Last Day in Connemara

For our last day in Connemara, we had plans to do a circle loop that would include Connemara National Park.  Due to using the Garmin and not hand mapping with the OSI Atlas, we shortchanged ourselves, partially because of Toot’s routing and partially due to some crankiness when we were unable to find a specific destination.  Cong in County Mayo was especially perplexing as Toots didn’t know where some places were and the OSI Atlas had what we were looking for misplaced.  In particular, the Cong Abbey was a challenge to find, only to stumble upon it as we headed to the Tourist Info Center.

The Monastery of Cong was founded in the 7^th century but the original abbey was destroyed by fire, subsequently rebuilt in the 12^th century but was again destroyed, this time due to invasion in 1203 by the Normans.  Most of the current ruins are of the 13^th century rebuilding of yet another “new” abbey as well as the adjacent church.  There are some however, that are part of the earlier two buildings.

There are some main walls along with the carvings that are still in fair shape. One stair case to the top a tower is also in decent shape, allowing visitors to climb atop the structure.

While in Cong, we also drove by the entrance to the Ashford Castle Hotel, although it was closed to the public by guarded gate.

From Cong, we returned to Connemara for our visit to the Kylemore Abbey.  This abbey was actually built as the castle home of Mitchell & Margaret Henry in 1867.  Baronial Castle as it was known at the time was a gift from Mitchell to his wife Margaret.   Kylemore was purchased in 1903 by the Duke and Duchess of Manchester and later sold again in 1914.  The financial troubles of these two owners led to the house being left to caretakers until a new owner could be found.

In 1920, the Community of Nuns of the Order of St. Benedict purchased the castle and the nearly 10,000 acres surrounding it.  For nearly 90 years (1923 to 2010) they ran a boarding school for girls mostly from the surrounding communities, although some women from prominent families including Angelica Huston have attended school here.   Today there is still a small group of Benedictine Nuns who reside and work at Kylemore Abbey.

The main house is open to visitors, with five of the lower level rooms on display.  Some of this part of the house has been rebuilt after a fire damaged it in 1959.  Many of the furnishings are not original to the Henry’s although several pieces on display in the dining room were original to their family, bearing his initials and coat of arms.  Upstairs, there were 33 bedrooms and dressing rooms, all of which are closed to the public.

On the grounds, Mitchell Henry built a Neo-Gothic Church, largely modeled to be a miniature cathedral.  He built it after his wife of 32 years died (at the age of just 45 . . . you do the math) after a trip to Eqypt.  He wanted it to be a memorial in her honor.  It was beautifully designed and today has the original stain glass window depicting the five graces; fortitude, faith, charity, hope and chastity.

Behind the church is a small graveyard where many of the Benedictine Nuns have been buried.  Further down the hill, there is also the mausoleum where Mitchell brought Margaret’s body to be laid to rest.  He was also returned to Kylemore after his death and has been buried there with her.

The walled gardens on the estate encompass over six acres and had fallen into shambles over years of neglect.  They were reopened in 2000 after the Benedictine community worked tirelessly to restore them.  Unfortunately due to the late hour of the day, we were worn out and did not make our way to the gardens.  For those who wish to tour them, there is a shuttle bus that departs near the castle to take you.

Throughout our ride today the roads were narrower and more twisting than most we had traveled previously.  There were wonderful views of the granite mountains, rich valley pastures and beautiful blue lakes.  A couple of the lakes seemed to go on for miles and miles. Often we met driving obstacles head-on; most frequently sheep with their young lambs but at one point in the road we did pass a woman pushing a baby carriage in the middle of the road.

Back at our timeshare cottage, we enjoyed a light dinner of burger and fries.  Afterwards, we watched the 1954 classic movie “The Quiet Man” starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.  It seemed appropriate since our cottage is on the road that crosses over “The Quiet Man Bridge” and earlier in the day we saw the replica of the movie set house used in the movie during our visit to Cong.

As he had previously done on each of the nights before, David built a fire using a fire starter log, kindling sticks, peat bricks and fire wood we purchased in town on Sunday.  The peat is an interesting thing in that it is actually bricks of compacted organic material from the Irish bogland.  Earlier in the day during our drive tour, we got to see where peat comes from, as we passed several bogs where the peat had been cut from the ground and stacked to dry out.

We leave Connemara in the morning, returning to Dublin for our last two nights.  We will be staying at a B&B in the northern suburb village of Malahide.  Our original plans included taking a walking musical pub crawl tour in Dublin Friday night, but we’ve made a change to that plan.  With the long drive from County Galway, with a planned stop or two along the way, we felt that trying to do a two and a half hour tour that starts at 7:30pm would simply be too much . . . and would most likely take its toll on how we might feel on Saturday when we are to take the Dublin Bus Company’s “Hop On – Hop Off” self-tour of Dublin City.

So for now, that has us about caught up here on the blog.