Westport
Day 10 - July 4, 2017
Our destination today is Westport with a few planned stops along the way.
Our first stop is the small charming town of Cong. Did you know that Maureen O'Hara and John Wayne filmed "The Quiet Man" in Cong in 1951. Maureen O'Hara was born in Ireland and John Wayne has Irish roots. Some pictures of Cong are on the right.
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Cong is also home to the ruins of Cong Abbey which was built in the early 1100's. It was built when Romanesque was going out of style and Gothic was coming in, therefore it has a mixture of both. The doorways have a mix of rounded Romanesque and pointed Gothic arch styles. Take a look at the pictures to the right.
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Cong is also home to the famous Ashford Castle. Ashford Castle has beautiful landscaping and gardens. Scenes from "The Quiet Man" were filmed on the castle grounds. President Reagan stayed here in 1984 and Pierce Brosnan chose the Ashford Castle gounds for his wedding reception in 2001. Take a look at some of these pictures on the right.
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Cong also has the Ireland School of Falconry. We stopped to visit the hawks at the Ireland School of Falconry and learn a little bit about falconry from our local guide Megan. Each of us had the unique opportunity to launch and land a Harris hawk. This was really a fun visit. On the right are pictures of the visit to the Ireland School of Falconry.
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After leaving Cong, we stopped for a photo opportunity of Clew Bay. Clew Bay is dotted with islands of glacier gravel from retreating glaciers. Take a look a some pictures to the right.
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After our Clew Bay stop it was time for lunch. We stopped in Leenane at Hamilton's Bar for a sandwich. Leenane is on the shore of Ireland's only fjord. It is the Killary Fjord. Killary Fjord is located in the west of Ireland in the heart of Connemara which forms a natural border between counties Galway and Mayo. It is 16 kilometres long and in the center over 45 metres deep. On the right are some pictures of our stop in Leenane, Ireland.
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As we continued to Westport, we made a stop in the Doo Lough Valley. This is the site of one of Irelands saddest famine tales. In the 1800's, County Mayo's population depended almost completely on the potato. They were hard hit in 1945 when the Great Potato Famine came. In the winter 10 1949, about 600 starving Irish walked 12 miles to get food from their landlord but were turned away. On the walk back, nearly 200 of them died along the side of this road. There is a monument here to remember the event.
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Our last stop on our way to Westport was a stop at the Coffin Ship sculpture. It is a bronze sculpture of a coffin ship like those of the late 1840's that carried sick and starving famine survivors across the ocean to the new world. Many of these ships were not seaworthy nor fit for travel by humans. Many of the Irish perished on the ship and many of those that did make it died shortly after reaching the new country.
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Later in the day we arrived in Westport which is a planned town, constructed in the Georgian style in the late 1700's. It was built to support the adjacent estate of Westport House. The town once thrived on the linen industry created by local Irish handlooms. Westport's linen industry fell into decline when it was unable to compete with the industrialized British linen makers. It is still a small, pretty town to have lunch and explore on foot.
Tomorrow we head to Northern Ireland's seadide resort town of Portrush.