Category Archives: County Mayo

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #227 – Home Sweet Home

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Too many places to choose from this week as Tina asks us where would we bring a visitor to our country? I have to narrow it down to our County – County Mayo, west of Ireland.

Firstly it would be our wild Atlantic coast. Always amazing no matter what time of year you visit.

Lacken Bay

So many beautiful spots to spend a day exploring.

Doohoma

The Mullet peninsula, where I spent much of this summer working, has lots of beautiful coast, but also stunning flora rich machair grassland, buzzing with insects.

Machair grassland

Go a little bit inland and you can explore lakes and peatlands.

Lakes, peatlands and native woodland

The woods are small, but perfect places for early spring or autumn strolls.

Clydagh Bridge forest

And just one more – the Great Western Greenway, 44 km of old railway track that you can cycle or walk free of traffic. Perfect any time of year.

Greenway

Many thanks to Tina for letting us apprecate a bit of home sweet home.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #215

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For this week’s Len-artist challenge John asks for “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles… and the Places they take us” – but I have veered off topic a little to talk about places boats have taken me. In recent years, we have had a few interesting trips on boats – or at least the boats got us to our destination. The first trip was to Clare Island off the west coast of Ireland. A small ferry takes about 20 minutes to cross from mainland to the island.

Early morning ferry to Clare island

The island is lovely. We visited in January – but the day was glorious and clear and the light beautiful.

Then home again on the ferry at sunset.

Our next island visit was to Inishbiggle. Also off the west coast, but a much smaller island – talking only about ten minutes in a small boat similar to the small boat in the picture below.

Here crossing over from the mainland.

The island is lovely, exceptionally quiet (there are not many families living on it now) and the only shame was all the abandoned cars (and tractors) that it is too expensive to remove and so are left to rust away.

A
Inishbiggle

Lens-Artists Challenge #183 – Memorable Events

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There was just something special and memorable about this trip to the coast at the end of last summer. It was probably the last sunny day before the kids went back to school. Something about it just gave me a really warm feeling. It’s a beach we’ve been to before, though this time we choose the little secluded bay as opposed to the big strand. The day was perfect, sunny and warm.

Secluded beach

The water was perfect for swimming.

North Mayo Coast

And even when we got tired of the water, there were the dunes to explore, with their wonderful wildflowers.

Harebells

And of course bumblebees – just to make the day.

Large carder bee