Culinary delights

My last visit to Connemara for quite a while to come (sad face) has been one to remember. After contemplating whether to take the car or the bus for some days I opted for the latter option and found myself on an uncomfortably stuffy and crowded bus Friday afternoon to Galway. The 15 minutes I had to change vehicles were reduced to a still sufficient 7 and by half five I arrived in Clifden, where Melani picked me up from the bus stop. That evening we feasted on a dinner of seafood delicacies, all locally sourced. We started with oysters, about a dozen each, their flavour further enhanced with some lemon and black pepper. Whenever I eat oysters they’re super expensive at some fancy restaurant and you get like six at most. These, however, were plucked from the seabed a few hours before and still carried the salty scent on them. Next were clams, prepared in a substance that included garlic and some other ingredients that gave it a superb taste. And if that wasn’t enough we had a third course of scallops, dropped by Gerry the neighbour that very afternoon, with some pieces of seaweed still attached to the large shells. Gorgeous food, but not altogether very filling, so I topped it all off with a plate of lamb tajine. Wow. Definitely one of my favourite dinners ever. Ever? Yes ever.

For Saturday we had scheduled a hike along the west coast of southern Mayo. When I gazed out of Melani’s bedroom’s window on Saturday morning however, dark clouds had ominously gathered on the northern horizon. ‘Surely it will blow over’. Yes, keep up that attitude, we’ll need all the positiveness we can get! Driving over there the clouds thickened, fog encircled the car, and once we parked at the parking lot wet snow had started to drift down. The mountain we were supposed to climb was hidden in thick clouds that made the whole scene simply quite dreadful. But then the capriciousness of Irish weather worked its magic, and a streak of blue sky emerged over the ocean. It stopped snowing, the patch of blue sky grew larger, and ten minutes later we were walking the beach in the blazing sunlight. What followed was a superb hike in the stunning landscape I have come to associate with the west coast of Ireland. We walked the soft sand of the beach, roamed the inland commonage in between gazing sheep, feasted on our packaged lunch (crepes!) and enjoyed the sun that extra little bit more.

Another culinary highlight awaited us that evening. It had been scheduled for weeks, our visit to a restaurant in Delphi that had recently hired some famous chef. Well, the 7-course dinner we got to enjoy was divine. A few courses of seafood and white wine to start with, followed by the more masculine dishes (meat!) complemented by a nice heavy Bordeaux, and some cheeses and ice cream to top it off with. As drinking and driving don’t go well together we had prepared Melani’s van for the occasion, and the next morning we were woken up by a man preparing his nets on the pier for another day of fishing mussels.

My spells of sunny weather that weekend couldn’t have been spent better, and the howling wind and torrential rain only made my bus ride home all the cosier. Melani, thanks for another lovely weekend. Connemara, I’ll be back, even though it will be another few years before I will see your stunning landscapes again. Keep your storms and floods, downpours and fog, so that those who dare to venture out and take a leap of faith have the place to their own when the sun shines and your mountains and lakes are turned into a paradise on earth.