Soaking up the seaweed in Ireland

I broke my first rule of bathing - take a book - so there I was after 10 minutes, lying in a bath full of seaweed and wondering what the heck to do.

The iodine seeping out of the seaweed had turned the bath water dishwater brown, and the whole thing could have done with a dash of lavender oil to counteract the smell.

The algae creeps around your body and a glue-like substance drips from its green/brown leaves.

While I was experimenting with different seaweed hairstyles on my knee, best friend Jo was coming to grips with the experience in the next room at Annaghdown Seaweed Baths at Carrandulla, just north of Galway.

Seaweed baths to relieve muscle stiffness and ease the joints have attracted people to the west and northwest of Ireland since the turn of the 19th century. The iodine released from the seaweed is a natural antiseptic and moisturiser that is said to help the overworked or stressed, and help with detoxing.

County Sligo has two popular bath houses, Kilcullen's Seaweed Baths at Enniscrone and the Celtic Seaweed Baths at Strandhill, where the seaweed is, like that at Annaghdown, freshly hand-picked from the coast, washed and turned into a beauty treatment.

Jo and I decided our skin did feel softer, but in future we would probably stick to bathing with sweet-smelling bath salts and leave the seaweed until the arthritis kicks in.

As Irish luck would have it, the bath was not our last run-in with seaweed that day. We departed the spa for the Connemara region, where the coastline glowed with orange seaweed-covered rocks.

We took the R345 winding through the Lake District with views of Lough Corrib and Lough Mask on either side towards the Connemara Isles Golf Club and a meeting with Tony Lynch at Leitir Moir, an island connected by a causeway to the Connemara mainland.

Tony runs his nine-hole course from a thatched cottage built by his great-grandfather, where he was born and grew up.

The former policeman insisted on a few holes to take in the views from the course, especially from the third hole, a disturbing par 3 with the green on the other side of a crevasse dropping to - you guessed it - seaweed-covered rocks.

The reward for clearing the crevasse was half a pint of Guinness and a bag of pork crisps.

Golf, fishing, hiking in the national parks and cycling are popular pursuits in this unspoiled area of Ireland.

Jo and I preferred the lazy option of a Renault on our 1200km journey and were out to see if it was true a tourist can sample everything Ireland has to offer on a trip to the west.

Over five days of driving through changing landscapes we ticked off the boxes: music, festivals, outdoors, culture, shopping and pubs.

From our base at Galway we could visit the preserved boglands in Connemara one day and the next be zooming around The Burren's limestone landscape, Stone Age ruins and barren hills that only the black-faced sheep could love.

On a day of driving around The Burren, we headed inland through narrow country lanes, made to appear even tighter by the low stone walls on either side, towards the Cliffs of Moher.
The cliffs are used in much of Ireland's promotional material and are one of the country's most popular attractions. It was worth the drive to see the majestic green-covered cliffs plunging 200m to the pounding North Atlantic. We took the scenic coast road back to Kilcolgan for lunch at Moran's Oyster Cottage. It was getting late but the coastline is too stunning to fly past without stopping for some photo opportunities against "beaches" of pure rock.

The Moran family's thatched cottage has been around for more than 250 years and the restaurant boasts famous diners such as Julia Roberts, Pierce Brosnan, Woody Allen and the Emperor and Empress of Japan.

The half dozen oysters natural and another six crumbed went down well with a swig of a chilled sauvignon blanc, and we followed that with smoked salmon and a seafood platter of more salmon, crab, mussels, lobster and prawns.

We rolled out of Moran's at 4pm with no idea we faced a two-hour or so drive to our next destination, Westport, in County Mayo.

Perhaps it was the navigator's wine consumption, but we managed to take the wrong road at Galway and ended up negotiating narrow country lanes in disappearing daylight.

Westport sits in the shadow of Mt Croach Patrick, where the Patron Saint of Ireland is rumoured to have spent 40 days and 40 nights banishing dragons and evil forces. Now it is climbed by more than 60,000 people every year to honour St Patrick.

Our accommodation, Hotel Westport, offered a B&B package with a room and three-course dinner for 85 euros ($150) per person.

The hotel is just around the corner from Bridge St, where we found a fair toss of Westport's 60 pubs catering to a population of 5000-6000.

Judging from the patronage of the bars we visited along the street, the place to be in Westport is Matt Molloy's, a packed pub owned by the Chieftains' flute player. It seemed to be the only bar with a live Irish band rather than football on the entertainment bill.

The following day we headed deep into the northwest, driving through Sligo and Donegal to Bunbeg.

After lunch at Donegal we visited Donegal Castle, built in 1505 and home to the O'Donnell family, who ruled for 1000 years before leaving with the Flight of the Earls in 1607.

The last O'Donnell occupier, Hugh, burned the castle to the ground rather than see it fall to the enemy.

The next occupier, Sir Basil Brooke, was forced to carry out an extreme home makeover, Jacobean style, turning the first floor into a impressive banqueting hall. He stamped his mark with a fireplace bearing his coat of arms and had a boar's head mounted on the wall of the dining area.

From Donegal, we cut inland and skirted around Gweebarra Bay towards Bunbeg in the Gaeltacht [Gaelic-speaking] area of Donegal.

At Bunbeg we found a small coastal town with one big hotel - the Ostan Gweedore - towering over a sandy bay that would be a perfect summer spot. On this particularly wintry night, with the wind threatening to tear away the canvas awnings on the deck and few guests treading the hallways, it held a spooky resemblance to the hotel in The Shining, according to Jo.

Bunbeg was to be our stepping stone to Tory Island, a little island with its own king, Patsy Dan Rodgers, a local hero who led a campaign against plans to resettle the islanders to the mainland in 1974.

Tory has a Tau - or T-shaped - cross that still stands despite an English soldier trying to smash it with his sword. The marks he made are said to still be visible.

I can't vouch for this because the weather turned worse and our ferry trip to Tory was cancelled. The crew suggested they could take us there but were unlikely to return that day.

We sought an alternative dose of culture at the Dunlewey Lakeside Centre and a boat trip around Dunlewey Lake.

The centre was developed around the homestead of the Ferry family and includes a tour of the workroom of master tweed maker Manus Ferry.

The afternoon slipped away with a spot of shopping in Letterkenny before heading to our last dinner at the Rosapenna Hotel in Downings.

Here, Jo learned that a small fishing village is not the place to throw car rubbish into a random skip on a wharf - and I realised that seaweed was not the worst smell in the world.

* Louisa Cleave travelled to Ireland courtesy of Air New Zealand and Tourism Ireland.