Well, it’s cold with a wintery blasting wind here in Ohio, so I let my thoughts travel to our trip to the Cliffs Of Moher in County Clare, Ireland. An awesome place for just the beauty and awe of the site but also a fantastic site to learn about ancient geology.
The website for the cliffs notes they are one of the most popular tourist sights in Ireland: part of the newly focused Wild Atlantic Way. The Wild Atlantic Way is a tourist and local people location for those of us who love the wild scenery and love the outdoors. The West ii’s own unique feature and very different than the East side of the island. The government and tourist guides list at least fifteen main sites for the wild Atlantic way with multiple subsites in each section.https://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/
It would take you a very long time to visit the entire west coast and see everything. The Wild Atlantic Way starts down south in the Cork area and goes up the entire west coast to Malin Head point in Northern Ireland. We only went from Cork to Galway. Our trip took a few days but to really see and visit the locations on the west coast, you would need weeks. A good reason to make Ireland a multiple visit site.https://www.wildatlanticway.com/home
As winter approaches and limits my outside activities, I thought I would start a program called Tuesday Tours. In these posts, I will share my traveling experiences here and in Europe. So please be on the lookout if you are interested.
We live in Wexford on the southeast corner of Ireland, and the Cliffs are on the northwest side of the island. When we went, we planned out our journey to go south to cork then turn up the west coast to finally settle in Galway to visit family. but I am going to take you down from Galway to cork as I retrace our steps
I’ll show you parts of the entire journey in the future, but today I will just aim to show you my experience at the Cliffs.
HISTORY
The official website at https://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/about-the-cliffs/the-cliffs-at-a-glance/ states:
“The Cliffs take their name from a ruined promontory fort ‘Mothar’ – which was demolished during the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s, to make room for a signal tower at Hag’s Head. The word ‘Mothar’ in old Gaelic means ‘the ruin of a fort’.”
They stretch for about five miles and are 702 feet high and have been around for over three and a half million years as Ireland was carved out by the glaciers.”
APPEARANCE AND LOCATION
The cliffs are on the far west side of Cavan just below the Burren, a mostly bare section of limestone that formed millions of years ago from the seabed which rose and collided with Europe millions of years ago. I’ll show you pictures next week as I continued with my Tues Trips.
This area of the cliffs and the Burren are famous not only for the beauty of the place but it also is a complex and well studies geological treasure. There are tons of information sites on geological tours of the Burren and the Galway area.
Our Trip
The day we went to the Cliffs was not at all like the tourist picture depicts this magnificent site. As you can see in this picture: you can see the entire cliff structure all the way down to the relative calm and beautiful blue gree sea. Those striations have a complex historical and geological meaning with demonstrations of ancient sea bottoms, rivers, and fossils.
One fact for any potential visitor in Ireland, especially on the west coast, is that Ireland is an island nation and the west coast is a very windy place where weather blows in fast and furiously. The weather in Ireland can change in a matter of moments; so one must always be ready for rapid changes from great sunny and clear weather to a fog and rainy blowing in as it did when we visited
We have been a couple of times now and have never been treated to that scene. The last time we went, the winds were so strong it actually pushed me down the hill at the visitors center. People were still climbing up the trail with the handrail, which is set in off the cliff a bit more than the Other Trail: the one which allows you to walk along the near edge. For the braver of spirit and not one of us scared of height people.
I started up this trail and then got blown nearly off my feet so I balked and did not go all the way up to the top of the cliffs. There is a trail you cannot see that allows visitors even closer and it does not have a handrail but it was closed that day due to weather.
In fact, shortly after we left, the entire site closed down due to high wind warnings; the visitor center did remain open. but before we left I did manage to get a few more picks from across the inlet.
Even though it turned into a miserable day for sightseeing, it remains a jaw-dropping and breathtaking memory for me. I just cannot imagine anyone choosing to take the walk along the cliff edge.
How many of you would take that trip to the cliff of Moher and walk the cliff edge? I am scared of heights so not me but John would have walked it!
Hope you enjoyed my trip…I loved my trips to see other parts of Ireland in my time there. I love sharing them with you and highly recommend you think about going to Ireland and seeing these places and finding special places of your own.
Thanks for visiting…Take good care
Talk soon
Dara
