A day ashore in Mayo

The Mayo Sailing Club is a fair distance from Westport. Lying in bed I turned mobile data roaming on and did some investigating. There are plenty of taxis and some of them will do custom guided tours but I also found a car hire place. That sounded like a good idea and would let us buy diesel and stock up on food too. I also discovered there was an archaeology trail we could drive around.

Once we were up I called the car hire place and they had a VW golf we could have so I booked a taxi and we rowed ashore. It all worked brilliantly. We drove back into town and parked and went to the tourist office and stocked up with leaflets and headed to Westport Quay where the Heritage Centre is and one can buy the Archaeology Trail guide book. The Quay is delightful. It would have been nice to bring Robinetta here but the tides are all wrong - high around noon and midnight and the quay dries below 1/2 tide. 

The lady in the Heritage Centre gave us a potted history of Westport. The current town is a planned community, built by the local lord as the original village spoiled his view from his posh new house. He did a good job though and the villagers prospered from the move.

The harbour was a working port into the 20th century with large steamers and sailing hookers using the quay. They all had to dry out against the wall. There was a tragedy in the 1894 when a hooker carrying people from Achill to join a steamer to emigrate to America was lost in Clew Bay. With the flaky winds we had yesterday in fine weather I can imagine what bad weather would be like.

We lunched at The Towers because it had a garden and the weather was so fine. Alison had a crab sandwich and I had mussels. Really good. The chap behind the bar might have been German. He made sure I had the most local beer - "You can get Galway Hooker anywhere - you won't get this more than 5 miles away". The local brew was good. 

We headed up the R335 towards Murrisk with two archeology stops on the way. The first was a tiny ring fort while the second was an alignment of standing stones in the marsh - it covers at springs. Really the scenery was more wonderful than the archeology. The views are dominated by Croagh Patrick but the drumlins and marshes of the bay are stunning.

Murrisk is notable for it's abbey - a ruin but with fine stonework, for it's Famine Ship sculpture and for being the trail head car park for walking up Craogh Patrick. 

We also saw a really young foal in a field with its mother.

Further on along the R335 is Louisburgh. We stopped there to visit the Famine Museum and Grainne Uaile Centre. This is a small private museum with two good exhibits.

The Famine Museum is truly heartbreaking. The heartless exploitation of the famine by the landlords is a stain on British history. One exhibit stood out for me. The picture speaks for itself.

Grainne Uaile ('Bald Grace') or Grace O'Malley is a fascinating character who deserves a Hollywood movie - according to IMDB she did get a Discovery Channel documentary in 2003. The O'Malleys were the Irish 'rulers' of that part of Ireland in medieval times and were amongst other things either pirates or excise men, depending on your point of view. Grace's life provides a fascinating insight into Irish culture, political, economic and social. Beset by encroaching English domination she visited Queen Elisabeth I in London, presenting herself at court as an equal queen to argue her case. Her descendants married into the incoming English aristocracy (or the other way round), salvaging at least a thread of continuity. 

From Louisburgh we headed inland and visited a wedge tomb and a Victorian clapper bridge before heading to the beach near Killadoon to watch the breakers.

We took a different route back to Westport heading south of Craobh Patrick through the hills. Another lovely drive and the furthest inland we got all summer. Back in Westport we did a good shop and filled our diesel cans and drove back to the Mayo Sailing Club and left our shopping and diesel in their club house. We then went back to Westport and had dinner. We didn't want anything fancy and we saw several good looking pizza places but they were too noisy. Then we found a little wine bar which ordered pizza in for you. It was quiet and friendly and played really cool jazz on vinyl.

We dropped the car off and phoned for a taxi to take us back to the pier, picked up our shopping and rowed back to Robinetta. Our first day ashore had gone really well.