County Clare
Ennis, Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands
May 22, 2025
We left Killarney by 8 am and drove north, leaving County Kerry behind. Because today is likely to be the last nice day, weather–wise, we rearranged our itinerary and did a bit more driving today than we originally intended, and we skipped our planned visit to Limerick.
Our first stop, after about an hour and a half of driving, was the Limerick County town of Adare. The books say this is one of Ireland’s most attractive towns. We can say it was pleasant and quite small. We had coffee and admired a nice city park before driving on.
Two photos of Adare.
Our drive took us north into County Clare through the outskirts of Ennis, the largest town in County Clare, where we will spend tonight, and on to the coast. We stopped in the small town of Doolin, and looked in a few shops, had coffee and then ate lunch in an Irish pub.
We drove a bit under a mile to the Doolin Pier, which is where ferry boats go to the Aran Islands and other locations. Tomorrow, we will take a ferry from here.
Photos taken at Doolin Pier: top left distant view of one of the Aran Islands; top right limestone (natural and stacked by man); bottom left, nice plant; and bottom right, the boat we are taking today.
Today, we took a tour boat on a 50-minute cruise to the Cliffs of Moher. The guide said these cliffs are the second most popular tourist attraction in Ireland (after the Guinness Storehouse!). The views of the cliffs up from the water were spectacular. We were surprised to learn these cliffs at 720 feet tall are a bit lower than the ones we saw yesterday at Kerry.
However, the length of the cliffs is quite impressive. There were many birds nearby and we actually saw some Puffins! The photos are not worth posting, however.
These two show the early part, before reaching the highest area.
Boats for scale.
The left photo is the southern end, called Hag’s Head. The path there is closed at the moment for safety.
Close up of rocks and a sea stack, right.
Below, approaching the pier at the end of the voyage.
After disembarking, we drove just under an hour to the attractive medium sized town of Ennis, below, where we will spend three nights.
May 23, 2025
Today, we drove back to the Doolin Pier from Ennis, a drive of just under one hour. Since breakfast was not exciting at our hotel, we went to the cafe near the pier and had nice scones and coffee before getting in line for the ferry boat that will take us to the islands.
The ferry ride took about forty minutes to the largest of the Aran Islands, Inishmore. This is where the Banshees of Inisherin movie was recently filmed. We spoke to a man from Germany on the ferry who admitted to really liking the movie! Our island guide called the film “daft”. We think one of them hit the nail on the head.
When we disembarked, we walked up to the center of the main village on the island, which is the only place with shops (well, there was one shop at the fort). There we met a guide for a mini-bus tour of the island. We drove to the far west end of the island, stopping a couple of times en route. One stop was an evocative ruin of seven churches with stone carvings. It is thought these ruins might date from the 7th or 8th century
There are still a few buildings with thatched roofs on the island, but most roofs have been replaced with slate. A few houses would have a very small house next to them so leprechauns would have places to sleep. Here’s an example.
Our guide gave us a great deal of information about what life on the island is like, including that electricity only came to the island in the 1970s (originally by generator but later by undersea cable). He also told us that even though the island is only about 8.5 miles long, it has about 7,000 miles of stone walls (he didn’t know who did the measuring). The topography of the Island was dotted with limestone, similar to what we will see when we visit the Burren in a couple days.
We then headed back across the island and were dropped off with time to climb up Dún Aonghasa, one of the oldest forts in Ireland perched atop a 330 foot cliff. It is not known when the fort was built, but part of it dates from about 1,500-1,000 BC. However, most of the visible structures date from the Bronze and Iron ages, so probably around 200-800 A.D. The site has a fantastic view of the north shore of the island. It had been a cloudy and drizzly day, but we were lucky to have no rain and a bit of sunshine on the walk (a bit less than an hour).
Many people toured by horse cart. Given the
weather, we preferred
our minivan!
Below is the path up to the fort.
Above, top, the cliffs looking back toward the mainland, and left, the cliffs looking west. Immediately above, walking back down from the fort.
After descending, we had lunch at the cafe near the entrance, and then the guide drove us through other sites, including a beach where we spotted harbor seals. Here are photos of the beach and the stone dotting the island.
The ferry ride back was somewhat rough, and it started to rain again. We drove back to Ennis in the drizzle, a 50 minute drive.
During dinner at a local pub, we were treated to traditional Irish music at a reasonable hour. Six musicians, three flutes, two fiddles and a squeeze box accordion, played toe tapping Irish songs a table away from ours. Back at our hotel, there was a more modern Irish band (with an electric fiddle and drums) was not quite our cup of tea, but still nice. We were enjoying Ennis as a home base for visiting the sights of County Clare.
May 24, 2025
It was rainy when we awoke, but it looked like there might be some visibility. We set out on a 45-minute drive to the Cliffs of Moher Experience. As we approached, it became clear it was a good decision to have taken the boat tour on Thursday, because there would be no seeing of the cliffs today in the low hanging rain clouds. We parked the car and walked through blowing rain to the nice, modern visitor center housed in a subterranean building.
It had a great deal of interesting information about the forces of nature that created the cliffs. There was a nice display about birds, including puffins, and other interesting animals we haven’t been lucky enough to see (well, we have seen rabbits).
The high point of the visitor center was a short video taken by drone that soared over the cliffs and also had showed underwater views of sea life. After having coffee, we went outside to see if there was any point in walking the trail out to the viewpoint. There was not, unfortunately, so we returned to our car.
There would be no
seeing the cliffs
from above today!
We were hopeful we could see some limestone formations of the Burren today. We drove to the Burren Center in the town of Kilfenora. This visitor center had fantastic displays about the rocks, flora and fauna of this UNESCO Geopark. There was a fantastic eleven minute video that showed the mountains, the plants and the animals. We were surprised to see they have badgers here.
We then decided that it did not look like the sky would cooperate to view the rocks of the Burren, so we would start looking for other sorts of rocks (ruined stoned buildings). Our first effort would prove fruitless, as we drove around uninhabited area with a very narrow “road” and no cell service looking for Dysert O’Dea castle and monastery. We gave up in the low visibility and returned to Ennis.
We parked the car near our hotel and walked to the 13th century Ennis Friary. This ruined complex featured some surviving stone carvings and a new wooden roof has been placed overhead to help preserve them. Here are three photos of the friary.
We then walked through the historic center of Ennis, and discovered there were more attractive streets we had not seen yet. After lunch in a cafe, we returned to our hotel for a short rest. We decided to venture out, despite a modest rainfall. First we visited the adjacent Clare Museum. Persistent as we are, we next made a second attempt to find Dysert O’Dea Castle. This time we succeeded; we think we missed it the first time because the road sign only faced one direction, not the one we took this morning (since the road looked familiar)!
We visited the restored 16th century square castle by walking up narrow, spiral stairs. It seemed like a strange way to live, with only one or two rooms on each floor.
Since visiting the Dysert Monastery and its famous high cross would involve walked through a lot of wet fields, we decided to pass. We headed back toward Ennis. A couple of miles beyond the city, we visited the ruined Clare Abbey. Since the rain seemed to be lightening up, we decided to try to visit one more stone building.
Clare Abbey above, and Quin Friary, below.
We took a ten minute drive to the town of Quin, which boasts a ruined 15th century Franciscan Friary, built on the ruins of an Anglo Norman castle.
We decided that was enough traipsing about in the rain today, and returned to Ennis and reviewed today’s work to write up our notes in the hotel’s pub. Today was the first truly bad weather day of the trip. Not bad for Ireland, since this was day 11 out of 15.
Here is a map of our travels in County Clare.
Tomorrow we head to Galway.
