We had met in Galway a French couple and two nice French girls. We chatted and drank the evening away. After some classic hostel bounding we elaborated a masterplan for the next day. Interesting day. We took a tour bus with Healey tours to Connemara park but asked them to drop us midparkour in Letterfrack. While the French continued, the couple keeping up with their journey and one of the two others having her return flight the next day couldn’t take the risk of missing it. We promised to meet the last French girl in Galway to keep up.

We started by walking around and kicking back, and ended up in the woods in a cryptic place called the Letterfrack Industrial School Graveyard. A creepy memorial composed of a small shrine, cryptic remembrance wishes to some “lost boys” and a bunch of headstones for boys aged as young as 7 years old. With death dates spanning roughly 20 years. We learned after that it was a memorial to troubled boys that were sent to a boy school in Letterfrack in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and were supposed to be reformed. The boys were actually abused, raped, tortured and some, eventually killed and made to disappear. A grim shrine to a deep wound in Irish history.

We then set to hike Diamond Hill in the national park of Connemara. After a quick and quite breathtaking hike (both in the scenic and pulmonary sense) we were on the top.

During our 3 part ascension there were many tourists but the further up you would go, the less there would be. That’s when we met Roxie, or simply “Rocks”. She had been running around the first part of the hike alone, having fun with the tourists and reached the top with us cheering for her to follow us. A beautiful dog that had her name given to her for eating, well, rocks. She followed us, played with us, ran downhill with us and would obey us. The more we talked to her, the more she followed. And people know one thing about me, I can talk alright…

So it followed us, befriended us and played with us until we reached the bottom of the hill. When after asking around the locals, we identified her owner as Molly. The same Molly as “Molly’s pub”. Brought Rocks back and called it a day. I would’ve brought her to Germany…