Ireland Road Tripping: Connemara Coast & Clifden with a visit to Omey Island!

As we’re now coming up on the October mid-term break, we were looking for places to go with the kids for a couple nights and we booked a 3 night stay at the Jackson’s Hotel in Donegal.  But after having it booked for several weeks, I did a search again and found the Station House was on offer for only 200. including one DINNER, all three breakfasts, a family room and the great kids club!  So we cancelled the Donegal booking – we’ll go there during a summer trip and we’re heading back to Clifden! The kids club was their favorite so I know they won’t mind.

When we told the kids, we were expecting them to be bummed but they were happy but not shocked. Soren literally said, he knew that we’d not cancel without booking someplace else!  Guess we’re predictable parents which he has loads of confidence in us!

We’re looking forward to it.  Soren says his favorite is the breakfast each morning, Nils is surely the mussels, Maebh the kids club and me, not yet sure.  Each day, if they want, they can go to the Railway Kids club again.  It offered daily events like Arts & Crafts at 3 pm, swim at 4 pm, dinner at 5 pm and a DVD at 7 pm, disco & more.

I had hoped to do a few things which we didn’t get to do last time we were there.

1). I wanted to visit the Glengowla Mines – but is not an option – they close on Nov 1st!

2).  Connemara Seaweed Bath – didn’t get to it.

3). We’ll spend a day in Galway and hopefully a day in Westport.  didn’t do!

4). Kylemore Abbey – didn’t bother – drove by!

5). Omey Island – driver over the sands to the island – only if the tides are right!  YES!  We did that.

Omey Island is a great place to explore.  But you can only get there during low tide – so you have to wait to get off the island if you lived there.   The tides were great if anything we were early so we were unsure about it being too soft but it was fine!!

As we started to drive on the island down one of the couple roads, we had to stop due to all the cows on the road.

We left the car and started to walk down towards the beach which was so nice – would be amazing in the summer – clear!!

As I’m always taking the photos of the kids and never in the photos, we took a couple selfies! 🙂

Soren found me a couple pieces of sea glass!

A memorial of a 20 something year old girl.

As we were walking back to our car, I was not interested in going by all the cows on the path in case they charged at the kids – so we opted to take a bit of a longer path back across the beach.  We then met up with the farmer who told us his cows were friendly but with kids they can mistake them for dogs and be problem.    He explained to Soren that he grew up there as a kid his age, had to wait for the teacher each day who would come over depending on the tides, so school times were based on the tides.

We went down to explore Glassguian Beach which was so pretty – again, imagine in the summer!