Sally Longs Galway
On our previous visit I was whisked off the Galway to drink in Sally Longs. With its murals and toilets labelled confusingly Sally’s and Long’s, it is perhaps one of the most famous pub live venues for metal and rock. However, one of my lasting memories of Ireland is huddling under a brolly in the pouring rain at a music festival in Spiddal on the Galway coast listening to the strains of Gaelic folk music and watching Irish dancers. For me, it was the musical equivalent to the incense aroma of a peat fire.
One of our latter tourist jaunts was to visit Achill Island on the West Coast. The island, jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, is joined to the mainland by a strip of land, so avoiding the delay of a ferry. Scooting down the winding roads, we passed the smattering of homes with donkey effigies tethered to peat carts in well tended front gardens. Our passage watched by any number of curious donkeys that were alive and kicking. This gave way to acres of peat bogs and dramatic rising hills and a fish farm in a stretch of mirror still water beneath a steeply rising cloud topped mount.