We had a good night last night having dinner underneath the hotel. Then we went out to a pub afterwards and drank and danced the night away!!
This morning we got up after about five hours sleep and got on the bus. The first two hours of the day were spent driving and I did not feel well at all! Thankfully I was able to nap most of the time and felt lots better after that :)
Our first stop was at a small church where the famous Irish poet WB Yeats and his wife were buried. The church was really nice, the 10 minute long queue for the toilet wasn't so much. Being a girl sucks!!
Back on the bus and Dave gave us a chat about the Great Famine. He said it was obviously a very depressing topic but he wanted to make sure we had the information.
In the 1600s King Henry VIII was trying to convert Ireland to the new Protestant religion. When people wouldn't convert he applied penal laws meaning that life became very hard for the Catholics. Ireland became a very poor and rundown place to live. By the time the 1800s rolled around, conditions had worsened and as well as that most people typically had 14-15 children to feed. Dave told us his grandma had 22 siblings!!
During this time people started growing potatoes. According to Dave Irish people call a meal without potatoes a snack, and on average each Irish person eats 140 pounds of potatoes a year.
In spring of 1845 potato blight swept across Europe and destroyed all the potato crops in Ireland. People sold their possessions and used what little they had to access other food. By 1846 people were running out of money and landlords started to evict people from their homes. 500,000 people became homeless and then the fatalities began. People died due to starvation and awful conditions. In 1847 on average 20,000 people in Ireland were dying every day. In 1845 Ireland had a population of 8.4 million, in 1852 two years after the famine ended it had a population of just 3.2 million. Approx 2 million people died and 2 million immigrated to places like America, Canada and Australia. Today 90 million people worldwide are of Irish descent.
After this explanation we arrived in a town called Westport for our lunch stop. While everyone not on a budget went out for a meal, I finished off the bread and cheese I bought two days ago and walked around alone. The town was quite cute and I had a nice walk through the streets and over a bridge. It pelted down rain for a few minutes then cleared up.
Back on the road again and our next stop was the National Famine Memorial, which was a boat with ghostly skeletons gliding along the sides. We also climbed up towards a mountain called Conargh Patrick which had some beautiful views!!!
We stopped in Duloc Valley and had a hot chocolate with Baileys in a small town and now we've arrived in Galway. Out for a pub crawl tonight.
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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