Art Minor in Ireland: Sights and Grykes

Ballyvaughan is a town with a population of less than 300 people. Needless to say, there aren’t any massive, world-renowned museums or landmarks here, but they do have a nice pier! This pier is my favorite place in this town, especially during sunset, when you can watch a million colors come and go as the sun slowly sinks away to make room for the lights across the bay in Galway. It’s a beautiful view, and since the town is so small and quiet, there are rarely more than a handful of people at the pier at the same time. Some days, there are too many clouds in the sky to see much of a sunset, or it’s too rainy and cold to actually motivate myself to leave the house, but I think that’s what makes the really great sunsets even more special; you have to wait for them and really appreciate them when they do come along. To me, the pier has been a place of peace, serenity, and inspiration. It’s my happy place; it’s where I go whenever I need some quiet alone time. (The first sunset that I watched at the pier was actually the inspiration for one of my paintings last month.) Although it’s not the Blarney Stone or the National Museum of Ireland, the Ballyvaughan Pier has given me some great memories.

Another unforgettable location in Western Ireland is Blackhead, one of the trails that we hiked with a local farmer named Shane as our guide. The trail goes up from Galway Bay, so the view at the top was amazing. However, the most memorable part of this field trip was simply enduring the hike up and down the hill. The day that we went on this walk, it hailed twice–once while we were going up and once while we were coming down, which made me extremely worried about slipping on the smooth limestone surface; the wind itself was strong enough to nearly knock me over. On top of that, the burren is known for being made up of large rocks, which are often separated by grykes, or wide cracks in between the rocks. And in order to avoid falling into the gryke and spraining an ankle, you have to make sure you only walk on the rocks. This sounds easy, but it can be a little tricky when there are patches of grass that look solid, but actually hide deep grykes like a bear trap in the woods. To make matters even more difficult, being a small person meant that, even though I could lift my foot with the intention of safely placing it down on the next rock, that didn’t always happen thanks to the strong wind. Sometimes, the wind made my foot land in a gryke instead. And other times, classmates with a lack of balance against the wind also made my footing go a little awry. But with the help of Shane’s rain tarp (which he used to shelter us during the second hailstorm), hiking sticks (that definitely helped in this all-too-real game of “The Floor is Lava”), and everyone’s love adventure, we made it to the top of Blackhead and back safe and sound.