A-Z Blogging Challenge - C is for Connemara

Continuing my theme of people and places in my novels, today we visit Connemara where my six ‘Mist Na Mara’ novels are set.

On my first ever visit to Connemara about fifteen years ago, I was fortunate that it was a beautiful autumn day, and I fell in love with the wild open countryside, the dozens of small loughs (pronounced like the ‘lochs’ in Scotland), and the Twelve Bens, a range of steep-sided bare mountains.

Connemara is the western part of County Galway and is an area of about 12 square miles, bounded on the east by Lough Corrib, on the north by Killary Harbour, on the south by Galway Bay, and on the west by the Atlantic.

Although I’ve been to many other areas of Ireland since then, Connemara was the place that captured my heart, and I’ve visited it several times. Most times I’ve been very lucky with the weather, but even under low cloud, Connemara is still beautiful.

On my first visit (and on subsequent visits, too), we went along Sky Road, near Clifden. This is a scenic drive along (and up!) a narrow peninsula which skirts Clifden Bay and rises to a viewpoint overlooking several small islands and beyond them the wide expanse of the Atlantic stretching into the distance. I’ve used the views from Sky Road several times in my novels because I love it, and my (imaginary) ‘Mist Na Mara’ house, which features in all my Irish novels, overlooks Clifden Bay.

Here’s an excerpt from ‘Irish Inheritance’ when Dan (a lawyer) is driving American artist Guy and English actress Jenna to Connemara to visit their joint inheritance for the first time:

“We’ll be on an ordinary road between Galway and Clifden, so I won’t be able to drive as fast,” Dan said. “Quite apart from which, I’m sure you’ll want to admire the scenery.”

Not long afterwards, Guy let out a low whistle. “Hey, you’re right. It’s as if we’ve crossed an invisible line into a completely different landscape.”

Jenna agreed. After the gentle green fields of central Ireland, they were now driving through the wild open countryside of Connemara, uninhabited apart from sheep and lambs. New vistas appeared at every twist and turn of the road—clusters of bright yellow broom, small brooks rippling over stones, breeze-whipped lakes at one side of the road, low green hills with rocky outcrops on the other, and the occasional ruins of stone cottages. A range of sharp peaked, green-grey mountains dominated the view ahead of them.

“What are those?” she asked Dan.

“Na Beanna Beola, the Twelve Bens. Ben means mountain here, the same as in Scotland. None of them higher than two and a half thousand feet, but they’re quite dramatic, aren’t they?”

Guy nodded. “They sure are. It’s an awesome view.”

(All my books are available from Amazon  or from Tirgearr Publishing )