Wild Atlantic Way

It's been whirlwind couple of days. We arrived in Dublin after a short flight from Glasgow, picked up a rental car (6 speed manual Mazda 2) and drove to Donegal. The rental transaction was a bit of a pain. They always want a credit card because they take a deposit using a hold. Hertz say they can't process a payment from Wise when I return the car, which sounds like a them problem. Anyway the cars perfect and mostly fits on the backroads. We quickly learned that the more digits in the road annotation, the worse things get e.g the N12345 will be suitable for nothing wider than a horse.

We're loosely embarking on a tourist route known as the Wild Atlantic Way which runs down the west side of Ireland. Our first big bite of this was a loop around the north western peninsula known as the Inishowen 100. Think of rolling hills with a carpet of green grass sprinkled with sheep and stone houses leading to wild beaches and sheer cliffs. It really was a beautiful thing and as much as we wanted to stop and record the moment(s), we couldn't do so safely.

The following day we moved south towards Galway following the tourist route periodically and again we were sufficiently rewarded with great scenery.

The northern most corner of Ireland

Donegal has the look

Wild beaches and moody weather

The route we took to Galway was cut through rocky hills...

...leading eventually to the sea

We're experiencing different versions of rain. The locals seem largely oblivious to it.