Is County Clare my Favourite County?

I’m not sure but it may be the wide sweeping, green hills lined with tidy rock walls, or the grand vistas from the edge of tall cliffs by the sea or the rich music tradition or … all of the above and more. It also may be a tie for first place with Donegal (and Connemara). 

The view from our wee cottage in Miltown Malbay.

The photos below are from our 2 days in Clare, one night in Lahinch and one in Milltown Malbay. That’s only because I screwed up the reservation and booked 2 places for one night and none for another! 

Luckily it all worked out. 

From Lahinch we drove north to the Cliffs of Moher, bypassing the regular visitor parking lot (full of buses) in favour of Guerin's Path - a farmer has opened his field for access to the trail and it’s cheaper, less crowded and you can actually drive up to the trail. Only one other car was parked at the top. Some views of the trail and cliffs.

Then on to the super cute little village of Doolin. Lots of parking when we arrived, starting to get a bit crowded with buses etc when we left. This castle appeared out of nowhere as we went down the windy hill into town.

After a break for lunch at Gus O'Connors Pub we headed south to find the bridges of Ross. These are (were) natural bridges formed by the sea. There were 3 bridges until 2 fell into the sea leaving this one. Can you see me there?

Thanks to Google we were able to experience some of Ireland's famous narrow roads. Marj has managed to keep us on the road and we only had to back up once. The roads with grass growing down the middle posted at 80kph are the most fun.

I’m not sure if it’s just the time of year or not but we saw more giant farm equipment on the road than I’ve seen in my whole life. There was a bit of a wide space here for this one to get by otherwise someone would have been backing up and I don’t think it would be the tractor.

There seem to be castles everywhere although Bonnie says there are more bouncy castles in Ireland than real castles. We’ve only seen one bouncy castle.

We were just leaving the road to the Bridges of Ross when some guy signals us to stop. We look over and there are about 50 dairy cows coming home to milk.  It wasn’t quite the wildebeest migration but it did remind me of that.

So many pubs and so much music. This group in the video were brilliant and so energetic. 

Off to Killarney for a few days.