Our basic route is counter-clockwise around the island, so today we headed from the north in the southwesterly direction. We had a brief stop at the grave of William Butler Yeats in Sligo.
Bill enjoyed discussing some of Yeats' quotes with him in the garden.
We stopped for lunch in Westport, a cute town on the west coast where we began one of Rick Steves' suggested driving tours. One of the highlights was a bronze sculpture of a Coffin Ship, a sobering memorial to those who lost their lives as they desperately fled during the famine in the 1840's.
We saw the mountain from which Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland in the 5th century.
Soon we noticed that the roads were getting narrower and we were sharing them not only with other cars, trucks, and busses, but also sheep!
We don't know why the sheep have the paint on their coats; we saw that in England also, but keep forgetting to ask.
As we approached Connemara National Park, the terrain got more and more rugged. Both of us commented that we hadn't expected to see such rocky, barren conditions here. It looked nothing like the green fields and hills we've been seeing.
We drove many miles through bog lands, where peat is cut to be used as fuel. Below, you can see the piles of peat left in the field to dry, then stacked behind a home (& cows) all ready for the fireplace.
As we approached Galway, we glimpsed the shoreline close to Salthill, where we'll be spending the next two nights.
The view from our window in the B&B isn't bad, either!
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