Did You Know
When Bing Crosby sang about Galway Bay, the sun rose over
Claddagh. This was a small settlement on the shore of the Corrib river
but outside the original wall of Galway city. It was a Gaeltacht area
with some 3,000 inhabitants. But, although there is some physical
evidence of this independently-minded community, mostly it's in the
memory today.
A Claddagh Ring was a symbolic ring worn in this area.
With hands, heart and a crown, it has since become popular as a
wedding ring all over the world. Buy one locally, they're beautiful.
The Galway Hooker is not a lady of doubtful repute but
actually a small wooden sailing boat that can still be seen in use
around the coast. There is an annual
Oyster-Opening competition each September in Galway City.
It's part of the bigger Oyster Festival. This year's event will be
the 48th. Red deer have been re-introduced into the Connemara
National Park, one of several conservation initiatives undertaken
recently.
There's a full week of horse racing at the famed Galway
Races beginning in late July. Ballinasloe once held the largest
horse fair in the country each October. In the 19th century, buyers
from all over Europe and Russia arrived to buy horses for their
armies - up to 6,000 at a time. It's still held today, but on a
somewhat more restricted scale. The verb 'to lynch' may have
originated in Galway City. In 1493, the mayor James Lynch hanged his
son from a window after finding him guilty of murder.
John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, the first men to fly the
Atlantic non-stop, landed near Clifden on July 14th 1919. From St.
Hohns Newfoundland it took 16 hours 27 minutes of hard flying. A
memorial to the event has been erected close to where they landed.
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aches.
yet it's still a place of infinite beauty with the Connemara
National Park to the north, the famous Galway Bay to the south and
the Gaeltacht along the north shore of that water. The
extensive sheet of water that is Lough Corrib is almost exclusively
in the county, as are the flatlands to the east. To the south east,
there is a range of wooded hills - the Slieve Aughty Mountains,
topping out with Cashlaundrumlahan at 1174ft. But this pales
alongside the magnificent Connemara. There are 12 bens (or
mountains) in this 5,00 acre National Park together with bogland and
lakes. Wildlife abounds too. This is also the home of that sturdy
beast the Connemara pony, examples of which you'll see all over the
place. But you'll be drawn, inexorably, to the majesty, the drama
and the sheer spectacle of that coastline.
