Tour of Ireland

Today we are heading back to Dublin and the end of our Ireland tour. We are in some traffic in the town of Longford. The group is shown here spread out on the bus. Some leaving tomorrow and barb, me, Peggy and george are going to London. We all really enjoyed having a big bus, and our driver, Paddy, was very entertaining and had lots of interesting stories to tell. The weather the past 3 days was very sunny, but today we are having a very rainy and cold day.

We stopped to see the peat bogs. Bogs are cut into pieces of peat about 4 inches by 10 inches by 4 inches and piled to dry. When they get to about 30% water content they can be burned like briquettes. A significant number of houses still burn peat to heat their homes. The bogs are very bouncy under your feet.

Today we stopped at Kylemore Abbey on our way to Achill Island.

Today we drove to Achill Island early enough to play golf at then local golf course, complete with sheep grazing on the course on the water...great views!

We drove thru the Burren today and arrived early at the castle. We went on a 6 mile walk today around the grounds. This castle is amazing...in Fodors top 20 hotels in the world. Dinner was four courses and excellent. Definitely one of the highlights of our trip. Here is a picture of the entrance.