Sunday May 19, 2013

We packed up and had breakfast at 8:30am, loaded the car and went to church at Galway Cathedral.  It was the “last great stone church built in Europe” so we chose well.  After mass we drove the rest of the way to Murrisk to the Croagh Patrick visitor center.  We left the car to climb the mountain at 12:00.
 

 

The very beginning of this climb was my favorite.  The statue of St. Patrick stood surrounded by noisy streams of water.  After 10 or 20 minutes though, the streams lay behind as we clamored over sharp loose stones and steep slopes.  The clouds also began to, well, cloud our view, and the panorama of Clew Bay was soon lost.  We ended up arriving at the summit of Croagh Patrick at 1:30, which was a pretty good ascent time, faster than average according to our travel books.  We sat and took a little picnic lunch at the side of the summit church, chatted with an Irish couple for a bit, and then began our descent. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View of Clew Bay from part way up Croagh Patrick

 

We took the descent very slowly.  We saw one woman slip and fall onto her bottom, and decided to almost creep down the slope.  I would estimate the angle of the mountain between 40 and 60 degrees at the steepest, so we felt that if you fell, you would continue to fall long enough to be injured fairly seriously.  We had rented walking sticks at the bottom, and I felt it was invaluable to get down safely.  Melissa thought the stick was useful but unnecessary, being somewhat a burden in certain places.  Either way, we made it down the mountain in one piece, returned our walking sticks, and got our stick deposit money back.  Across the road from the Croagh Patrick visitor center was a Famine Memorial sculpture called the “coffin ship” so we visited that for a bit. 
 

 

 

We left the car park at 4:00 and started making our way toward Sligo.  After paying so much for the B&B in Galway, we sent a few last minute couchsurfing requests for that area of the country, and were feverishly checking our email any time we would get a blip on our wifi.  And we got an invitation to come stay in Manorhamilton from a girl called Aiofe (pronounced Ee-fah).  Lucky, huh?

 

We met Aiofe at the Castle car park right in town, and followed her to her little apartment.  She had cooked an Irish stew that day and made enough for us as well.  We talked and ate our stew, and afterwards she let us relax while she met up with her boyfriend Sean.  They both came back after about an hour and we all went out to a few pubs in town.  Sean and I went next door to the last pub and bought some burgers and chips, and after going back to Aiofe’s flat around 11:00, we ate, pulled out the couch bed, and went to sleep.