Last night we stayed up late listening to music at dinner. The Irish are very musical and most restaurants and pubs have music almost every night. We did get to sleep in a bit as our Cliffs of Moher tour started at 10 AM. Thankfully we had a beautiful sunny day.

Our guide was a local farmer named Pat Sweeney. His family has farmed in the area for generations. In fact his family owns land along the coast and contains areas that include the cliffs. In 2006 he encouraged other farmers who owned land along the cliffs to create a cliffs walking path on private land, which they then opened to the public. The goal was to create more interest in the Moher Cliffs and draw more tourists to their small town of Doolin vs. the large buses which visit from Dublin and just stop for an hour. It has worked. Doolin is bussling. In addition to creating the path, Pat gives tours like the one we did. You get to see areas of the cliffs that normally aren’t seen. The hike takes about 4 hours and covers about 5.5 miles mostly uphill. Pat also talks about the local farms and history of the area. Plus, we had great views of the cliffs. The pictures don’t do them justice. If you head this way and like a good walk we highly recommend his tour.

Moher is the Irish word for fort. There was one nearby the cliffs for hundreds of years. The cliffs are about 800 feet tall at their highest point. The waves are also quite high, especially in the winter and draw surfers from all over the world even though crashing into large rocks is a major hazard.

Scenes from a number of movies have been filmed on the Cliffs of Moher including “Princess Bride” and parts of one of the Harry Potter movies

After the tour ended we had a picnic lunch outside before heading north to catch a ferry to the Island of Inishmore, our next stop. Inishmore is also known for its cliffs, so we will get to compare them.

We had dinner on Inishmore at a pub called Ti Joe Watty. Sadly the music didn’t start until 10 PM and we decided to head to bed before then.