Wednesday 19 September 2018

Beautiful route along the coast of Sligo (part of the Wild Atlantic Way)

Happy Monday!

After a long and very warm summer we are back home, back to school and back to discovering this fantastic Emerald Isle and writing about it.

This time, we would like to write about a trip we made to Co. Roscommon, Co. Sligo and Co. Leitrim at the end of August, an area that was still unknown to us...

And more specifically this post is about the route we did along the coast of County Sligo: loved it, in spite of the weather (which wasn't explosively sunny at times...).







First of all, let me show you the summary of the route we made and then I'll tell you what we loved most:



Our starting point was

1) AUGHRIS HEAD where we were hoping to see seals and dolphins, but unfortunately it started to rain and it was very windy so we didn't try the cliff walk, which seems to be very popular and fairly easy for the whole family.

Still, we loved the place! and we also loved the soup at The Beach Bar

2) Our next stop was STRANDHILL: fantastic beach to go for a walk and also to go for an ice cream, like we did. 




Someone had told us to look for a very popular ice cream parlour over there: Mammy Johnston's, and that is exactly what we did




From the "millions" of flavours they have, we chose... VANILLA! Yeah, we are that exotic! But, you know, somebody has to eat the vanilla flavour as well :-)


If you like "adventure" and would fancy trying other flavours, we learnt that the HONEYCOMB flavour ice cream was awarded best in the world back in 2016!!!! I am sure it's worth a try ;-)


3) ROSSES POINT: so nice! This place is soooo nice! Maybe, it's because the sun started shining when we got here and the beaches became wider and "sandier", and the ocean looked so much "bluer"... maybe. But the truth is that we fell in love with Rosses Point <3





Plus we found a lovely cafe where we had, according to the "experts", a fantastic hot chocolate (my cappuccino was also really good). The Little Cottage Cafe, it is called and if you happen to visit the village, do not forget to stop here ;-)




4) STREEDAGH STRAND was our next stop. This stop had a more educational intention, as it was here where three ships from the Spanish Armada ended their glorious days... and, sadly, approx 1,800 sailors also lost their lives here.



One of the survivors was Captain Francisco de Cuéllar, who became popular because he wrote all the adversities he had to face while in Ireland, trying to return to Spain after the wreckage. To be honest, we did not know many details about the Spanish Armada and de Cuéllar's story, but it is very interesting! Found this site where you can read a very general summary and watch a lovely video.

5) MULLAGHMORE: lovely little village. Very quiet when we arrived, but we later learnt that Mullaghmore Head is one of the best Big Wave Surfing Spots in the Atlantic Ocean, where some 15m high waves were recorded back in 2012! We assume that the place must be full of surfers during the summer. Who would have thought, seeing the pictures???





Before we did this route, we were checking the information on the Wild Atlantic Way site and watched the video below by Red Bull... Just couldn't believe how brave the surfers are to face the Atlantic at Mullaghmore. See for yourself:



As in almost of our stops, the beach here is fantastic (when the sea is quiet!) and the views are second to none. Worth a visit for sure.




Hope you liked this amazing corner of the world. Some more "amazing corners" to come very soon ;-)






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