Friday 11 July 2014

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Ireland: Fare and away

Where to, then? How about a 140-mile taxi trip around the Connemara Peninsula, suggests Jo Knowsley

THE leaden morning skies looked uncertain but locals sniffed at our concern. "It's just mizzle," said Frank, the taxi driver who was to take us around the Connemara Peninsula. "A cross between mist and the wet. You're blessed. It could have been bucketing down."

Irish logic if ever I heard it. Then again, modern Galway has good reason to look on the bright side of life. The economy is booming and tourism to this beautiful part of western Ireland is growing steadily. Only visitors worry about the weather.

Spending I£100 - about £80 - on a taxi for the day had at first seemed extraordinarily extravagant. But, as we drove deeper into Connemara and the terrain grew wilder, the roads winding, narrow and steep - in some places, such as the aptly named Sky Road, almost climbing into the clouds - we celebrated the decision. And compared with the spending habits of Maharajah Ranjitsinji - a former owner of the 16th-century Ballynahinch Castle - it was positively prudent. Last century, when the Maharajah owned the castle, he visited for just two months each year: January for fishing and September for hunting. Each time, he would arrive in Galway by train and buy a car which he then drove to the castle. There he would summon a fleet of tradesmen, including tailors who would make him a new wardrobe. He paid everyone in gold.

But it was his departure that his 25 staff most eagerly awaited. Then, as legend has it, he would bequeath the clothes to the servants and the car to either the clergy or a doctor, generosity that must have prompted fierce competition and was apparently repeated on every visit.

The castle, which had earlier been owned by Richard "Humanity Dick" Martin, the founder of the RSPCA, is today an elegant hotel: perched on the shores of the Ballynahinch river, its lush gardens surrounded by stone walls, it attracts visitors from around the world for the tranquillity of its location and its excellent salmon fishing.

The first stop on our 140-mile round trip, however, was Kylemore Abbey, a few miles to the north, where for the past 150 years Benedictine nuns have lived in spartan isolation. The abbey is a Gothic castle, poised dramatically between the edge of a lake and the foot of a mountain. Today, it is a boarding school and the nuns have changed with the times, cultivating their own vegetable gardens and selling a nifty range of homemade jams, honeys and mustards in the gift shop.

However, one must go deeper into Connemara to find the key to its heart: where the mountains rise starkly over the salmon lakes and give way to some of the last boglands in Europe, where the overgrown embankment of the old Galway to Clifden railway line yields a hint of the past and abandoned stone houses stand testament to the days of the Great Famine when thousands of families, indeed whole villages, died of starvation.

Along the Sky Road, towards Clifden, at the tip of the peninsula, the views over the ocean are achingly beautiful. "My wife just won't drive along here," said Frank, as he negotiated a lumpy bend in a road no wider than a farmer's cart. "She thinks it's frightening." It is certainly high. Hundreds of feet down, perched by the sea, little farmhouses stand solid against the gales. It's a wonder that the farmers ever made a living. In times past, it took days to herd black-faced Connemara sheep and the hardy cattle into Galway, Frank said. The herdsmen had been paid a pittance. "A few shillings - if the farm owner didn't get drunk. In the scheme of things, of course, a lot of them never got paid at all."

Today, the cottages are more likely to be holiday homes and Clifden, the capital of Connemara, has become its centre of tourism. Each September, thousands of people swarm into town for the Connemara Pony Fair, to buy the tough wild ponies that have been rounded up for the occasion from the moors.

It was 1pm and we were getting hungry. But Frank, with the insistence of our lively guesthouse owner, was following a schedule that did not yet allow a break for lunch. Instead, we lurched and bumped over winding roads that took us towards a gentler coast and the fabulous stretch of golden sandy beaches at Dog's Bay, so named for the seals - or "dogs" as the fishermen call them - that shelter here in winter.

The sun was trying to come out and Frank was jubilant. "Now look at this day," he said. "It couldn't be more perfect. Perhaps you'd like to take a walk?" His seat was reclined and his cap over his face within moments of our setting off for the beach. And a brisk stroll it proved to be. The sun was indeed shining, but the wind was in hot pursuit. "Now was that refreshing?" Frank asked when we returned half an hour later.

The landscape was becoming lusher and the villages more populated as we made for Roundstone and O'Dowd's pub and seafood bar overlooking the small fishing harbour. A Real Irish Pubs award was on the old, wood-panelled wall and the place turned out to be a genuine treat. I gazed out the window to the sea as I scoffed the nine plump scallops in herb butter and fresh, fat chips that made up lunch. We were only a short flight from London but a million miles from the Irish "theme" pub. I allowed myself, briefly, to feel smug in the snug.

After lunch, we wandered around the town: a pretty little place with freshly painted white cottages, cobbled streets, and a plethora of art galleries. At 3.30pm, it was back in the car for the hour-long drive to Galway. The day trip had proved to be a stunning highlight in our visit to Ireland; Connemara, more enticing than I could have imagined. I could think of only one element that I would like to have transported from the old days. That marvellous maharajah. Frank was fantastic, but I knew that he wouldn't give us the car.

Connemara basics

Getting there
Aer Lingus (0845 973 7747) flies from nine UK airports and has four flights a day to Shannon from £90.70 return.

Staying there
Norman Villa, 86 Lower Salt Hill Road, Galway (00 353 9152 1131); elegant rooms in a restored Victorian house from £32.50 per person per night.

Getting around
Hiring a taxi (00 353 9158 5858) for a day costs about £80.

More information
Telephone the Irish Tourist Board on 020 7493 3201.

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