Hawk Walk at Ashford Castle and Inchagoill Island: Our Last Day in Ireland

Did we save the best for last? Well, it probably depends on who you ask, but some would say that we did.

When (my sister-in-law) Amy and I were making trip plans, this was one of the first things we decided on (and we booked early, as well). We liked that Corrib Cruises offered a trip that would take us from Oughterard, where we were staying, to Inchagoill, a small island in Lough Corrib, and then to Ashford Castle….where it would drop us off and leave us for enough time to do a Hawk Walk at the falconry school there. I.e. it was a whole day just perfectly planned out already.

The pier in Oughterard was a little too far for us to want to walk from our rental house, but parking was very limited there. We ended up parking at the public lot in town and then walking from there (about a 20 minute walk). Amy and Craig drove to the pier and found a spot.

Some will remember that I did not enjoy the boat ride to the Aran Islands earlier in the trip. So I’m happy to report that the boat ride across Lough Corrib was delightful. Lake boats > ocean boats.

After a few minutes we got to the small island of Inchagoill. No one lives there now, but there are ruins from a very old monastic ruins along with the ruins of a small village. We stayed with the group from the boat and had a guided tour around the very pretty island:

This, we were told, is Saint Patrick’s nephew’s grave. Got that? I guess they’re pretty excited about it.

After our Inchagoill stop, we headed for Ashford Castle:

Most of the castles we saw in Ireland were crumbling ruins, but Ashford Castle is the sort of castle that’s so still together that it’s a hotel! A very expensive hotel, and you can’t go in there unless you’re staying there. So our streak of only seeing the inside of the ruins variety of castle continued. But our Corrib Cruises tickets did include access to the grounds of the castle.

And the grounds of the castle include Ireland’s School of Falconry, where one can see and fly hawks.

We signed the kids up for a one hour Hawk Walk, where they all got to take turns flying a pair of Harris Hawks named Joyce and Wilde. Not signing the grown-ups up was a sort of agonizing decision, but flying hawks is expensive and I also knew I wanted to be free to take lots and lots (and lots) of pictures. The official minimum age for the hawk walk is 7, and Abe was only 6 1/2, but they ended up letting him fly the hawks a bit, too. I gather that it depends on how things are going and how calm both the hawks and the 6 year old are acting. They won’t commit in advance to letting younger kids handle hawks, and we had prepared Abe for the likelihood that he would only be able to watch.

If you have a group of 4 or more, the one hour hawk walk is 55 euros a person and people who are just watching can come along at no charge.

So the boat drops you off maybe a 15 or 20 minute walk from the falconry school. We tried to ask someone at the castle for directions, and they insisted on giving us a ride over there. Which was very nice of them, but we had kind of been looking forward to the nice walk through the grounds, and it also meant we got there super early. So we hung around for awhile in a gazebo:

Harris Hawks are from the Americas, and, I have to admit, I was a little disappointed to learn we’d be flying American birds instead of ones that are native to Ireland. However, I imagine there are limited options for birds of prey who are okay being handled by random newbies. Harris Hawks are also one of the few hawks that will hunt in pairs, which also makes them well suited for this kind of activity (there’d have been a lot more waiting around and a lot less hawk flying if we’d only had one hawk for our group). The guy who initially opened the gate when we got there was also American, and I was going to be really   disappointed if we flew all the way to Ireland to fly American hawks with an American human. Although I’m sure he was very nice.

Fortunately, the guy who actually took us on our hawk walk was Irish, with a charming habit of punctuating sentences with, “that’s all it is.” First he showed us around the facility and introduced us to some birds:

And then he brought out our hawks for the hour, Wilde and Joyce:

And then we spent a lovely hour (really, if I remember right it was more like an hour and a half) walking around the grounds and flying the hawks. They’re trained to fly from your gloved hand and then return for some food, and they usually did no problem, although they got distracted occasionally.

Our guide did a great job of making sure all the kids got multiple turns if they wanted them; I wasn’t sure if it’d be something where you only got to fly the hawk a time or two and then you were done, but there was, it turned out, lots of hawk time. It was definitely one of the favorite things of the trip for all of my kids and well worth the money.

I have a whole lot of pictures of Milo and a hawk, and he’s just gazing adoringly at the hawk in every one.  Milo wants to be a clarinetist, but maybe if that doesn’t work out he can be a falconer.

If you don’t use your time at Ashford Castle for a hawk walk (you have about 3 1/2 hours total before your return trip), you can just wander around and enjoy the grounds and gardens or you can take the 1 km walk to the village of Cong to get something to eat or see the bridge from The Quiet Man. I have never seen The Quiet Man, but they really like to talk about the bridge.

And then Abe took us back across the lake:

And that was it! Our last day in Ireland. The next day we drove to the airport in Shannon and flew home. Now I would like to go back, please. If you missed any of the posts, just click on the 2019 UK/Ireland Trip category and they should all come up for you.

Since we didn’t do a long trip this past summer, I’m in the strange position of being all caught up on travel recap posts. We do have some travel plans this fall and winter that we hope we’ll actually be able to do, and we really, really hope to be back to long RV trips next summer. But maybe in the meantime I’ll get around to some of the more general travel/RVing posts I keep meaning to write but don’t usually have time for.

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