When I first heard of the Wild Atlantic Way – the very name sounded exciting. So I googled it, and then last week I drove along it. Or at least, a small part of the southern section of it.
The Wild Atlantic Ways refers to the roads that run up the west coast of Ireland – where the Atlantic Ocean meets land for the first time in some 2,000 miles. I had visions of huge waves crashing against rocks, and gales blowing wildly.
I am sure that happens. But for my visit, the sun shone and the waves crashed gently against the rocks.
But that’s not to say the trip was disappointing – in fact, it was far from it.
The scenery was nothing short of spectacular.
Ireland is, as promised, very green. For someone who grew up with the reds and browns of the Australian outback, all that green really is something worth looking at.
And it was fascinating to see the fields, all enclosed by dry stone walls. It seems the average Irish farm is about 80 acres. Keep in mind, in my head, paddocks run to thousands of acres. And enclosures the size of the ones I saw in Ireland are actually yards we use when we bring stock in for handling.
It’s more than just the size of the paddocks… err… fields. It’s the number of animals per acre. In fact – that sentence says it all really. In some parts of Australia we talk about the number of acres per head of stock- that is to say how many acres it takes to feed one animal for a year. In Ireland, there seemed to be many beasts per acre. But then, there’s all that lovely green grass that is sadly lacking in vast areas of Australia. I guess that has something to do with the rain. Ireland gets a lot of it. Australia unfortunately misses out.
Mind you, parts of Ireland looked pretty barren too.
But that coastline kept drawing my eye. It was totally spectacular. In paces it was filled with thousands of tiny bays and inlets. In other places, there were towering cliffs that were home to tens of thousands of sea birds.
It wasn’t as wild as I expected – at least, not in the way I expected, but none the less, it was totally fascinating. A week was far too short a time to see even a fraction of it. Next week, I’ll post some pictures of the amazing faces I discovered carved into ruined castles and abbeys.