Canyoning in the Beautiful Connemara Region of Ireland - DLive video with Epic Ireland

It's our blogger/vlogger group's second day with Epic Ireland. To see the awesome adventures from the previous day such as caving in an underground river, click here.

Click photo above to view video

On this day, our guide, Micheal, led us out from the city of Galway into the Connemara region, a breathtaking part of Ireland full of mountains, lakes, bogs, and sheep farms. It was on one of these sheep farms that Micheal brought us. I still don't know how he finds these places in the middle of nowhere. The backdrop we had for this adventure was a mountain with a beautiful glacial-cut valley running down the middle of it with a river running through it. This river is where our adventure is set.

Meeting the locals in Connemara

Micheal told us we would be canyoning, aka gorge walking. Basically, trekking up the cold river and climbing over any obstacle we happened to face... with some cliff jumps and slides in there for extra fear-inducing activities.

We got geared up in wet suits, life jackets, and helmets. This was not a warm day to be changing clothes outdoors, especially changing into damp, skin-tight, neoprene onesies. But, we were also prepping for something even colder.

The group is all geared up

We stepped into the freezing cold rushing stream of water. Oh, my sweet genius for the love of Pete's sandwich, it was COLD. Thankfully, the wet suits kept our body heat in and prevented hypothermia. The first obstacle to overcome was slippery rocks, but that was a perpetual obstacle that we faced through the whole river. You can see how many times I stumbled in the video and that was the reason. We also climbed up boulders, scrambled up small waterfalls, and swam through the deeper sections.

Climbing up the river

We eventually made it to some cliffs that we climbed up and jumped off of into the deep water below. I've done cliff jumping several times before and these cliffs weren't that big in comparison to some things I've jumped from. However, for a couple in our group, it was their first time jumping from anything this high. Needless to say, they were very hesitant. But seeing others jumping before them and receiving encouragement from myself and the others, they built up enough courage to take the leap. And not just once. Several times. And they even jumped from the higher cliffs too.

Jumping off cliffs

The great thing about adventure travel is that it gives people the opportunity to overcome their fears and have new experiences that they'll never forget. It's even better when doing these things with people you care about to help encourage you and celebrate with you when you overcome your fear.

To add on to our day, Micheal took us to Glassilaun Beach which wasn't too far from Connemara. There he brought out some big paddles from his vehicle and threatened to use them on us. But actually he was teaching us some of the rules to one of Ireland's national sports, Hurling. I still don't understand most of the game but it was fun to swing the paddles around and try keeping the ball off the ground. And at such a beautiful location.

Learning hurling at Glassilaun Beach. Photo by Here Be Barr, used with permission

This was an amazing day provided to us by Epic Ireland in exchange for online exposure. Check out their website: www.epicireland.com for amazing tours provided by an amazing guide in an amazing country. We really did have the time of our lives as we explained at the end of the video in our bathrobes.

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Music used:
Streets of Sant'Ivo by Art of Escapism
Royalty Free

Gemstone by Michael Jan
source

Fiddle-De-Dee by Shane Ivers
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

Wheel of Karma by Audionautix
is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Porches and Universes by Puddle of Infinity
(Creative Commons)

My video is at DLive