Cleggan Loop & Omey Island

For our third and last day in Connemara we drove the Cleggan Loop. The first picture is the view right from our first B&B this morning, which changed every day a bit through the drastically changing weather conditions. On the way to the Cleggan Loop we passed this really still mountain lake in the second picture which was absolutely gorgeous.

Our main goal that day was to see Omey Island as we had read about the fun way to get there - there's a road, but it is usually flooded. Only when the water is low can you drive over there. We timed our drive to that and arrived at the parking lot overlooking the Omey Island Road when most of the water was already gone.

One other car before us traveled over, but drove around the biggest puddles still left. So we decided to also drive out into what used to be the sea and was now just a white beach. At about the middle there was still some water, so we waited for maybe another 20 minutes, taking the time to take a walk and collect some sea shells and then drove over. And now, that's the important point: You're NOT supposed to drive over there. There's only one road on Omey Island, and it is not for tourists, but for the islands inhabitants. It really didn't say that anywhere though, so we drove over.

We used the road on the island, which was of course a cul-de-sac, and wondered why nobody bothered to put any signs up. We had a walking map of Omey Island that we didn't know was a walking map, and couldn't find the roads marked on the map - that was because they weren't roads but just sandy trackways in the islands grassland. It took us a chat with some locals to figure out what was going on. So, once again, DO NOT drive there!

After our little odyssey on Omey Island we continued our way to Cleggan, where we hoped to catch a ferry to go over to visit Inishbofin. By the time we arrived there though, we could have taken a ferry over, but would not have gotten back on the same way, so we decided against it. We were sad to miss that opportunity though, since a few people had told us it was really worth seeing.

In the evening on our way to have dinner and a walk afterwards, we captured a few more impressions of the beautiful Renvyle Peninsula, our "home" these first few days.