Les lacs, les rivères: c'est le décor du Connemara (part 1)

In this beautiful and sunny weekend, we decided to take a trip (one more) to the Connemara.

The Connemara is a well known place in Ireland, that everybody knows (in France, at least) thanks to the song "Les Lacs du Connemara" from Michel Sardou.

Also, everybody knows that this is place is one of the most beautiful places in Europe. This natural and wild area and those unspoilt places offering a wonderful experience and once in a life time adventures.

As the Connemara is really vast and have a lost of wonderful landscapes to offer, we rent a car and drive in direction of the Connemara without any plans except, getting lost in the unknown... and the nature.

Our first stop was the Kylemore Abbey. This place is all year opened to everyone.

A little of history? Let's get even more intellectual than we also are! :)

The Castle were first owned by the Henry Family : Mitchell Henry, the owner, was a famous doctor in London and his wife was called Margaret. Once they went back to England, the place was sold to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester. They finally had to sell the castle because of gambling debts (oops!). Finally, Benedictine Nuns onwed the Abbey where they offered education for catholic girls that they had to close in 2010.

Few figures? The Abbey was built in 1920, founded as a private home for the family Henry. The castle covers about 3,700 m² and the facade mesures 43m.

There is around 70 rooms (33 bedrooms, 4 sitting rooms, a ballroom, a billard room, a smocking room, a gun room , a study room... To sum up, there was almost one room for anything you can do in a house/castle).

Unfortunatly, we couldn't visit the castle but we saw the Abbey and many others buildings on the East part of the site, such as the Henry family mausoleum (containing bodies of Margaret Henry and Mitchell Henry.... Hmmm nice!) and a Gothic Cathedral:

Just behind this Cathedral, you can follow a way in the woods that will brings you in front of a big triangular stone placed in front of a hand sculpture coming from the ground.

And here is come the interesting story: we went to see the Kylemore Abbey site maybe 3 times in 5 months and we only red the prospectus the last time we came (..I know this is shameful and I should have looked before, Oops...) to finally known what is this hand coming from the ground ready to grab you.

But, let's move on. The story of this place is that you had to stand up in front of the hand sculpture, the triangular stone behind you, pick a stone from the ground, make a wish and throw it in the back in order to make the stone end up BEHIND the huge triangular stone (which was really difficult to do by the way).

If you succeed, your dream will come true and if you don't, nothing will happen.

And, guess what? I succeed! But I still don't know if my dream is going to become true yet. I will tell you everything when it does, I promise :).

On the West part, you can either take a bus for 5minutes or walk approximately 15minutes toward the Victorian Gardens. Those gardens were restored thanks to the local artisans and the donations the Benedicte Community had gathered. The gardens are really huge and you can take a "natural" walk all along the gardens, each plants is well named and you can even pick flyers to see each name of each flowers.

Also, you can visit a little greenhouse with vines and the tool shelter of the gardeners as well as the butler and gardeners residences. It's really interesting; you can see the conditions they lived in: stone floor, little bed in bad conditions... you can really imagine how it was to live at their time and put yourself in their shoes.

After we saw these wonderful lanscapes and learned more about how it was to be a gardener in the 1920s, we went to the little coffee/restaurant at the end of the gardens and we ordered an herbal tea from the gardens and home-made scones. Few kilos well deserved!

#connemara #kylemoreabbey #victoriangardens #ireland