• Home
  • Write for Us
  • Digital Nomads
  • Hiking
  • Teaching Abroad
  • Volunteering
  • Food
  • Events
  • Archive
  • Contact

Backpackers Travel Magazine

Volunteering, Backpacking Travel Guides, Backpacker Hostels, Jobs, Tours, Activities, Events, Outdoors, Gear, Camping, Hiking, Climbing, Yoga, Digital Nomads, TEFL, Volunteer & Adventure around the World

Backpackers Travel Magazine - Backpacking Independent Travel Guides, Backpacker Hostels, Jobs, Tours, Activities, Volunteering & Adventure around the World, South America, Chile, New Zealand, Asia and Thailand
Backpacking in New Zealand
Backpackers Asia Magazine
Backpackers South America Magazine
Backpacking in Africa
Backpackers Travel New Zealand Magazine - Written by backpackers for backpackers
Backpacking in Asia
Backpacking in South America
Backpacking in Europe

The voice of independent travel

Get updated on backpackers travel, events, hostels, people, deals, budgets, food, gear and adventure!

  • Magazines
    • Latest Issue
  • Asia
    • Backpacking in AsiaAsia
  • New Zealand
    • Backpacking in New ZealandNew Zealand
  • Europe
    • Backpacking in EuropeEurope
  • South America
  • Africa
    • Backpacking in AfricaAfrica
  • Hostels
  • Gear
  • Volunteer Abroad
    • Apply to Volunteer
    • Registration for Volunteer Projects
  • Shop
You are here: Home / Backpacker / Walking Sky Road on Ireland’s West Coast

Walking Sky Road on Ireland’s West Coast

June 9, 2019 By backpackers Travel

sky road ireland

I stand above the ocean at Sky Road’s summit and look out over the islands, where folktales say mermaids sit and sing and comb their hair. A group of French tourists laugh amongst themselves. There’s a smell of saltwater and a faraway seagull cries. Behind me Sky Road winds its way back to Clifden, where I started my hike around this 16 kilometer loop that follows county Galway’s Kingstown Peninsula, on Ireland’s western coast. I turn my head the other way and look to where it disappears around a bend on its way down the mountain.

The ocean’s depths are blue and black and its shallows are green where seaweed grows. I take a picture and listen to the wind and watch whitewater throw itself against black rocks. An hour and a half ago I stepped off the bus from Galway City onto Clifden’s Market Street. It is a town small enough to fit in two cupped palms but it’s alive with history and art and the sounds of foreign accents. I went towards the town centre, walking a road marked Seaview to the fork in the road at the Town Hall. Beach Road fell to the left and Seaview climbed to the right, then turned onto Sky Road. From there an ivy-shrouded stone wall followed my route upwards. Giant rhubarb hung over its edge. Its brighter greens clashed against the ivy’s darkness. I rounded a turn and Clifden vanished behind pine trees and Sky Road stretched on into the country.

Walking Sky Road on Ireland’s West Coast

Once you have turned that corner the sounds of the town disappear, replaced by the neighing of horses and the wind that shimmers over the fields. Rocks cut through the grass, slabs of grey beside the violets and dandelions. Above me stood D’Arcy’s monument (erected c. 1842), on the peak of a hill overlooking Clifden. I turned off the road and climbed the track up to the squat stone prism put there in memory of Clifden’s founder, John D’Arcy. I walked around its base and looked out over the town, at its church spires and clumps of trees and the skyline of mountains beyond. Clifden Bay’s waters were smooth as a polished glass plain. I swept my gaze across that panorama and turned to face the monument. A vandal’s initials were carved in one corner. Their faded “J” was barely visible after years of weathering storms. I took a final look across the land and remembered how much I love it out here.

I walked back down to the road. It sloped away from me at a steep angle, headed “up towards the sky,” as the locals told the first tourists that came here, giving Sky Road its name. Sheep with curved horns suckled their lambs in the fields and Connemara ponies grazed among the rocks. Once this country was marked only by stone walls, the crumbling cottages that stand by the road, and the tracks that were worn into the land by donkey-carts. This was the edge of the known world once, the last ground before the ocean, and the first wild west. A rough and untamed place.

The paved road made walking easy. Cars drove past that stank of petrol and broke the silence. Most people drive the route I took, going up the mountain at the fork where it splits into Sky Road and Lower Sky Road. From that point on the silence between cars swallowed all noise. I stopped walking and stood still to look across the ocean and listen to the calm. The wind had died away and all I could hear was the sound of my breath, slight and small in the quiet.

Walking Sky Road on Ireland’s West Coast

I stopped every now and then just to take in that silence as I trekked up here to the road’s summit, where I’m still looking over the islands. I turn to the shining horizon. It stretches across my field of view in a line as fine as an artist’s brushstroke. Behind me a man starts his motorbike and takes off down the mountain. I turn around and pull my backpack on and set off after him.

The wind starts to cool and pick up strength as I descend. I can see ahead for miles to the peaks that reach for the heavens beyond the next bay. Pine trees grow down here and the sound of bird calls – cuckoos and starlings and crows and blackbirds – starts to fill the air. I follow Sky Road’s turns around farms on its way to the N59, the road that will take me back to Clifden. Up the mountain the only signs of farming were the sheep and ponies and the walls that cut the land into fields. Down here there are machines and hay-sheds and farmhouses. I can smell the peat-smoke that pours out of cottage chimneys and hear the barking of sheepdogs.

Connemara’s rocks would buckle any plough and its soil is too shallow for any plant that needs deep roots. The only animals that live on the peaks are sheep and Connemara ponies, two tough breeds. There were few houses near Sky Road’s summit. All built stout and strong and in modern styles that revealed them to be newer additions, unlike the bungalows here in the lowlands that are cracked and stained with age. Nothing grows tall up the mountains like the trees do in the foothills. Yet people have carved lives out of this place. A process that must have taken almost as long as the erosion that shaped the landscape.

These mountains once stood as tall as the Himalayas. Now they have been worn short and smooth. I look out over the bay to a line of them. They curve like waves of earth that were frozen in place. There are people fishing from a pier across the water and the mountains stand tall over them. Boats float on the bay’s flawless surface.

Walking Sky Road on Ireland’s West Coast

The relationship between this place and people is not perfect. Those boats have been abandoned for some time. And I pass a yard full of scrap metal where piles of rusted farm machinery claw at the sky. It is possible that the people have started to take Connemara for granted. Even though it has shaped them as much as they have shaped it.

To say that a place and its people are linked is understatement. The people who settle a land have to learn how to balance their needs with its ways. A place will have its own rhythms and tunes and stories and secrets that have to be learned and respected. I look at those boats and that rusted metal and think that once they helped strengthen the people’s bond with Connemara. They allowed them to explore and farm it and be part of its story, to strike a balance between themselves and the place. I pass the scrapyard and think that humankind has taken too big a bite out of this country. And that the scars from our teeth will take ages to heal.

I come to a humpbacked bridge and step off the road to get a better photo of it. A lone seagull stands on a telephone pole and squawks. The gorse’s flowers are in bloom and their yellow petals shine in the evening light. The water that flows beneath the bridge is shallow and muddy. I look into it and wonder if the crab fishing is good here.

A rooster crows and I catch the sound of a stream running over rocks. Two bales sit on the shore wrapped in plastic and there’s a smell of silage on the breeze that has started to ripple the bay. There have been no road signs since the hike’s peak. Only now have they started to reappear, bearing their directions and information and spray-painted graffiti – a jarring sign of the boredom that affects all rural youth. I follow Sky Road for its last few kilometers, past a great stone house and up a hill onto the N59 where I sit down on the grass to rest and eat. It’s colder now. The day is dimming and commuters are returning to Clifden on the road south into town. I pick myself up and start walking in that direction.

It takes me an hour to walk the last kilometers of my hike. The road is narrow, traffic has to swerve around me. I get back to Clifden at four o’clock. I had started hiking at noon and took my time with it, not wanting to miss any of Connemara’s whispers or expressions. When I was a kid we used to go on drives through here and I would stare out the window and wonder about this place. Now I feel like I know something about it.

I walk back to the square and decide to head for a bar. It’s quieter here now. The last of the tour buses has passed through and some of the shops have closed early for the weekend. I have a few hours before the bus back to Galway arrives. I choose a pub, walk in, order a pint and dinner and wait, looking over my notes and retracing my steps along Sky Road.

 

Authors Bio:

James Fleming

I am a published music journalist whose work has featured on AllAboutJazz.com, GoldenPlec.com, and HifiPig.com. I took a travel writing workshop with Peter Carty, a writer for The Guardian, in London.

Filed Under: Backpacker, Europe, Hiking Tagged With: Backpackers, Backpacking, Europe, Hiking, Ireland, Walking

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Latest Backpackers Mag Issue Out Now!

Asia Backpacker Mag

FREE DOWNLOAD OR DONATE!

Download Magazine

Backpackers Travel Magazine – Let The Adventure Begin!

Tags

accommodation Africa Asia Backpack Backpackers Backpacking Backpacking Asia Budget Campervans Camping Cape Town Chiang Mai China Cooking Digital Nomads Europe Events Food Freedom Camping Gap Year Gear Hiking Hostels India Ireland Markets New Zealand North America Outdoors Parks Road Trip Solo Female Travel South Africa South East Asia Spain Teaching Thailand Trails Travel Tips Trekking Volontär Volunteer Volunteering Walks Working Holiday

Become a travel writer! Write for Us!

Become a travel writer.

Recent Backpacker Articles & Tips

  • Ikaria – Volunteering on a Timeless Greek Island
  • Solo Hiking the Slovenian Mountain Trail
  • 8 Reasons Why You Should Go On A Caravan Holiday
  • Essential Items for Your Hiking Backpack
  • How Traveling Across The Globe Can Improve Mental Health

[instagram-feed]

Ikaria – Volunteering on a Timeless Island

Ikaria – Volunteering on a Timeless Greek Island

‘I wished our first meeting hadn’t started an hour and a half late…at least not the very first one!’ Mihalis laughed, pointing to an invisible watch on his hairy wrist. ‘This isn’t the kind of Greece you know…time doesn’t exist in Ikaria!’ His explosive laugh caused us, the foreign volunteers, to pause with our buttered […]

Solo Hiking the Slovenian Mountain Trail

Solo Hiking the Slovenian Mountain Trail

I sat in a hostel room in Maribor, northeastern Slovenia, hiking gear and packaged food strewn all over my bed. I was planning to start walking the Slovenian Mountain Trail the following day but I still knew almost nothing about it. Established in 1953, It’s one of the oldest long distance mountain trails in the […]

Write for us Travel Writers

Feature Backpacker Travel Articles

Go On A Caravan Holiday, Make it yours

8 Reasons Why You Should Go On A Caravan Holiday

Caravan holidays are making a comeback. With the cost of holidays rising, this cheaper alternative is a cost-effective and flexible option for an impromptu weekend getaway. Whatever your age the … [Read More...]

Essential Items for Your Hiking Backpack

Essential Items for Your Hiking Backpack

Essential Items for Your Hiking Backpack (Infographic) A well-packed backpack is a key factor in making sure your hike is comfortable, safe and enjoyable. Learn more about how to pack your hiking … [Read More...]

How Traveling Across The Globe Can Improve Mental Health

Whether you’re traveling to a local city near your home or across the globe, science shows that traveling can positively influence mental health. In fact, a study by Harris Group found that 72 percent … [Read More...]

Bhutan and Punakha Festival

It all started with a dream and a decision to let go and trust life. I stumbled upon an image of Taktsang Monastery or Tiger Nest last year but honestly never thought I’d make it to Bhutan. In a … [Read More...]

My Exciting Fishing Trip in Croatia

This is my story of a summer vacation in Croatia last year. Me, my girlfriend and parents went to a place where my father had a small camper house. We took a long vacation and experienced a lot of new … [Read More...]

Backpackers Travel Gear

Hiking, Climbing, Travel & Outdoor Gear

Essential Items for Your Hiking Backpack

Essential Items for Your Hiking Backpack

Essential Items for Your Hiking Backpack (Infographic) A well-packed backpack is a key factor in making sure your hike is comfortable, safe and enjoyable. Learn more about how to pack your hiking … [Read More...]

7 Essential Tips for Women Solo Hikers

Doing thing solo, especially hiking solo, is one of the best ways to improve the independence and personal skills. Of course, hiking alone in the wilderness has its risks. Yet, there is no reason … [Read More...]

What I’ve Learned From Reviewing Over a Dozen Backpacks

After a year and a half of one bag travel, I caught the backpack bug—big time. So much so that I started my own website, packhacker.com, where my team and I review backpacks and other gear with a … [Read More...]

Backpacker Hostels

Hostel Guide for Backpackers

The Backpack Hostel Cape Town in South Africa

The Backpack Hostel in Cape Town South Africa – Hostels for Backpackers

The Backpack Hostel Conveniently located in Cape Town, The Backpack Hostel is a great base from which to explore this vibrant … [Read More...]

The Local Hostel NYC in New York City, USA

The Local Hostel NYC in New York City, USA – Hostels for Backpackers

The Local Hostel NYC Conveniently located in New York (NY), The Local Hostel NYC is a great base from which to explore this … [Read More...]

  • Volunteer Abroad – Apply Now
  • Registration for Voluntary Organizations & Projects

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2023 Backpackers Travel Magazine · Write for Us · WordPress · Log in