On Saturday, we drove northeast from Connemara for Co. Sligo. From here on, this is all new territory for us. No more comparisons to 1987!
The land is softer than we found in Connemara, lush and pastoral. This is Yeats Country. As we were driving around, we would see little brown signs that depicted an inkwell and quill pen that would indicate we were on the Yeats route. I kind of doubt he wrote with a quill pen, but it does give you the idea the area has something to do with a writer.
Our first stop on Sunday was to visit Yeats' grave at the little church in Drumcliff where his grandfather was rector. A simple grave, but with the striking backdrop of Ben Bulben, a massive table mountain (as it's described locally) that rises dramatically not far away. This place and his epitaph were spelled out by him in one of his poems, Under Ben Bulben.
Ben Bulben:
From Drumcliff, we set off to explore the coastline north of Sligo town.
We visited Lissadell House, a large, forbidding Georgian house that is being restored. We took the hour–long tour that led us through the main floor and the horrifying below-stairs area. (Horrifying in that it is dank and crumbling. It made us very glad that our lot in life did not have us being servants in that house.) While the house was stately but very cold feeling, it is set at the edge of a large, open bay. It is a huge estate with a walled Victorian garden, a kitchen garden, and a very large gatehouse/coach house complex. It was a good walk through the woods from the coach house and stables area to the open land where the house stands. Interesting, but we weren't wanting to stay there. Not a very welcoming place.
A short ways north, we turned off the numbered road onto a track that took us out to Streedagh Point. (My Michelin map didn't even show a road in this area. Between the suggestion of our host and the help of our car's GPS system, we found our way to the point.) The wind was blowing like crazy, but it was a beautiful view to crashing surf, a lovely little beach cove, and a long, protected dune area.
At our lodging in the Sligo area, we are on what is called a Yeats Country package, which provides a picnic lunch for our touring days. Since it was beautiful and we had the place to ourselves, we decided Streedagh Point would be where we would picnic. Given that I could barely open the car door or stand still long enough to take a quick snapshot (and, perhaps, the fact that it was barely 50 degrees outside), we quickly decided that eating inside the car was going to be the preferred choice. A bit awkward, but yummy food (lettuces from the inn's garden with smoked chicken, cherry tomatoes, apples with local cheese, rolls, and a cupcake for a sweet treat--not exactly suffering, are we?) with a dramatic view.
From there, we headed to Mullaghmore, a charming little port with a long strand. It was a nice spot to get out and stretch our legs. It was a bit more protected from the wind, but there was a series of big dark clouds and their attendant rain showers moving through, so we didn't spend very long out.
We rounded out our day with a fabulous Yeats Country highlight, the Gleniff Horseshoe Drive. Our host, Simon, had mentioned it as a good drive, but he hadn't given us any helpful hints on how to find it. We spent a lot of time wandering around in the countryside on tiny roads and couldn't find it in the area he'd pointed to on our map. We finally gave up and got ourselves back out to the "highway." No sooner were we heading south again, when we actually saw a good sign telling us to turn for the drive. So we tried again. We didn't see another sign for probably 10-15 minutes, but we eventually found it.
It was worth all the fuss. Even in so-so weather, it was dramatic and beautiful. This area of haunting, table mountains and almost no signs of humans is a beautiful spot. We never found any trails or places to stop and walk, but the road was pretty easy in that there was no traffic to speak of. I think we only encountered two cars while we were on this horseshoe drive. The road is basically a loop through a cirque in the Dartry Mountains. From the highway, all you can see is a set of flat-topped mountains. But this drive (once you find your way to it) takes you back into them, so that you're surrounded on three sides by these behemoths, all lush and green and dotted with sheep. Quite dramatic and beautiful.
As we always say, "Into each vacation, a little rain must fall." In the case of this trip, we've revised it to, "Into each vacation, a little rain must fall (and fall and fall) and wind blow (and blow and blow)."
We've been told Ireland had 2 "lovely" weeks in April, but it has (and therefore we have also) been experiencing an uncommonly cold and wet May. We've gotten used to the wind and frequent showers, and we've been good Northwesterners and determined not to let it get in our way......until Monday.
Even though we'd had rain and hail hitting us in wave after wave on Sunday, the real fun came on Monday. There were orange alert storm warnings for heavy wind and lots of rain. Whee!
We headed out relatively quickly that morning, since the weather was supposed to worsen noticeably in the afternoon. We took country roads north to Lough Gill and made a scenic loop. The weather was quite cold and rainy, but we could at least get a sense of this pretty lake that was very important to Yeats. We stopped at Parke's Castle and toured this lakeside, fortified castle. It was bitterly cold, so we bustled through fairly quickly. We moved on and found a viewpoint on the south side of the lake for our in-the-car-again picnic.
The weather was really picking up steam, so we changed our plans and decided on a relatively short and tame coastline drive. By the time we reached the approach to that drive, the rain was hitting us in buckets and coming at us horizontally. We decided the thing that sounded best to us in the whole world was to spend some of our afternoon in front of the fire at our inn. And that's exactly what we did. Initially, we had the drawing room all to ourselves, but bit by bit our fellow guests straggled in as we all took respite from the storm.
Then the sun came out, so we grabbed our jackets and headed out for a walk on the inn's grounds. Fresh smells, lots of birdsong. No sooner did we get about 10 minutes from the house than the showers started again. We waited one shower out under cover of some trees, but when our second foray netted us another shower, we headed back for the warmth of the house, finally willing to concede defeat to this dreary day and its determined weather. And what a lovely defeat it was.
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