Ireland: Cliffs of Moher At Sunset

Cliffs of Moher is a UNESCO World Heritage site that is one of Ireland’s most spectacular and visited natural landmarks and this can be packed with people if you arrive during the day on a high season. Well, we arrived one hour before the closure and enjoyed the almost empty site in the last rays of a stunning setting sun. This postcard-material site stretches for 14 km along the coastline with vertical cliffs plunging 214 m directly into the Atlantic Ocean, offering breathtaking panoramic views of the Aran Islands, Galway Bay, and the hills of Connemara. Since 1988 Cliffs of Moher serve as a fauna refuge to over 30,000 birds – thousands of Atlantic puffins alongside razorbills, guillemots and peregrine falcons. The mid point of the cliffs has a round stone tower – O’Brien’s Tower – built in 1835 by local landowner to attract Victorian tourists. It can get insanely windy here and we almost got blown away. The cliffs famously appear in The Princess Bride as the Cliffs of Insanity and in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as the setting of a dark sea cave.