Tuesday, September 25, 2012

irish road trip #2: the cliffs of moher

 On the first day of our trip, we took to the road early, leaving Dublin. Our goal for the day was to make the west coast of Ireland, more precisely the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare.
After an hour or so, my friend felt she'd adapted to driving on the left (minus a few bumps). Our route planner announced that the trip duration would be around 3,5 hours. Not the shortest drive but still manageable with a few mandatory breaks. We got the GPS and a good morale.  We were fairly confident that it was going to be fine. But that was without allowing for my general bad luck with technology and the state of the Irish regional roads...
At some stage, we realised that the gps battery life was going in the red. Don't panic (and grab a towel) I thought. It turned out that our car had a faulty cigar-lighter. Luckily, my friend, who was more far-sighted than I, made us buy a map the day before... just in case.
Not sure how much my friend knew about my lack of orientation skills at the time, I tried to keep a straight face and got the map out of the glove compartment, pretending to know what I was doing.
Well to cut a story a short, I got us there... in 6 hours. My head was probably this close to be chopped. It wasn't all my fault I must say, the regional roads in Ireland are a zigzagging mess and it slowed us considerably (well ok, had I known the difference between regional roads and national ones in terms of speed, maybe just maybe I would have directed us slightly differently).
Both exhausted, we finally arrived at destination in the early evening. And you know what, it was worth it. It was breath-taking, atmospheric and foggy like a Kate Bush song. It was everything we had hoped.
With epic images in our heads, we left the site and drove south to Galway where we had booked a hotel. Needless to say, we slept like babies that night.














10 comments:

Jane said...

That sounds like one exhausting day! Definitely worth it though, these views are amazing... I love the fog, I feel like it would be better like this than it would be on a sunnier day!

moira said...

you're totally right, we thought that as well, the fog and the rain added so much drama x

Célestine Causette said...

Ooooooooh!

Lidy said...

This just makes my heart happy! I recently visited Ireland for the first time last Spring break (although we never made it to the cliffs of moher). I fell in love while I was there, which isn't hard to do! It's weird, but I almost feel homesick to go back. Beautiful pictures!!!

XOXO
Lidy

moira said...

Hi Lidy, thank you for your comment! What places did you go to while visiting here?
I have a few more posts lined up for this trip, so do pop by later on, you might recognize some places you've been to x

TheHeadlessMannequin said...

Just after stumbling upon your lovely blog and I'm an instant fan :) Being Irish, this post definitely won me over!! You capture the typical grey moodiness of the Cliffs of Moher perfectly! And sum up the state of our regional roads nicely :) Looking forward to hopefully catching glimpses of some more of your road trips!

moira said...

hey fellow irish blogger :) thanks a lot for your kind words! Where are you from?! xmoira

Gabriela said...

wow it's so beautiful there. I found your blog on tavi's blog and I love it! please check out mine :) http://sequinsandspikes.blogspot.com/
xx gabi

Aya Smith said...

WOW... absolutely STUNNING photos. I love the one of the flower... the use of depth of field is so captivating!

Aya ♥ Strawberry Koi

moira said...

@gabi: I certainly will! thanks for stopping by x

@aya: oh hi aya! thank you so much, so happy to see you here, i've been following strawberry koi for a good few years now xx

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