Severin got lucky, because in both Scotland and Ireland we missed two major horse events (a horse trials at a castle in Scotland and the Connemara Horse Show in Ireland) by a matter of weeks (Scotland) and mere days (Ireland). Otherwise I would have dragged him to go watch. As an aside, I came up with a business idea, which would be a boutique “equestrian-themed” travel agency, which would focus exclusively on planning horse-centric vacations for enthusiasts. Some of the destinations could involve actual riding while others could just be focused on big events, like the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, the Aachen or Olympia horse shows, etc. In the era of TripAdvisor I’m sure it wouldn’t make big money, so I’ll just have to add it to my list of vanity projects to do while I am independently wealthy ;-)!
All of this to say, Connemara is famous for its hardy white horses. I didn’t know much else about Connemara, and all of the guide books and tourist websites really seemed to suggest that given our short time in Ireland, it would be best to base ourselves south of Galway near the Dingle peninsula or Ring of Kerry. Most people said you could spend a day or two in Connemara. We ended up doing four days with a day trip to the Aran Islands, which ended up being probably about as much as we wanted to do without doing some more hiking or trekking.
When we first arrived at our hotel, we both felt slightly claustrophobic. It was a historic manor of some sort and not terribly big. When we walked into our room, it felt very damp, old, and musty. We laid down on the bed to check the internet, only to find the wifi didn’t work in our hotel room. I know, I know, the horror! But for whatever reason, after driving so long, and not feeling entirely comfortable in our surroundings, we both really, really just wanted to sweet escape of the internet. In the end, it worked out fine– there was a lovely living room which was not damp and musty, and which had a nice fire burning every night and quite a few cocktails were drunk.
There was a decent sized hill across the bay from our hotel and when we first arrived Severin said “I want to hike that.” At the time I laughed but the joke ended up being on me. One of the entrances to the Connemara National Park was about a three-minute drive from our hotel, and that hill (which I later learned was called “Diamond Hill”) was the main hike from the Park’s parking lot. In retrospect, the walk wasn’t THAT strenuous but I am out of shape (unlike in my Inca Trail days!) and sometimes I still get a little anxious when there is no “easy escape.”
The view as we entered the park– this is the hill Severin wanted to hike up. We agreed that we’d get start on the short loop up to the hill in the foreground, then decide if we wanted to go higher from there.
Once we got up the small hill, we had a pretty good view, so we decided to keep walking.
The path got very steep and we were still going up, up, and up. Eventually the path changed from wood planked walkways to gravel to big stone steps. The wind was blowing pretty hard at this point, enough sometimes to knock me a bit off balance while scrambling up the rocks.
Eventually, we made it, and I was proud of myself for pushing through my discomfort at times. Here’s the view from the top:
You can see the trail we hiked up better in this photo. And while you can’t see it, our hotel is on a hill overlooking the bay closest to the hill.
