Wanderung · Co. Galway
The Benna Beola — the sharp-peaked quartzite range of Connemara National Park, Benbaun at 729 m at its height, with the 16-km Glencoaghan Horseshoe, considered one of the best ridge-walks in Ireland.
The Twelve Bens, County galway — photo by Louis-Michel Desert
The Twelve Bens — or the Twelve Pins, also called the Benna Beola (Na Beanna Beola in Irish, meaning “the peaks of Beola”) — are a mountain range of mostly sharp-peaked quartzite summits and ridges in Connemara National Park in County Galway, in the west of Ireland. The highest point is Benbaun, at 729 metres. The range is the country's quartzite in its purest form: the bare peaks, the ridges between them, and the bog that the peaks stand up out of — the walk up it is the big day out of the Connemara country.
The widest definition of the range includes the Garraun Complex to the north as well as several isolated peaks to the west, and it is designated a 16,163-hectare Special Area of Conservation — the conservation status is the reason the country is the way it is, and the boundary is the place the walk goes over. Topographically, the range is partnered with the Maumturks range to the east of the Inagh valley — the two ranges that make the Connemara mountains, with the Inagh between them.
The range is a popular location for hill-walking, with the 16-kilometre, 8–9 hour Glencoaghan Horseshoe — considered one of the best ridge-walks in Ireland. The Horseshoe takes in the peaks around the central bowl, up over the quartzite and down the other side, and it is the walk that the range is known for: a full day, the peaks in a circle, and the light on the bog in between. The weather on the range is the whole story — the peaks are bare and the ridges have no cover, and the forecast is the thing to check before setting out.
The Twelve Bens are in Connemara National Park, a drive from Galway city and Clifden; the standard approach is from the Glen Akecliff country, and the Glencoaghan Horseshoe is a full day out with time on the peaks. The range is open ground with no cover — check the forecast before the walk, and the quartzite is rough underfoot in the wet.
Übernachten
Clifden or the Inagh villages put the peaks, the bog and the Horseshoe all within a drive — the full day is the point.
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A castle turned abbey on the shore of Kylemore Lough in Connemara, three kilometres from Letterfrack in Co. Galway — one of the most photographed buildings in the west of Ireland, with a story that goes back to the 1860s.
“Town of the ford of the king” — the medieval town on the River Clare, 25 km east of Galway, with the town wall, the castle, the priory, the 13th-century street-plan and the song that made its fields famous.
The 1754 country house on Ballynahinch Lake, directly overlooked by Benlettery of the Twelve Bens — home once to Richard Martin, “Humanity Dick”, founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, now a hotel in a private estate.
The Gaeltacht focal point of west Connemara — a Garda station, the lifeboat, the health centre and the university's Irish-language centre, at the edge of the bog country 74 km west of Galway.