Connemara tours from Galway run seven and a half to nine hours north-west into the bog and the Twelve Bens, and the Kylemore Abbey ticket is what separates the fares — one names it, one stops there without naming it, and one asks you to choose between the abbey and a free national park.
The only Connemara fare that names the Kylemore Abbey ticket. Two hours at the abbey, half an hour in Leenane and a last stop at Spiddal on the coast road home.
From $76 per person
Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead.
Adds seventy minutes at a working sheepdog farm in Joyce Country to the abbey stop. A later start, a smaller coach, and no ticket named for either gate.
From $135 per person
Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead.
Nine hours, the longest of the three, reaching Clifden and the Sky Road. You choose one main stop: the free national park, or the abbey at your own expense.
From $58 per person
Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead.
Read what each one covers before you choose on price. The cheapest leaves the gate fee to you.
Compare every Galway tourA coach day north-west, seven and a half to nine hours, through bog and quartzite mountains to a Victorian house on a lake. Connemara has no legal border; in practice the day begins where the road crosses the Corrib past Oughterard and ends where the coach turns at Kylemore, Leenane or Clifden.
All three of these days go into it, and none of them reaches the whole of it. Choosing your day is really choosing which third you see.
Where the Clare road gives you limestone pavement and a cliff, this one gives you blanket bog, mountains, sea inlets and lakes. If you have two days, they make a pair.
Kylemore Abbey has a house, a neo-Gothic church, a mausoleum and a restored walled garden reached by shuttle. Two hours there is a visit rather than a photo stop.
There is no boat in any of these days. They run in rain, which makes one of them the obvious swap when a gale cancels an island crossing.
Free, on twenty-four hours' notice by telephone. The Clare departures mostly do not.
The honest comparison is between a region and a single sight, and the fares do not tell you which is which.
| A Connemara day | A Cliffs of Moher day | |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | 7h 30m to 9 | 8 to 9 |
| The main stop | Kylemore Abbey, 2 to 3 hours | The cliff top, 90 minutes |
| The paid gate | The abbey — in one fare, at the gate on another | The Cliffs of Moher — in four fares of seven |
| Hotel pick-up | On two of the three, free with notice | On one of six |
| Weather risk | None | None |
| Cheapest fare | $58 | $65 |
Take the cliffs first if you have one day — it is the thing people come to Ireland's west for. Take Connemara second, because it is the one that surprises people.
Fares run from $58 to $135. Departures leave Merchants Road at 9:30 and Forster Street at 9:45 and 10:15, so the later starts give you a slower morning. The nine-hour day reaches furthest west and gives the longest single stop; the seven-and-a-half-hour ones turn at Kylemore.
The roads are bendy and travellers mention car sickness on this route more than on the Clare one. Sit forward if that affects you, and note that two operators need you to bring your own child seat for under-fives.
If you have only one day in Galway, take the cliffs instead — they are what most people came for, and the Cliffs of Moher tours page compares them. If you want to walk rather than tour a house, the day that offers Connemara National Park gives you three hours on the Diamond Hill loops and charges nothing for them. And if the point of the trip is the water, an island day puts a ferry into it instead.
Seven and a half hours, two hours at Kylemore Abbey, and free hotel pick-up on a day's notice.
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