Return to Galway
We are lucky to live on Ireland's West, as anyone who has been here will tell you, it possesses rugged beauty and is inhabited by a friendly and welcoming community. I am a native of Galway myself, but lived away from here for over fifteen years. I spent time in Australia, South East Asia, USA and for the most part Dublin city and County Meath on Ireland's East coast.
Covid-19 was tragic for so many, bringing death, job losses and hardship to so many worldwide. I was extremely lucky in so far as it actually paved the way for me to move back to my home town of Galway.
We live just outside the city in the gorgeous wide open Galway countryside, with Galway city on our doorstep giving us the best of both Urban and Rural living, which is exactly what we wanted when moving West. We have a number of beautiful beaches on our doorstep and that is what this post is going to focus on, the gorgeous beaches and rock pools beside An Spidéal as the Gaelic speaking locals call it or Spiddal as the tourists and some Irish people call it.
All to ourself
We have lots of beaches and picturesque coastal areas right on our doorstep spread around the surrounding hinterland. We often visit these as a family on warmer Summer days. Last week was not that warm, but one of my sons went on a play date and my wife was tired, so I decided to go to the beach with my 3 year old and 9 year old sons.
My sister had told me about a beautiful secluded beach, but I did not follow the directions perfectly and we ended up in a slightly different location, a happy accident if you will. Here are some photos of this coastal paradise:
"Searching for Creatures"
At our first accidental location, there were rock pools galore and after spotting a crab in one pool my kids started searching for more creatures and they found loads, which was fun, educational and both my boys loved the adventure and felt like mini Bear Grylls as they navigated the rocks carefully with my regularly carrying my 3 year old little man.
Have a look at the photos below to see all of the sea creatures that we found, zoom in and you'll find even more, how many can you spot? We got well into double figures for the day which the guys were thrilled about.
So many Rockpools
We set out to go to the beach for a swim and to make some sand castles and kick around the football, and we ended up finding an deserted beach and an abundance of rock pools and marine life, which was exactly what my kids love.
They spent a number of hours exploring the rocks pools and searching for sea creatures. It really was a lot of fun and anything that puts big smiles on their faces is a win for me.
So we eventually left the rock pools and drove on another mile or so to find the beach that we had set out to find in the first place and it was gorgeous with only a handful of people. I did not get many photos this time, as we were busy swimming, making sand castles and playing football.
I did manage to get a few snaps though which I've included below.
Oh yes, we also found this little mini beach up near the rock pools and set about building some sand castles, but they would not set as this sand was too course and dry, but luckily the next beach had perfect sand castle building sand, so our luck was in.
That's it folks, that's An Spidéal and it's beautiful coastline, if you're ever in the neighbourhood pop around and if ya meet anyone, tell them 
These photos are all my own captured on my Samsung Smartphone
