Ireland day 1547. Tuesday 23 December 2025- To Connemara

Today’s summary	Got up relatively early and packed everything we will need for 4 nights away into the car. We were on the road by 11:15, which was only 15 minutes late. Stopped at Applegreen then were at our cottage near Clifden in Connemara (Co Galway) just before 4pm. An easy drive. Settled in and went SuperValu to get bottled water as apparently the spring water is a bit dubious. Finished off Sunday’s salad for dinner and sat by the peat fire for the evening. We’re spending Christmas here and leaving on the 27th.
Today’s weather	Overcast with occasional light rain most of the way to Clifden but clear at sunset. Light north easterly breeze. Appx 10c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

Today something remarkable happened. Well two things actually. First of all, some mail that I’d been waiting for for a couple of weeks finally turned up, much to my relief. And then second, we left to go on holiday only 15 minutes after our scheduled departure time of 11am. That’s something of a novelty for us, as we are rarely less than an hour late on these occasions.

Anyway we got up at a decent (for us) time and started gathering the things (food and drinks, mostly) that we will need to sustain us for our epic four day voyage to the west coast of Ireland. Clothes were a bit of a secondary consideration, I’m sorry to say, as it’s just the two of us this year, and we’re not planning on going anywhere posh.

So we stuffed everything into the Yaris and headed off into the wild blue yonder. Stopping off at Applegreen as we didn’t want to run out of petrol halfway to Yonder. The yonder in question today is an isolated cottage just south of the town of Clifden. It’s in the area of Connemara, a mountainous remote western lobe of Ireland, consisting the top half of Co. Galway and the bottom half of Co. Mayo ( we are in the Galway bit). We’re here for the whole Christmas period.

It was an easy drive down the M4 and M6 and I was surprised how quiet the motorway was. There was the usual bottleneck going round Galway (though I understand a new bypass has just been approved) but generally there wasn’t as much Christmas holiday traffic as I would have thought. We arrived at our cottage, which is about 5 minutes south Clifden, just before 4pm and it was still light (being so far west, the daylight hours are shifted about 40 minutes later in the day compared to the UK and 15 minutes later than Malahide). From the back garden, there’s a fantastic view of the “Twelve Bens”, a remote but alluring mountain range in the centre of Connemara. It’s in the featured image at the top of this blog.

Once we’d unpacked and settled in, we realised that our tap water here comes from a well and while the landlord says it “should” be safe, it’s recommended to use bottled water for drinking. As we didn’t have any – and as we realised we hadn’t, despite multiple visits to the shops before we came, brought enough milk – we jumped in the car again to head back to Clifden SuperValu to stock up. The excursion was successful and we were rewarded on the way with a magnificent sunset which lit up the sky over the Atlantic as if it were on fire.

Talking of being on fire – we have the stove lit and it’s glowing nicely. We were left a basket of turf (peat) by the previous tenants, and we’re supplementing it with some logs we bought at Applegreen. Now it’s just time to open the champagne and relax into Christmas. We are here until the 27th and plan to do as little as possible. I’ll report back tomorrow!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


How can two people need so much stuff for just four nights away?	The fairy lights on the tractor at the M6 service station were impressive to the eye, but don’t really work on the camera..

Cuach Cottage – our home for the next four nights	The view over “our” stream from the back garden

Val checking that we have got everything (amazingly we still had to go back to Clifden SuperValu after we got here, because we hadn’t brought enough milk)	Turf (peat) at the ready to stoke the fire! The picture doesn’t really do the homely glow justice, I should add.

Connemara sunset. Simply stunning