Connemara is the wild stretch of west Galway between Lough Corrib and the Atlantic — bo…

Connemara is the wild stretch of west Galway between Lough Corrib and the Atlantic — bog, lakes, mountains and a coastline shattered into peninsulas and tiny islands. The name comes from Conmhaícne Mara, an ancient tribal group. Oscar Wilde called it a “savage beauty” and not much has changed. The Twelve Bens and Maumturk mountains rise from blanket bog, the roads are narrow, and the villages are small and whitewashed. It’s Ireland’s largest Gaeltacht, with around 20,000 native Irish speakers, and the cultural heartland of Connacht Irish. During the Famine, starving locals built the road along Killary Harbour — Ireland’s only fjord — as relief work. Alcock and Brown crash-landed in Derrygimlagh Bog outside Clifden in 1919 after the first non-stop transatlantic flight, and Marconi built his wireless station on the same bog twelve years earlier. The Connemara pony is a cross between Spanish horses that escaped from Armada shipwrecks and Scandinavian ponies left by the Vikings.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​