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S

ure, I havent the time toclean me arse, a man said tome when I asked him i hewas in a hurry, while I was

working in a bar in Ireland a ewyears ago.You might not use exactly thesame expression, but youll bethinking something to the sameeect i you try to see all thatIreland has to oer in one trip.Ireland is one sixth the size oSpain. Its smaller than Castileand Len or Andalusia, butunless you have acouple o monthsto spare, itsbest to chooseyour route

realisticallyand concede

that at the end o your trip youllbe wishing you had more time tospend in the places youve visited.Ignoring Dublin, and Belast and

the southern hal o the island,weve decided to take you on aroad trip rom the west, goingnorthwards up the coast andeastwards across the top o theEmerald Isle. Teres a lot o driv-ing on our chosen route, but wevecareully picked out the highlightsbased on a ve-day trip.

Due west and a three-and-a-quarter-hours

drive rom Dublin,our rst

stop is thecapital othe Gaelic

West,Galway.

Tis is wherethe natives told me you

can nd the best pinto Guinness outsideDublin, as Te BlackStu is said to lose itsquality the more itsshaken, and the directDublin-Galway rail

route keeps jiggling to

a minimum. Whetherstout is your drink ornot, youll love the pubs

and going-out scene inGalway. Lots o pubs have kept

a Gothic eel and are charmingoutside and in, not that looks arenecessary to add atmosphere to aplace with a bouncing, youth-

ul vibe. Te citys two collegesensure a constant rejuvenation,although its reputation as thecultural capital o Ireland givesit a ar wider appeal to peopleother than students. From springto late summer, it always seemsthat theres some estival goingon. During the months o Julyand August, Galway lls upwith young Spaniards trying toimmerse themselves in English.Ironically, most o their practicecomes with Italians, Swiss and

Koreans who have all

had the same idea.

You will want to stay longer,especially when your eortlesslyacquired hangover kicks in, butnow its time to go into the wild

and begin the real road trip.

Moving westward into Con-nemara, the landscapes canchange quite dramatically. Fromthe lush banks o Lough Corribto the harsh, rocky land withtough grasses, where I thoughtId landed on the ctional CraggyIslandrom the V comedy seriesFather Ted, you can eel the re-moteness o the region and a kindo beauty that is dierent romwhat you nd elsewhere. Tis iso-lation rom the rest o the country

explains why it has the biggest

WORDS byLuc ciOtkOWSki

euro weekendertravel

14 mar 08 www.europeanvibe.com

Currently the worlds number one in the Quality-o-lieindex, we show you some o the things that have always made Irelanda spellbinding place, on a ve-day road trip around the west and north.

in

5Ireland days

GalwayClifdenDublin

Sligo

Donegal

Derry

Bushmills

Belfast

Westport Newgrange

Galway

Kylemore Abbey

Giants Causeway

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Gaeltacht, Irish Gaelic-speaking area, in Ireland.Oughterard, a shingvillage on Lough Corrib, isworth a short stop, but themust-see in Connemara

is the stunning Kylemore Abbey,the site where Belgian nuns fee-ing rom World War I oundeda Benedictine nunnery. Te twomountain ranges that contrast theloughs o Connemara are Maamurks and Te welve Bens. Youwill pass the oot o the latter onthe main road northbound aterthe areas biggest town, Cliden.Te French singer, Michel Sardou,has immortalised the region orgenerations o French people withhis song,Les lacs du Connemara,which has attained epic status.

Te lyrics to the song are almostas well-known in France as thoseo the national anthem and youshouldnt be surprised i you hearit pumping out as the last bigsong o the night in clubs romParis to Bordeaux to Marseille.

Northwards again towards Mayoand taking the coastal road pastLouisburgh, we come acrossIrelands holy mountain o CroaghPatrick. Te mountain alreadyhad religious importance beoreChristianity arrived in Ireland, but

it was at this site, inthe th century, thatSaint Patrick reputedlycompleted a 40-dayast, while building achurch at the sametime and nishing up

by banishing all the snakes andserpents o Ireland. When it wasdiscovered that snakes had beenextinct in Ireland since the last IceAge, some interpreted that thelegend reerred to the symbolicuse o serpents by pagan druidsat the time. Whatever truth lies

behind the legend, Croagh Patrickremains an important site opilgrimage and draws around25,000 pilgrims every year on thelast Sunday o July (and youresupposed to do it bareoot). Notar away is the attractive andrelaxed town o Westport, in ClewBay. Tis is a place with the kindo easy-going atmosphere I loveabout Ireland. It was in a pub nearhere a ew years ago (not actuallyin Westport, granted) that I leta jacket wedged between a ruitmachine and a wall and ound it

still there when I came back sixmonths later (stinking o staletobacco and beer, but still there).Cutting through County Mayo,past Castlebar and Charlestown,

we enter County Sligoand head straight orSligo own. As well asgiving us a base to visitseaside resorts like Stran-dhill and the impressive

Lough Gill (home to W.B. Yeatsamous island o Innisree), Sligois a great place or a night-out,and at the top i you want to seelive traditional music. One o thebest pubs is Sheila na Gig,owned by the well-knownband, Dervish, but there areplenty o other good venuesto drink and listen to music.

Ever northward into CountyDonegal and westward beyondDonegal own, we come to theold shing port o Killybegs,

to rest in the bay and prepareourselves or what comes next:the highest sea cli in Europe.Te Slieve League is probablynot the best place or you i yousuer rom vertigo, even the roadgoing up rom eelin can be a bitscary. Its always windy, but i itis too much so, or there is heavyog, you may have to miss outon seeing the summit. However,i the weather permits and youcan stomach it, the 600-metreprecipice provides breathtakingviews as the waves crash and

roth silently at the bottom o thecli, which, encrusted with amberdeposits, seems to glow yellow,orange and red in the light.I dont know its true, butpeople say that on a clearday, you can see one thirdo the island rom the top.We go north or the lasttime in the Republico Ireland, passing GlenveaghNational Park on the way, toDunanaghy. Here, you can visitthe workhouse, restored as a his-tory centre in remembrance o the

Great Famine in the 19th century,and you can see the wild beauty othe clis at Horn Head.

Our journey turnseastward and wepass Donegals big-

gest town, Letterkenny, beorecrossing the border and Derry(or Londonderry), the only city

in northwestern Ireland, andcontinuing beyond Coleraine. Teroute across the top o NorthernIreland takes us to the seasideresort o Portrush, and this is ourbase to explore the nearbydistillery in Bushmills.Te Old BushmillsDistillery is the oldestlicensed distillery in theworld, with its 400-yearanniversary o beinglicensed this year, although thereare claims that whiskey was beingmade there 400 years beore that.

Just three kilometres north is theGiants Causeway; a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site and regularly

number one in lists omust-see attractions inIreland. Te unnatural-looking rock ormationwas explained by thelegend o the Irish war-rior-giant, Finn McCool

(Fionn mac Cumhaill), and theScottish giant, Benandonner. TeCauseway had suposedly beenbuilt all the way rom Ireland toScotland, so Finn McCool could

ght the Scottish giant. Seeingthat Benandonner was muchbigger than him, Finn McCool

got his wie to cover him with ablanket and pretended he was thebaby-son o himsel. When theScottish giant saw the size o thebaby, he fed back to Scotlandand ripped up the Causeway as

he went, so Finn could not ollowhim. Te reality is a less excitingstory o volcanic eruptions thatlet thousands o interlockedbasalt columns as lava cooled.

I personally preer toantasise about the gi-ants mythology, and thesetting makes it easy tosuspend belie.

With the road trip com-ing to an end, our road back toDublin goes south past Belastand into the Republic again. I

you can allow yoursel one lastdetour, then make it Newgrange.Te amous prehistoric site isa passage tomb that predatesthe Egyptian Pyramids andStonehenge. Tis could be thelast bit o magic on a trip lledwith it. And thats howwe leave Ireland thistime, with a quoteas true now as whenit was said in 1958,God made the grass,the air and the rain;the grass, the air and the rain

made the Irish; and the Irishturned the grass, the air and therain back into God.

euro weekender travel

mar 08 15www.europeanvibe.com

CroaghPatrick

Connemara

Dervish

Bushmills

GlenveaghNational Park

Newgrange

Slieve League