Ireland's West Coast: Why This Is the Trip That Turns People Into Repeat Travelers

Ireland's West Coast: Why This Is the Trip That Turns People Into Repeat Travelers

There is something about Ireland that is difficult to explain and very easy to experience. The light — the Atlantic light that makes the green of the fields a particular shade of green that exists nowhere else. The landscape, which on the west coast ranges from the limestone pavements of the Burren to the sea cliffs of Moher to the lakes of Connemara. The people, who have a relationship with conversation that is genuinely different from what most Americans are used to.

We have been sending clients to Ireland for decades. It is the destination that produces more repeat visitors than anything else we sell.

The West Coast

The Cliffs of Moher are 214 meters of vertical rock dropping into the Atlantic, stretching for 14 kilometers along the Clare coast. In the weather the Atlantic actually delivers — low cloud, horizontal rain, the sea below working itself into something dramatic — they are more impressive than in sunshine.

The Burren is one of the most unusual landscapes in Europe: a karst plateau of limestone pavement where wildflowers grow in the cracks in May and June — Mediterranean and Arctic species side by side, a botanical anomaly.

Connemara — the region of County Galway west of the city — is bog and mountain and lake and the occasional village that still uses Irish as its everyday language. The light here is what painters come for.

The Celtic Connection

Many clients who travel to Ireland have Irish ancestry, and Ireland is one of those destinations where that connection has a genuine effect. Standing in the churchyard of the village your great-great-grandmother left in the 1840s is not nothing. It is, for many clients, one of the most profound things travel has ever delivered.

The guides we work with have a genuine relationship with the landscape. Their knowledge is not performed for tourists. It's the knowledge of people who live in a place.