Cong

When we left Ballina, we drove round the Mayo coast via Ballycastle and Belmullet before heading down to Westport. The coast was lovely - quite dramatic and deserted. Worth a return visit to spend longer there. Belmullet was a nice town although the lady in the information office was, while willing, not actually very helpful. We had only gone in to look at what was on offer really but she wanted to know where we were going, had we got somewhere to stay etc. We told her we were camping but she knew absolutely nothing about it. We asked about walking in the area and B&B prices but she also did not know this! Not sure what she was there for really except to man the premises. Still, enjoyed the chat. Our impressions so far were of a certain quiantness about Ireland, like going back in time about 20 or 30 years. People would never give a 1 word answer when 5 would do. There seems to be more land than they know what to do with so they don't! There is a lot of land just growing over with no crop or livestock but not open access either for walking. As we drove, there were often place we saw that would have been nice to stop and take in but there are no lay-by's and roads are fenced either side so you are unable to walk away from them.
We headed on down to Westport - a nice town although a bit 'touristy'. It reminded us a bit of Bourton-on-th-Water in England Cotswolds surprisingly.  From there, we intended to get down to the coast at Clifden for the night but the bridge was down at Leenane meaning a massive detour so we headed inland across the moors instead and ended up at Cong between Counties Mayo and Galway. The weather was atrocious across the hills and we could see very little. The roads were very narrow but nothing coming in the opposite direction.
As we were coming down again off the hills, we could see what we thought at first was the sea but realised it couldn't be, then wondered if we were looking down on more clouds. It turned out to be the vast expanse of Lough Mask. It would have been beautiful on a clear day and had it's own beauty in the murky weather too.
By the time we got to the site at Cong, the rain had stopped. The site included a hostel and was clean and very well run