Today was a good day.
We started after a decent "Full Irish" complete with white and black pudding. Our first stop was a few kilometres up the road to Croagh Patrick, originally a pre-historic religious site on top of a 2000+ ft mountain it was taken over by the Catholic church and became a pilgrimage for Christians. You got the most time off purgatory by climbing to the top in bare feet, lots of people were doing the climb today but mainly in boots. There was a t-shirt in the gift shop that said "I climbed Croagh Patrick", we wanted to know if there was "I climbed Croagh Patrick, a bit" .
Across the road is the National Famine Memorial, the statue is called "Coffin Ship" and commemorates those who died crossing to the US and those who had to leave their homeland because of famine. It represents a sailing ship and is covered in skeletons. There is also one in New York which has two gang planks which has survivors coming down.
The climb is to the peak above the statute's head
Then it was on to Achill Island, we crossed Achill Sound on the only bridge linking it to the mainline and started on the Atlantic Way.
There was some interesting things to see. A watchtower that belonged to Grace O'Malley (also known as Granuaile) she was the Irish daughter of a pirate who grew up to be a pirate herself. She was active in the west of Ireland during the 16th century and was only stopped by a campaign by Queen Elizabeth I.
Onward around the island and the scenery became somewhat staggering and the photographs do not do it justice.
I think that's Grace at the bottom...
