Herewith the promised larger post of photos from the little peninsula that ends in Mullaghmore Head, on which sits Classiebawn Castle which we’ve shown you twice before. This is just about all our shots from County Sligo, which we passed through en route to Donegal.
This is Classiebawn Castle, on the coast north of Sligo Town shortly before you leave County Sligo to enter County Donegal. The guidebook tells me it was home to Lord Mountbatten, who was killed near here in 1979 in an IRA bombing portrayed on The Queen :-). Looks pretty gothic, doesn’t it? You’ve seen it in one prior post, but soon we’ll show you most of what remains from our short side-trip to this little peninsula in Sligo…
So that’s Diamond Peak, as we saw it for the very first time upon arriving at the car park for Connemara National Park in northern County Galway. Doesn’t really look all that intimidating, does it? But let me tell you, the wind can bite pretty fiercely up there, as we learned on our stunning but indeed quite challenging and fun walk all the way up, over, and around it. Enjoy these last photos of this quite stunning location…
Sticking with my theme of using up more of 2023’s photos before taking my break, herewith all the remaining from-the-air shots of 2023. They’re in chronological order, so you first see my plane passing over the Dutch coast on 6 November en route to Dublin, then more of the English coast both on the east side (North Sea) and the west side (Irish Sea – so far as I could tell, we passed roughly over Liverpool, but clouds…), and then two 29 November images of the island of Penang and the sea north of it as we approached landing after my flight from Qatar to Penang (with a stop in Phuket); and, finally, 6 December photos as our plane traveled up the coasts of Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar en route from KL to Yangon. Not really sure which islands we’re seeing in these various shots, but fairly sure most were islands in Myanmar by this point.
Herewith all my remaining photos from Inishmore, which happen to all be from the area immediately around what’s probably the island’s most renowned historical site, Dún Aonghasa.
Above, the moon sets over Sloterplas as seen from my balcony window on the morning of 26 December. (Before hopping the train down to Den Bosch aka ‘s Hertogenbosch for that lovely day we showed you in our last post.) Below, a gallery of pretty much every other remaining “city lights” relevant photo I took in NL during 2023 but haven’t yet posted. A note about the dawn photo of storefronts: the rose-shaped light decorations, which you will notice extend all the way down the street, tell you that this street is “Rozengracht,” which means either the street alongside the Rose Canal, or Rose Canal. In this particular case, I’m unaware of there actually being a canal named Rozengracht any more, but I’m guessing there might once have been one and the street is all that remains after the city did what the Dutch have always done, redirect the water. It’s entirely possible a more-knowledgeable Dutch friend will either email me or post a public comment to educate us all :-).
The heavily-flooded Maas (Meuse), which here functions as the border between the Dutch provinces of Gelderland (to left, north in this photo) and Noord Brabant. Took this, plus the shots of two different castles in two different villages below, during a 26 December walk with my friend Kiki while visiting her for a lovely Christmas-holiday afternoon.
Cill Rónáin (Killronan) is the main village on the Aran Island of Inishmore, which is the most populous of the islands. Above, the village as seen from across the bay during a walk after the driver and tour guide deposited us back in the village, after showing us the key sites of the western 2/3 of the island in a roughly 3-hour walking and driving tour of various sites I’ve shown you in prior posts. Below, a view as our ferry from Rossaveel approached the dock earlier that morning. In the gallery further down are all the other shots from various parts of the island that might give you a sense of “village” life on this lovely but remote and sparsely-populated island.
These are mostly from a village I’m pretty sure is called An Spidéal (or Spiddal?), which we passed through en route from Galway city to Rossaveel, shown in the last photo and from which depart the ferries to the Aran Islands. I posted one similar entry while I was still in Ireland, but these remaining photos are so lovely, if so similar, that I hope you won’t mind a similar repeat :-).
Some final images from the lovely harbor / coastal edge of Galway City, where the River Corrib (after originating more or less at the hotel whose grounds we showed you a few posts ago) meets the sea.
So that’s Diamond Peak, as we saw it for the very first time upon arriving at the car park for Connemara National Park in northern County Galway. Doesn’t really look all that intimidating, does it? But let me tell you, the wind can bite pretty fiercely up there, as we learned on our stunning but indeed quite challenging and fun walk all the way up, over, and around it. Enjoy these last photos of this quite stunning location…
Herewith all my remaining photos from Inishmore, which happen to all be from the area immediately around what’s probably the island’s most renowned historical site, Dún Aonghasa.
(so much world, so little time....) 