A Walking Tour of the Western Irish Countryside

After my little walking tour of Galway City the other day, I decided that walking out into the country for a day wasn’t going to be as daunting of a task as I had previously envisioned.  I walked a total of 8 miles roundtrip to the Tesco, so what’s an extra four miles?  I plotted a walking tour starting in Salthill and heading West down the coast to Barna, inland a couple of miles and then back to Salthill.  The whole walk was supposed to be 12 miles, but I ended up turning down the wrong road at one point and so I

ended up walking about 16 miles. Let’s just say, my little feed were NOT happy with me when I got home.

Possibly inspired by this clip from P.S. I Love You, I really wanted to get out and experience the REAL Irish countryside.  These little roads seem so charming and every turn off looks like a scene from the Secret Garden.  So off I started, heading straight West on Upper Salthill Road.  I walked down towards the Salthill Diving Tower (where a man was actually swimming! At about 40 degrees F – no THANK YOU!) and kicked the Blackrock Wall at the end of the promenade (it’s said to give good luck).  I walked down past the Galway Golf Course along the ocean and then turned in a bit to meet up with Barna Road and loop around Rusheen Bay.

I found a small castle here, but it was pretty much overgrown and covered in graffiti.  I kept walking along the road, and as I came around the bend at Knockauncarragh to look back towards Salthill, I found one of the most amazing views.  I stood up on a hill quite high above sealevel but could look down a clear path all the way past small farms and a couple houses down towards Rusheen Bay and across to the Burren.  There were even ponies (a grey mare and her baby black colt), and though I couldn’t tell if they were wild or not (I didn’t see any fences, but they were awful close to town to be wild) they were beautiful against the bright green background.  The baby hid from me most of the time so I didn’t get a chance to look too close, but he was there.

At this point, I couldn’t really remember where I was supposed to turn but I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to walk too much farther past Barna.  So I took one of the first streets out of town, which actually took me on a slight outward detour.  I cut back once I saw a sign pointing into down and headed towards Aille, where I had looked up a riding stable I was hoping to pop into.  On the way, the streets were just perfect.  Every driver gave me a cheerful wave as they passed by, but they only drove past every 10-15 minutes.  I was pretty much out there by myself.

At one point, I broke off the road and hiked a bit up onto a hill to take in the view.  There was a faded horse trail, so I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t fall into a boggy hole, but it was a bit frightening as the ground was pretty spongey and wet. Someone told me that they invented the sport of Cross Country Riding here, and I see why.  The only thing dividing most of the pasture land for each farmer are these short stone walls and it becomes quite clear why horses would be bred to travel long distances and jump short stonewall jumps. 

I walked for about 6 hours before making it back to my little house and, though I was ambitious to head into town again, my feet just completely stopped working, so I called it a day and cooked some dinner. 

See all of my pictures from the little walking tour on Flickr.

Comments

[Luc Jenson]

Lovely blog. Though I've always wanted the opportunity to travel on my own, it's very inspiring that there are people in the world who take life by the reins and do it.

Luc Jenson
Western Clothing

[Abbey Hesser]

@Luc - Thanks Luc. It's not as hard as it sounds, just requires a bit of will power, some balls and a lot of craziness. If you want a good read, Dave from What's Dave Doing wrote an excellent post on this very subject called "So What the Hell Are You Waiting For?". Check it out!