Today we’re enjoying a breath-taking journey through the Irish countryside, but not just any Irish countryside, we’re in beautiful Connemara on the west coast of Ireland. The journey includes a drive alongside the stunning Killary Fjord and ends at Kylemore Lough and the incredible Kylemore Abbey, one of Irelands must see big houses.
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Connemara is a region along the Atlantic coast in western County Galway and is therefore in the province on Connacht. When you see how totally isolated this place can be you’ll understand the origin of the Cromwellian term “to hell or to Connacht”. It was a place chosen to send Crowell’s Irish Catholic enemies because of its remoteness and poor land. The land may be poor in agricultural terms, but it’s some of the most beautiful countryside in Ireland.
Connemara also has the largest Gaeltacht in the country. For those viewing from outside Ireland, a Gaeltacht area is an Irish speaking region.
It is a part of Ireland that has an abundance of mountains, small lakes, coves, islands and peninsulas, so as you can imagine it is in some stunning countryside. This beautiful area is, loosely speaking, the land of west Galway (west of lough Corrib) as far as Killary harbour in the north and Galway bay in the south. Since Connemara isn’t a county, it has no actual geographical boundry and exactly where the boundary lies is to an extent contested.
Connemara suffered very badly during the famine in Ireland with mass depopulation and evictions by Anglo Irish landlords. As a consequence there was a backlash it and became a hotbed for the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
Similarly this area saw action in the Irish war of independence. Notably, the town of Cliften was the scene of a British war crime known as The burning of Cliften. This was an incident where the infamous Black and Tans burned down 14 houses and business, beat and robbed local people at gunpoint and shot a man dead and another man in the face who survived.
It's difficult sometimes to associate the terrible brutality of conflict in Ireland with the sublime beauty of its landscape.
Immediately after the war of independence, during the Irish Civil War, anti treaty forces requisitioned Kylemore Abbey after the anglo Irish landlord fled. It was barricaded and prepared to fend off an expected attack by the newly formed Irish Army.
Connemara has a population of 32,000 and of these 20 - 24,000 are native Irish speakers. The Irish nationalist Patrick Pearse himself had a cottacge in Connemara where he came to study the language, he would later be exectuted by a firing squad by the British for his part in the Easter Rising in 1916.
Killary Fjord is an incredibly beautiful stretch of water that we’ll follow for a while. This flooded valley is 16 km long and as much as 45 metres deep. Seals dolphins and sharks have all been sited here.
Incidentally, if you’ve ever seen the 1990 film The Field starting Richard Harris, John Hurt and Sean Bean, it was almost entirely shot here in Connemara, in the village of Leenaun.
We pass boglands. This is where turf would be cut and dried to be burnt in winter. It’s the traditional fuel of the irish countryside and has a very distinctive smell - very nostalgic for Irish people.
Then we pass Kylemore lough - 2km long and 1 km wide. You’ll get your salmon and brown trout in there is you’re an angler. This whole area is part of the Twelve Bens complex, a group of mountains that are classified as a special area of conservation.
We visit Kylemore Abbey. This magnificiant house was built in 1868 as a private house, all 40,000 sq ft of it. It’s nowadays the home to Benidictine nuns and has been a Monestary since 1920. If you’d like to see inside though, you can. It’s one of Ireland’s leading visitor attractions and it also has an impressive walled garden that you might also like to see.
I hope this road trip through Connemara has been interesting for you. Please if you haven’t already, feel free to check out the wealth of other Naked Ireland videos that are available on my channel.
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