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Photo: Misik Péter Neo7, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Park covers some 2000 hectares of mountains, bogs, heaths, grasslands and forests. Purple moorgrass cloaks the terrain; it's poor soil where many plants are nourished by eating the insects. The bugs also draw a lot of birdlife, but there's limited land fauna. The Visitor Centre sometimes puts on exhibitions and guided walks and talks. The park was extended in 2025.
Connemara National Park is one of eight national parks in Ireland, managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service. It is located in the northwest of Connemara in County Galway, on the west coast.
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The castle is a grand cod-Gothic affair built from 1867 with a Manchester textile fortune. Its estate included much of what is now the National Park. In 1920 it was bought by a community of Benedictine nuns who'd been evacuated from Ypres during the First World War, and it's been an abbey since then. It was also a school, but that closed in 2010. You park at its visitor centre then a shuttle bus takes you on. Only a few rooms of the castle / abbey are on display, plus the church and family mausoleum. The big attraction is the extensive gardens, which take an hour or two to explore.