Today we visited the Ireland School of Falconry for a 1-1/2 hour “Hawk Walk”. The school is on the grounds of Ashford Castle, a castle hotel. After we were shown around the facility and given a crash course on birds of prey, we were fitted with leather gloves and given two Harris Hawks, Aztec and Chico. We proceeded to walk with the instructor through the woods surrounding the school. The hawks would fly ahead of us, and when the instructor gave us meat and we held it in our extended gloved hand the hawks would come flying back to us for the meal. When the hawks had eaten their allotment of food, we exchanged them for an owl which flew to each of us a few times (the owl was much heavier than the hawks). We were also lucky enough to be there when they were feeding some baby hawks. Not surprisingly this was one of the highlights of our trip so far.

From the school it was a short drive to Cong Abbey in the nearby town. The monastery dates back to the 7th century but the existing structures date back to the 13th century. One neat thing about this abbey is that we saw its cross at the National Museum of Archaeology in Dublin on Day 1.

We drove through the treeless mountains of Connemara with its blue lakes. Along the way we saw an older man harvesting turf (the peat from the bog land dried and burned in fireplaces). He was using a blade to cut out “bricks” of turf which he stacked in piles. We also stopped for a picture of Kylemore Abbey before heading back to our hotel for some much-needed rest. We were so tired we didn’t come out for dinner, and had to order sandwiches from room service at 2am when we were starving.