Kylemore Castle was built in 1868 by Mitchell as a love token to his wife Margaret Henry. In 1903 it was later sold to the Duke and Dutchess of Manchester who were frivolous with their money and eventually lost the Castle. It was then turned into an abbey and school by the benedictine nuns and became known as the Kylemore Abbey. It is now part of Connemara National Park, and is open to the public for tours.
Kylemore Abbey is a very popular tourist attraction, so it's hard to get pictures, but the following pictures give a good idea of the inside of the abbey.
The view from the front door was spectacular!
There is also a cathedral on the grounds of Connemara National Park, but unfortunately we ran out of time and weren't able to see it all.
Then we had a quick lunch of scones and coffee from the grab and go restaurant on sight. It was a terrific lunch, and a continuation of our new found scone addiction!
Coming home, we drove by the only fjord in Ireland for some pictures of the mussel farms and the beautiful contryside, then made our way back to Galway.
We visited the incredible Kylemore Abbey, originally built by an individual for his wife, and later sold to the duke and dutchess, then turned into an abbey and school. It is now part of the Connemara National Park. The park covers nearly 3000 hectares of bogs, mountains, grasslands and woods.
Before going into the abbey, we took a quick train ride up the hill
to the walled gardens of the property and walked through the acres of flower and vegetable gardens.
You have to love the wooden sheep at the entrance of the garden.
All of the walls are covered in "fan" trees. These trees have been pruned to grow flat against a wall, but still produce fruit. This one is a pear tree.
Artichokes
I would love to have a vegetable garden like this, but I don't think I have a prayer in Arizona.
When we completed our tour of the gardens, we waited in the overed bus stop for the bus to take us back down to Kylemore Abbey.
After leaving the marble factory, we continued toward the Connemara National Park. On our way, we drove through the rolling green hills of western Ireland sheep country.
The land in this area is rocky, bog land, and is not good for farming, so instead, it is use mostly for raising sheep. They also dig the peat from the bogs to sell and burn in their fireplaces.
Back in the 1800's, the farmers would remove the rocks from their fields to make the land more desirable, and then used the rocks to build walls by carefully placing each rock to interlock with the last. These types of walls can be seen all over Ireland even today, as the farmers continue to repair their beautiful rocks walls through time.
You can see the rock wall sections in this picture.
When you look closely at the bog land, it is very clumpy and uneven.
We passed by a couple of sheep on their daily commute.
In the summer the sheep are allowed to graze freely in the mountains, with several ranchers sheep intermingling. Each farmer has his own unique marking for his sheep so that when the sheep are rounded up in the fall, each rancher knows which sheep are his. They use different colors on different parts of the sheeps body to distinguish them.
All of the animals in Ireland are free range, including dairy cows. It is so refreshing to see them grazing peacefully in the fields.
I have never seen anywhere so green! Ireland is such a beautiful country!
Today we left the hotel early and traveled by coach through the countryside of western Ireland. We stopped in a small town in the Inagh Valley for a tour of the Connemara Marble Factory. The marble is mined in a nearby mine, and this factory made small marble trinkets and jewelry from the beautiful Connemara marble, known world wide for it's beautiful shades of green. Larger marble pieces are made in other locations, but this stop gave us a chance to see all of the different shades of marble that come from the mine and to see how they work with it. Most of the small items are made from marble cores taken from larger pieces.
This is a display of all the different shades of green and black marble that come from the Connemara Mine.
This little stop in Inagh Valley was a nice leg stretch, and allowed us to view the beautiful and uniquely colored marble of this region.
