Reflections on Ireland

We have been back home for about 3 weeks now and I usually do a wrap up on my trips. "Busy" is my only excuse with a little bit of "lazy" thrown in.
First off, Nicola and I proved we could travel together. We have been hiking together for the last couple of years but that only amounts to a couple of days at a time, so it was lovely to find that we are quite compatible as travel companions. We would both prefer to be in the countryside than in the cities, prefer to see sheep and cows to seeing bus loads of people. We both need our coffee in the morning and like our glass of wine in the evening. We dealt with our controlling natures by me driving and Nicky navigating. Made for some amusing times in the car! (Usually something to do with narrow roads).
From the day we arrived to the day we left, we kept commenting on the greenness. We hadn't really believed all the "Emerald Isle" hype but it truly is a constant array of greens, even though there had been a drought and the locals kept telling us it had effected the colours.

Road, field and moors on the Ring of Kerry.

 The other surprise was the colour. Hedgerows of Fuchsia, roadside Aubrecia, moors covered in Gorse and magnificent, multicoloured Hydrangeas in the gardens. We must have been there at the perfect time of year for flowering plants.

Even the rocks sustained flowers.

The food also surprised us. We didn't do any fine dining, always ate in pubs or cafes and the meals were consistently exemplary. The focus was on fresh, local products and they made a point of listing on the menu where the smoked salmon came from and that it was Irish butter that was served. Even more useful, as Nicola eats Gluten Free, was their attention to allergies and sensitivities. All the menus had a code at the bottom with numbers attached to different foods. So if Gluten was number 1, Nicola just had to avoid every menu item with a 1 next to it. In addition the servers all knew why that number was there and sometimes Nicola was offered a gluten free alternative ie gluten free bread rather than Irish soda bread. We thought it was just luck when the first place we stopped had gluten free scones to go with the jam and whipped cream but it was standard everywhere.
When we talked, before we left, about what we wanted from the trip, for Nicola it was rugged coast, crashing waves and castles, and for me it was exploring a different country and hiking. We were able to fulfill all of that although we discovered that castles in that part of Ireland (the south west coast) , although numerous, were single towers built by local clan chiefs and mostly in ruins.

However the one we had to ourselves, after hiking over the moors, made up for that.

The high point for me was the trip out to Skellig Michael

followed closely by the evenings we spent sitting by Finians Bay with our wine and cheese after days of exploring.

We were there for 2 weeks. We didn't see everything we wanted to around the 4 southwest peninsulas that we explored. We want to continue up the coast and see more of "The Wild Atlantic Way"  (Galway Bay, the Cliffs of Moher etc etc)and I'm sure there are lots of lovely areas on the other coast too.