Twelve Bens

The interior of Connemara, with the Twelve Bens (east of Clifden) and the Maamturk Mountains, is lonely and thinly populated - very different from the coastal areas. Its central feature is the group of 12 peaks which are the great landmark of Connemara; the highest is Benbaun (2,356ft/718m), and the others are not much lower. Their steep rock faces are colorful with mosses and lichens, heather and the white quartzite of which they are composed. Access to the hills is over meagre grassland and barren expanses of heath into the side valleys which climb up through the foothills into the mountain world of the Twelve Bens.