A Whirlwind through The Burren and Ballyvaughan

So I know a lot of you at this point are even wondering if I’m alive still. I am and have had such a crazy busy week and a half for the start of this Study Abroad, so strap in because this is a long post. After a flight cancellation and many hours sitting and trying to get us all to Dublin, we found ourselves on a coach to Ballyvaughan. Ballyvaughan is a 3 hour drive from Dublin and is on the very west coast of Ireland next to the Atlantic. It’s a pretty small town with a handful of pubs that open only at 7 pm and a Spar (the local convenience store) that close at 7 pm. It is part of what is called The Burren which means Rocky Place in English which to be frank is not the most creative name but hits the nail on the head. This is probably the only time I have been extremely happy to say that I took 2 semesters of Geology because the rock formations there were rare and beautiful. The locals also loved to talk about how the flora is known worldwide because you can find flowers from alpine conditions usually sitting snug next to Mediterranean flowers.

Fairy ring formation

Where we were staying was right outside the city center in little cottages complete with thatched roofs, 4 to split between the 22 of us. We had a short walk into town and a man, who basically was a whatever you need guy to us, Robert would take us to school every day. Where we spent this first week and a half was The Burren College of Art, which is center around an actual castle tower. Students walked around this like it was the most normal thing in the world, but as I’ve noticed in the Burren it kind of is normal to see that kind of stuff all the time on the roads. We were separated into 3 groups of students and set on projects right away. What we did was help the college do something with an outdoor space that was extending off a dorm-type of building for students staying there. What my group did was build a bike port for students to put rental bikes into to help keep them out the elements. We thought this was an extremely important task because we experienced hail, rain, and bright sunshine and that was all in just one day! I won’t bore you with the process but we built the structure within a couple of days with a minimum of problems. I did get to learn how to weld which is very much like trying to draw a straight line in the dark. I even have a permanent souvenir from welding as I now have chunk gone from my pointer finger from a bit of wire that I accidentally touched while it was still extremely hot!

The castle at BCA

Welding one of the bike stands

In between working at school we have also done a whole bunch on sightseeing and have had free days to do anything we wanted. On this past Saturday, a bunch of us wanted to go hiking on the nearby mountain, Cappanawalla, so we got up decently early and had to walk to the school (a 30 min hike) to start the hike to the top. The winds on the ground were at 31 mph, so here’s where you get to imagine me trying very hard to keep my balance while trying to climb vertically up a ridge in the rock only to find that I still have half of mountain to go up. We did eventually make it to the top, me with a lot of help from others! Three of us had to link arms just to walk at one point because the wind was making us do the Michael Jackson body lean. On the way down the mountain we had even more trouble where paths were extremely steep and that wind was not going to make it easy, so needless to say I fell. A lot. The reward from such an intense hike? A herd of horses on the mountain that were extremely beautiful and friendly! My Fitbit says that that hike and the hike back to town was 20,000 steps, so I counted that as a good day.

Me trying to catch my breath on Cappanawalla

The next day on Sunday, we had a coach tour of the Burren and County Clare. Now that was a long day after that hike! We went to variety of places, from Medieval stone or faerie forts to a famous pub called Vaughan’s to the Cliffs of Moher. To give a full run down on the day would take a whole other blog post, but I am going to do my best to summarize. The tour we took brought us south down through the country and back up along the coast to Ballyvaughan. Quick facts that I learned include: Any place with a cathedral is a city no matter what the population size is. The Pope to this day is actually the bishop of a tiny place called Kilfenora because no one else would take it. There is no such thing a Celtic cross, what we think of those as are called High Crosses. The circles around the High Crosses are not there for design, its purely structural support. And there are 50,000 miles of stone walls covering the Burren because during the Potato Famine the government had to give some sort of job that had no benefit to anyone special, but that people could do without getting free handouts.

High Cross at Kilfenora

We went through many towns that could probably be described as the perfect Irish countryside towns, but only stopped at 4 or so. In order to break up the time on the bus we stopped in a beach side town called Lahinch right before stopping at the Cliffs of Moher where there is apparently world class surfing conditions for a good part of the year. From there we did get to the Cliffs, where we promptly broke the rules by climbing over the wall to get better views of the scenery. I did wish we could have spent more time there, but we did get to go the Mini Cliffs. So everyone knows about the Cliffs of Moher, but where you can really get out to the extreme edges before the ocean is the Mini Cliffs. There are no railings and I made very sure not to lose my footing but as I said to someone else, “I’m not going to the very edge unless I get picture proof”! So a couple photographs later, and can say I made it so close to the edge of a big cliff that I got to hum “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic with a friend as we made sure the other one was safe. After that we just got to sit back and watch the ocean go by as we traveled back to Ballyvaughan. 

View of the Cliffs of Moher

The beginning of this week has been as fast and full as the past week. We finished construction of the bike port at the college on Tuesday morning, and quickly moved to more sightseeing. There are a lot of cave systems under the Burren to explore so went to the Aillwee caves near the college. It was a short tour, but right after that we took a short hike to a birds of prey demonstration which had birds ranging from owls to vultures. We rushed back to our cottages where the cottage I was staying in became the place where a famous Irish storyteller would come to speak to all 25 of us. His name was Eddie Lenihan and he told us 3 stories that were told to him by people of Ireland about "The Wee Folk" as he called them, or faeries to us. It was all very interesting to hear and e definitely had a good way about him that made you want to listen (and it may have been because I was fascinated by his beard). After he had to go we were left to pack up and clean the cottage.

Standing in our finished bike port 

Eddie telling us a story

Today, we have traveled by bus to Galway which was a county over and has the train station we connected through. We had a quick lunch there and then took a commuter train into Dublin. I kind of forget when I get into far off places that I love cities, but there is no mistake Dublin is going to be good! We are staying a hostel called Kinlay House which is actually pretty amazing! We are fitting a lot of people into each rooms but we have a huge window that outlooks onto the street so it should be good. We took a walk around the city for a little it after setting up at the hostel and then we were released to do whatever we wanted. I grabbed Indian food with a couple of friends and explored a bit more. This hostel has wifi and since we are going to be in more populated areas I should be able to post more frequently and keep everyone up to speed.