferry to Inisheer, the smallest of the three Aran Islands, telling a curious group of Americans from San Francisco about our travel plans. Joan and her two sisters are on their way to the island for a day trip with their husbands Maik, Maik and Maik (no joke!). They couldn't have chosen worse weather because it was pouring rain and storming so hard that our ferry was being tossed back and forth in the waves.

On Inisheer we leave our large backpacks in a container at the harbor that a carriage driver showed us and set off on foot to a famous shipwreck that washed up here a few decades ago. It continues to pour as if the end of the world were imminent and when we make our way back to the harbor so as not to miss our ferry to Inismore, we are soaked to the bone despite having rain gear.

At the harbor we meet a young couple from Australia. Along with them and a group of locals, we are the only passengers as we board the ferry to Inishmore. That's a good thing, because during the half-hour journey I was thrown out of my seat several times because the waves were so high.

Soaked and exhausted, we disembark on Inishmore, pass through Kilronan, the main town, and walk along the coastal road to the campsite. We have to brace ourselves ever more strongly against the wind.

At the campsite we find out that the power went out due to the storm and the emergency generators don't want to work - so showering isn't possible. But that's not so bad because we wouldn't have had dry towels anyway. These were lost while drying the inner tent, which got wet while setting it up in the rain. Even our backpacks are soaked despite the rain protection - at some point the campsite kitchen will be converted into a drying room while we nibble on a few muesli bars - because we left dinner in Doolin...

The next day the sun shines from the sky like there is no tomorrow. We rent bikes and explore the island - seal beds, Kilmurvey Beach, Meenabool, the Bronze Age Fort Dún Aonghasa and the cemetery of the 7 Saint Churches, where we meet an old man who tells us his life story in a strong dialect.

While we're bar hopping in the evening at Joe Watty's Pub, we get to talk to locals and temporary workers, get to ask a few questions, get asked to dance, and ride late at night in the deep darkness (and when I say deep, I mean it, because the rental bikes have no lights and on an unlit road on a remote island you can't expect a spark at midnight) back to the campsite.

On the morning of our departure we explore the lesser-known part of the island, hiking to a small church on a hill, seeing a small plane at the tiny island airport and finding the ruins of Teaglach Éinne, a chapel of the St. Enda monastery from the 19th century, in a cemetery early 6th century. Legend has it that anyone who can climb through the window above the altar here, as a young Colombian woman in Doolin explained to us, will get married this year. Of course, this is tried out immediately and lo and behold – it actually works!

A few days later we wander the streets of Galway with Connor, a local. On so-called free walking tours, locals agree to share the secrets and sights of their city - in the end, everyone in the group gives as much as they want. The concept is new to us, but we learned from an Austrian that it is now practiced in many European cities. In this way we get an idea of Galway's charm, much more than we would have experienced on a commercial city tour.

I really wanted to go to Galway because of Steve Earl's song Galway Girl... and the city doesn't disappoint. The fact that our campsite is located directly in the Salthill district gives the magic of the song a very special touch ;)

Well, I took a stroll on the old long walk

Of a day-i-ay-iay

I met a little girl and we stopped to talk

Of a fine soft day-i-ay-i-ay

And I ask you, friend, what’s a fella to da

‘Cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue

And I knew right then I’d be takin’ a whirl

‘Round the salthill prom with a galway girl

…

“Do you think we’re still in the right place here?” Lisa asks me, following the large road with her doubtful look that leads directly along Lough Corrib, Ireland’s largest lake.

“Sure,” I reply and walk forward confidently.

A few hours later we realize – we are lost. Less than half an hour into our five-day hiking route on the Wild Western Way, we turned onto the wrong road.

That started well.

Around midday we started from Oughterard (the pronunciation of which numerous Irish people have tried to teach us correctly) and wanted to head north. So now we're standing on this big tar road and thinking about how we can get back to the actual route. This should be possible in a few kilometers, we can see by looking at the map. However, the detour costs us a lot of time that we would have actually needed to find a place to sleep. The path, surrounded by forest on our map, is lined with numerous residential buildings. Not a good place for wild camping.

Because nothing helps, we trudge on. Everyone absorbed in their own thoughts.

A car stops on the opposite side of the street with squealing tires. I'm still thinking that with more traffic there could have been a serious accident when the driver, an older lady, waves us over.

“You girls shouldn’t walk here,” she tells us. »This is a terrible path. Listen. I have to go to the next village. If I come back and see you, I'll take you a few kilometers with me. Okay?" That wasn't a question, but rather information and we couldn't think of anything better than to happily accept the offer.

A few minutes later we are sitting in the car with Amelia Joyce. She is descended from the powerful Irish Joyce clan that once ruled Connemara. Even her father, she tells us, still owned almost half of the county. Today the family name can be found in Joyce's Country, a mountainous district on the border between North Galway and South Mayo.

Amelia herself is, and we can hardly believe our ears when she tells us this, a hiking book author, 86 years old. Some of her works are in the trunk. She gives us one of these and drives us back to Oughterard. When she hears that we want to walk the Wild Western Way ("This path is a joke. You won't see anything") she recommends another route.

In the early evening we are disembarked in Recess by a bus that was not on any timetable and plunge into the Lough Inagh Valley, which seems to encompass the whole of Connemara with its reddish-brown hills, lakes and forests (and sheep!).

However, we don't get very far. Heavy rain was forecast for the night, so we looked for a cozy spot for our tent in a small forest above the valley road. Amelia had given us a few tips for great camping spots and vouched for them with her name - if anyone came and said something against us wild camping, we should just mention her name and it would be fine, she assured us. We'll never find out whether that would have actually worked - we're always alone when camping.

By the afternoon of the next day, the magic of the valley had completely disappeared - it was pouring rain, we were soaked, exhausted and strong gusts of wind were increasingly pushing us off the road. In the morning we were given two bottles of water by a coach driver, and at lunchtime we were drinking tea in an old English hotel in the middle of the valley. But now we just want to get out of here and find a place to sleep - even if we don't yet know how and where we should set up our tent in this storm, let alone how to cook.

And happiness comes around the corner again. Quietly, without warning, this time in the form of a young woman with a car pulling up next to us. “Do you need a ride, girls?” she calls to us. We nod miserably.

Less than half an hour later we are standing in front of the Old Monastery Hostel in Letterfrack and asking for a place to sleep.

At first there is no soul at all. Instead, we find ourselves standing in front of a sign telling us not to panic and to make ourselves comfortable. At some point someone will come.

So we slip out of our wet clothes and throw ourselves into the armchairs in the rustic living room. Little by little the first guests come back from their excursions and at some point we can also register and move into two beds.

We spend the evening with Lizzie from Berlin and Katta & Annika from near Rosenheim in the living room, writing, knitting, chatting and drinking tea. We like the atmosphere in the Old Monastery Hostel so much that the next morning we asked Stephen if we could stay another night - preferably forever ;)

In the morning of the same day, we hitchhike with Lizzie to Kylemore Abbey - after sticking out our thumbs doesn't work, we paint a sign at some point and less than five minutes later we're sitting on a pile of files in the car of a busy woman who's talking on the phone about her work on the speakerphone .

Kylemore Abbey is a former castle that was taken over by the Benedictine nuns shortly after the Second World War and turned it into a girls' boarding school. Amelia, the woman who drove us to Letterfrack and the daughter of the couple who later took us from the castle to the hostel all attended this school, which is idyllically located on a huge lake and has a wonderful castle garden.

In the evening we climb the well-known Diamond Hill in the Connemara National Park and enjoy the view over the autumnal mountain slopes of Connemara, which glow orange in the evening atmosphere.

The Old Monastery Hostel will be remembered as our favorite place in Ireland - a small, unexpected oasis.

We're back on the street. This time we want to hitchhike with the backpacks to Leenaun and from there walk through the Doolough Valley to Delphi.

The hitchhiking drags on - the big backpacks scare off the smaller cars - but at some point the tires squeal behind us, a car door is pushed open and a woman's voice calls out excitedly: “Lisa! Rebecca!”

We turn around in surprise.

They are Ann and Michael, who we approached yesterday in the Kylemore Abbey car park about a ride back to Letterfrack. Today they were heading the other way on the way home and saw us standing on the side of the road. We stuff our backpacks into the trunk and into the back seat - Ann and Michael are happy to have met us again.

An hour later we are sitting in front of Aasleagh Falls, watching some tourists who have climbed over the wall to take photos and munching on our lunch. It's fresh, a light drizzle is coming in from time to time and a slight frustration about the long journey around Ireland's only fjord is creeping into our minds.

But then the road finally takes a turn and we dive into the wonderful and historic Doolough Valley. During the great "potato famine" in Ireland, hundreds of starving people crossed this valley on their way to the rich who resided here. But the superiors rejected them without giving them food. On the way back, numerous Irish people died from their suffering. There is still a monument today that commemorates these poor souls - for us that is our goal today.

However, after a few hours of hiking we are surprised by heavy rain. A resident who had taken us a few kilometers along the fjord had already told us about the persistent clouds that covered the valley with an impenetrable blanket of rain. The rain shrouds us in silence and wet shoes - progress is slow and the goal is far from being in sight.

A fast sports car pulls up next to us. One whose back seat is also supposed to act as the trunk. Alisa from France and Izzy from Wales work at Delphi Lodge and are on their way to Louisburgh. They offer to take us a piece. I look at the small car doubtfully, but Alisa waves it off with a laugh. "It's okay."

To this day I don't know how, but at some point our backpacks are sitting in the back seat, me on the 10cm next to it, Lisa on my lap. The following 15 minute drive saves us 2 hours of walking - it doesn't take long before we turn off to the monument stop. “Oh, French!” Alisa says happily when she sees the license plate of one of the cars stopped there. I squeeze my head between Lisa's back and the wall of the car and look at the two women thoughtfully.

“We know them!”

They are Magali and Bettina, who we already met at the Old Monastery Hostel. The two of them are obviously happy to see each other again and give me their number if I happen to be in the right corner of France during my trip to South America. Two months later I will be standing at Magali's door near Lourdes and taking advantage of this offer.

Soon we are alone at the monument and start looking for the place to sleep that Amelia had recommended to us: »Look back down the street from the monument. On the right you will see a gate. You can go through there, the land belongs to O’Malley, I know him. When someone comes, you say you are friends of mine. It's okay. Follow the dirt road and you will reach a beautiful campsite right by the lake. It’s crazy, an unimaginable place.”

We actually find the place described, even if we feel a little uncomfortable about going through the gate, on which a sign clearly prohibits entry.

However, what Amelia seems to have forgotten is the condition of the meadow, which is practically drenched in rain at this time of year.

So in the end we basically camp in the lake. Additionally, while I'm cooking, another storm hits and to top it all off, our gas bottle leaks and saturates Lisa's sleeping pad with a stench. In the evening we are cold, wet, exhausted and can hardly sleep because of the smell of gasoline.

But Amelia was right about one thing – the view is gigantic.

The next day we leave the valley and walk to Louisburgh, a small town on the coast. Because we stayed one night longer at the Old Monastery Hostel, we skipped the route to Westport and took the bus instead. At Westport train station we ask about the trains the next day. From here we start for Dublin, the last leg of our journey. The landscape flies past us and we land in Red Cow around midday, where we are picked up by Abina.

In Carrigwood, where Abina lives in a small detached house, we are greeted by a large group of people who are visiting. The grandchildren help us hang up our wet tent in the garden and Abina's daughter makes a master plan for our visit to Dublin.

We spend the next 48 hours at the National Art Museum (free for everyone!), the main district of Temple Bar, the Castle of Dublin, Trinity College and the famous library there, in the small, hidden bars, at an art festival and in Abina's living room , where we dance to old ABBA records and play the concertina and piano.

Abina is a great hostess, cooks for us, chats with us, shows us her life and finally takes us to the airport shuttle, not without handing us two bags of lunch first. We are touched and very grateful to have met her. The invitation to come back is there.

And then we leave Ireland, this green island. The past few weeks have been intense and full of surprises. A challenging journey that also gave us the most beautiful moments. And as my father said: “Oh, wonderful. I envy you so much. It brings back memories of the past. In England: when we were soaking wet after a cloudburst and were looking forward to the sleeping bags. But everything in the tent was wet too. Even the stove didn't work and we spooned the canned food cold. Or in Sweden, where it rained constantly and we had to put up and take down the tent wet every day. How I envy you. This is what a vacation should be like.”

:) :) :)