Travel Go wild The

Travel Go wild The F-PACE SVR’s sporty interior is the perfect vantage point from which to soak up expansive views, while County Clare’s roads urge you to explore its array of delights beach, though the wind on this day could flatten an ox, to Milltown Malbay and the miniscule Clery’s, a pub of two rooms, one of which is the landlady’s own lounge. In the other, fists raised pints, steps were danced, poems recited, jokes told and a voice as pure as mountain spring water sang Bright Blue Rose. If you were local you’d take it in your stride, but if you were a stranger here, as I was, you could think you’d stumbled on the mother lode. Clare grows more otherworldly as you move north. The overwhelming Cliffs of Moher look out to the Aran Islands and the ocean beyond like 200-metre-high sentinels. To the east is the Burren, a natural wonder covered in swirls and cliffs, patches of woodland and the disappearing lakes known as turloughs. In the wide view it is desolate, eerie and lunar. In close-up it is intricate and delicate, with tufts of sweet grass and flowers between the regimented strips of pale grey limestone. In the F-PACE you are perched a little higher. The view is expansive, the seats a firm embrace, the handling fluid. Powered by a 550PS V8 engine, we glided as if on a cushion of air past tractors, bicycles and herds of cows until we hit Galway. I knew the city decades ago. It was a partly derelict but nevertheless seductive place known then as the Graveyard of Ambition for the way it drew people in, particularly artistic people, like quicksand. They would arrive with bright eyes carrying concertinas, paintbrushes and typewriters, and not be seen again outside the city limits, or even their favourite pubs. But Galway dusted itself off and, along with the Irish economy in general, grew in wealth, size and confidence. Now, nine out of the world’s ten leading medical technology companies have bases here. Nearly a quarter of its population was born outside of Ireland. There are 39 languages spoken in its schools. People come and stay, like their artistic predecessors. Where before there were vacant buildings running with moss, there is now the brightly coloured Latin Quarter. Where the menu was once limited to toasted sandwiches and overdone steaks, there are now restaurants of every kind, two of them with Michelin Stars. Artistic seeds planted “The roof regularly gets raised in Galway, and now it’s about to be raised higher still’’ earlier have burst into bloom – the Druid Theatre Company, Macnas with its street pageantry, the literary festival Cúirt, the Galway International Arts festival, the Film Fleadh, galleries and as ever music in the streets and pubs. The roof regularly gets raised in Galway, and now it’s about to be raised higher still. When it became Ireland’s turn to host a European Capital of Culture, Galway, city and county, put in a bid under the title ‘Making Waves’, suggesting its coastal location, an intention to disrupt and an opening of the way to new talent. They then refined the concept in an unusually serious and open way, holding more than 80 community meetings to narrow down the themes to Language, Landscape and Migration. “When the European Union judges came for an inspection in 2016,” says Brendan McGrath, Chief 64 / Jaguar Magazine Jaguar Magazine / 65