BACKSTORY
My best friend and I had been having the time of our lives on a whirlwind tour from Dublin to Belfast, all through Northern Ireland up to Bushmills and the Giants Causeway, back down to the Republic to tour various small towns, and then some.

We had met wonderful people, gotten insanely lost, butchered dozens of Irish words (sorry), eaten bad lasagna at a goth club, slept in a castle, escaped a mad drunken AirBnb hostess and the ghost of her trickster husband, were chased by a creepy dude at the Clonmacnoise ruins, consumed an embarrassing amount of breakfast pork, and taken in so many amazing sights.

After several days, it was time for us to make yet another cross-country trip in pursuit of a relaxing weekend at a remote, peaceful cottage in County Galway.

COUNTY GALWAY
Ireland’s Galway Bay on its west coast forms a crescent around the Aran Islands and other small islands. The county contains the Connemara National Park, the Republic of Ireland’s largest lake called Lough Corrib, plus several Gaeltacht districts where traditional Irish-speaking residents live.

It is estimated that more than 20% of the County Galway population, which amounts to about 50,000 people, speak Irish as their primary language. Specifically, this dialect is called Connacht Irish.

Communications within the schools, government offices, media outlets, and even theatres are mostly conducted in Irish, so English speakers must not assume that they will be understood in a Gaeltacht.

Actress Nicola Coughlan of Derry Girls and Bridgerton fame is from County Galway, as well as various musicians from celebrated rock band, The Saw Doctors.

RENVYLE
Renvyle is a peninsula of land in the northwestern region of Ireland that contains many villages, loughs, and peat bogs. It is alternately spelled Rinvyle, and rather inconsistently.

The nearest town is 12 miles away and main route through each village around Tully Mountain is part of the Connemara Loop of the Connemara National Park.

Renvyle is close to Inisbofin Island, and a three-hour drive from Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher.

HURRICANE OPHELIA
We arrived at our Renvyle cottage near midnight, rattled from driving impossibly narrow roads during the pitch black storm and blinding rain. My best friend is a total boss for driving, because I don’t think I could have pulled that off.

We camped out in the living room of our cottage, glued to the radio. Hurricane Ophelia had crossed the Atlantic and was headed right toward us. There was no phone or wi-fi and we could not get a cell signal, so we felt very uneasy.

Around 5 am, broadcasters had announced that Ophelia had hit County Cork pretty hard and was moving closer to us. We managed to doze off and on a bit, but it was an extremely restless night.

When the sun started to rise, we could finally see the landscape around us for the first time and were stunned. The whole area was surrounded by luscious green hills, giant stones, and the smell of fresh peat being unearthed in the bogs of nearby farms.

Our cottage was on a hill overlooking two beaches, a sandy one and a rocky one. In the distance, we could see the trail that led up to the summit of Tully Mountain.

Thinking the hurricane had passed, we went for a walk together and were so excited about all the rainbows shooting across the entire village.

We soon learned that the hurricane had not moved on, as the sky went black and torrential downpours filled the surrounding bays to overflowing. The wind picked up fiercely and was propelling debris around and toward us.

We booked it back to our cottage, made some tea, and I started in on the book our new friend in Belfast had given to me in hopes of finding a distraction. It was a total roller coaster, not knowing from one moment to the next what was coming.

Irish public radio is an abomination, by the way, but it was the only connection we had to the outside world. I have been advised that it has vastly improved in the last couple years, though I have not yet been convinced.

Between moments of static, the two stations would could get played samples of music that sounded like bubble gum ads from the 1970s, bits of news where even the reporters admitted they were not sure if the source was trustworthy, and long segments of awkward call-in radio shows.

Renvyle, as promised in the property listing, is absolutely remote. Given the circumstances of our arrival and first night there, we still had no food, no phone service, and no way of checking in with our families.

We finally saw another human out in the bog who told us the hurricane was gathering strength and would be crossing over shortly. It was not exactly safe to drive, but the water level was rising up over the tires of our rental car.

Once again, we got in our car and fled.

Waves started heaving onto the beaches and water gushed violently through the ditches on either sides of the roads, spilling over onto the lanes.

We drove through a couple villages that were already boarded up and, after switching directions a couple times, we found a small market in Tully that was still open. You better believe we filled up on gas and bought every kind of snack in the place.

I realized right away that this village was on the protected side of the mountain and all the water seemed to be running down away from the streets, so we seemed to have made the right move.

LETTERFRACK
We could have missed the sign for the Letterfrack Lodge if we had not been driving so slowly through the storm. A very kind employee at the lodge let us seek shelter inside, made us coffee, and allowed us to use the wi-fi to contact family, before we even knew we would be staying overnight.

She was able to contact the owners on the landline. They offered to let us stay in the lodge without a reservation, and just pay the next morning when the booking site or credit card machine or whatever else was back up. I really do not know what would have happened to us if these amazing people had not gone out on such a limb.

We had not eaten since the previous day so once we sat our luggage down in our room, we excitedly spread out our newly acquired hurricane feast.

Thunder echoed and shook the whole place throughout the night, but Hurricane Ophelia once again seemed to have gone right around us without doing much actual damage.

My friend lightened the mood by doing her uncanny impression of Michael Jackson singing “Remember the Time” and we laughed until our sides hurt. The previous night had taken its toll, and we eventually crashed HARD.

The next morning, we woke up to an enormous red deer outside our window. His shoulders were taller than the top of a parked SUV several feet away, estimating him to be around eight feet tall or more.

We were mesmerized by how graceful he was, with his ears perking up at every sound and movement around him. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a clear photo of him before I spooked him off.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG
After a good night of sleep and hearing that the hurricane business was finally over, we set out for Kylemore Abbey and Connemara National Park. Eventually we made our way through Oughterard, Galway proper, the Dunguaire Castle in Kinvarra, Bell Harbour, Bealaclugga, Ballyvaughan, and into the heart of the Burren along the Wild Atlantic Way.

WILD ATLANTIC WAY
Sli an Atlantaigh Fhiain, the Wild Atlantic Way, is the longest coastal route in the world. It spans over 1,500 miles along Ireland’s west coast from Donegal in the north and tucks into Cork down in the south.

The WAW runs right on the edge of rocky cliffs and shorelines of the Atlantic Ocean from dramatic heights. Each sharp turn is full of suspense and surprise, and we had to stop periodically to take it in.

Porsche produced a cool video if you would like to see a bit more:

We first joined the WAW near the end of the Bay Coast segment and continued through the Cliff Coast segment.

OUGHTERARD
Oughterard has fewer than 1400 people and its main attraction is Glengowla Mines. At Glengowla you can tour the farms, herd and play with the sheep, learn the history gold panning, and about the ongoing research facilities used to track seismic activity in Ireland. Glengowla Mines also has a museum, café, and shops.

I walked over to Powers Pub and had a nice chat with strangers. Oughterard is a really cute area, and on the way out you will pass the Aughnanure Castle.

GALWAY
The city of Galway itself was magnificent from what we could see of it, but the hurricane had caused so much destruction, downed power lines, fallen trees, and traffic blocks that we decided it was just not in the cards to see Galway on this trip.

DUNGUAIRE CASTLE
This 16th-century tower overlooks the Galway Bay between Kinvarra and Bell Harbour. Well-known literary icon and doctor, Oliver St. John Gogarty, bought the Dunguaire Castle in the 1920s and began restoring it.

The castle became a meeting place for notable Irish writers such as William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw.

It was acquired in the 1950s by a new owner and now hosts a variety of private and medieval events.

BELL HARBOUR, BEALACLUGGA, BALLYVAUGHAN
Our next destination with an actual overnight reservation stay was Bell Harbour, a small town in the Burren National Park.

Bell Harbour’s town junction is just across the water from Dunguaire Castle.

We had seafood chowder for dinner and walked around the main square, though the shops and galleries had all closed for the evening.

I kept returning to where the road met the Galway Bay to watch little boat and ships glide by in the sunset.

The next morning we rejoined the Wild Atlantic Way through Ballyvaughan into the Burren, past the Black Head beaches and Murooghtoohy, through Fanore, and finally arrived in Doolin.

In the area for a while? Follow me to the Burren National Park, Cliffs of Moher, Kylemore Abbey or the surreal Connemara National Park.

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