Clifden

We spent two nights in Clifden, our base for exploring Connemara and some of the nearby coast. The weather varied - sort of an unsurprising pattern throughout the trip - the worst being the 2 minutes during which M ran into Mitchell's to make dinner reservations (turned out they were booked solid) and the five minutes it took to make our hasty escape off of Dog's Bay Beach south of Roundstone.

Clifden is nestled in a valley at the head of a small inlet. From the surrounding hills, there are views of the hills of Connemara. And there are views of the Atlantic from any of several long rocky peninsulas, including the Sky Road loop immediately west of town.

Clifden claims a connection to Marconi's radio tower (built in 1907 in the bog south of town) and to the landing site of Alcock and Brown (their first transatlantic flight in 1919 crashed into the same bog south of town).

We ate at Guy's Bar and Snug one night; at Mannion's the next. We were staying at the Hillside Lodge west of town on Sky Road.

Subsequent posts will cover some of our touring, but these last few are from a morning north of town towards Cleggan. We looked across at Omey Island, but decided against driving across the low-tide beach to check it out.