This Irish vignette has stayed with me throughout the years, the way poignant moments tend to do. It was only a moment, really, yet even at the time I could have told you of its impact; there was something about sitting in Seamus O’Flaherty’s porch on the coast road in Inverin that made me think I’d truly arrived in…

It was nine o’clock on a Sunday night when Johnny Og came to collect me, and it was raining—not one of those misty, soft rains, as is often the case on the west coast of Ireland, but one of those howling, unforgiving, relentless downpours that comes from no discernable direction, save for the threatening sky overhead.…

The distance between Inverin and Clifden is approximately sixty kilometers. It’s a visually inspiring hour-long ride through undulating midlands with grass as soft as velvet, gray stone walls that split the landscape, and bubbling intermittent streams as you glide along a two-lane road that cuts through a…

If one is travelling through Connemara, one of the more compelling tourist destinations is Kylemore Abbey, a Benedictine monastery since 1920, which sits majestically surrounded by wooded acres behind a tranquil lake. The…

Once upon a time, I spent a year living on the western coast of Ireland, in an area of Connemara called Inverin, which is thirteen miles up the coast road from Galway City. Last October, I had good cause to return for nine days, and had invited a childhood friend to accompany me sans…