Allow us to take you on a romantic journey. Picture yourself far out on the Atlantic Ocean, skimming over the waves, visited by gulls and terns, heading east toward the Old World, to the continent that gave birth to Plato and Picasso and Piaf.

As you get closer, the landmass you see ahead of you is an island on the westernmost fringes of Europe, an island where the early Celtic Christians created an outpost of culture and civilisation during a dark period in our history. Nearer still, you find yourself passing the three whale-like humps that are the Aran Islands, and you pass into the sheltering arms of a natural deep harbour, a place that is so well loved it inspired not one but two songs that have travelled around the world – the Galway Bay of Bing Crosby as well as the other Galway Bay of native Galway singer Dolores Keane.

Galway has a special place in the hearts and imaginations of all who visit these shores. It is one of the thirty-two counties on the island of Ireland, one of the principal counties of the province of Connacht and its city is known as the City of the Tribes. There are some magnificent edifices in the city, but the most glorious aspect of Galway is its setting and its connection with the natural world around it. In how many cities do wild salmon leap upstream to begin their cycle of life all over again?

Standing close to the sea is a little cluster of houses, a settlement that was home to the fishermen of Galway for centuries – an area known as the Claddagh. That place is still home to the proudest people of Galway, proud of their traditions and their close relationship with the ocean that rolls up to their doors. Here, wearing the old Claddagh costume of long woollen skirt, tight-fitting bodice and capacious shawl, the women waited, holding their breath until their menfolk came safely home from fishing the wild Atlantic waters. Here and all over Galway you’ll find musicians, dancers who kept alive the traditional steps that found worldwide fame in shows such as Riverdance, and sean nos singers who continue to sing in the ancient and profoundly emotional style of their ancestors.

And in Galway you’ll also find musicians of a much more contemporary calling. That is one of the secrets of the city – it never stands still, never turns into a museum. It is always evolving and renewing itself and the same goes for its people, not least the Galway girls.

Right beside the Claddagh is the Spanish Arch, a fine old structure that commemorates Galway’s links with the Spanish who sailed here hundreds of years ago in a bid to help Ireland with its long fight for freedom and to escape from the dominance of the English crown. As history relates, the Spanish fleet encountered a terrible storm that left many of its ships wrecked and sunk, and the story goes that those sailors who managed to make it to dry land decided to stay on and make their lives in this new country where the people had a special attraction, especially the women of Galway, famed for their beauty. Perhaps the influence of the Spanish genes accounts for the dark hair of so many of the Galway women, although the Celtic side to their heritage often gives them eyes of a startling blue.

Go back in history as far as you like, and you’ll find that the women of the west were outstanding. Back in the sixteenth century the merchants of Galway found their merchant ships under attack by the famed Granuaile, Grace O’Malley, a pirate queen who met Elizabeth I of England face to face, as a monarch and her equal. For centuries the women of the Claddagh were known for their distinctive dress and the gold ring that they wore, consisting of a heart, a crown and two hands. The manner in which they wore the ring indicated if they were free and single or if they were married, and the symbolism of the heart, the hands, the crown is of mythic origin.

Around the turn of the last century, two Galway women were remarkable in very different ways, one a landed aristocrat with a deep love of Ireland and its native culture, the other a girl of little education and no wealth. Lady Gregory, of Coole Park, near Gort, was one of the most influential figures in the movement that became known as the Celtic Revival. At her house gathered poets and playwrights, politicians and academics, all keen to discuss the ways in which Ireland could assert its own language, its traditions and its culture after centuries of its being quenched by the culture of the British imperial power.

Local people around Coole remember her as a kind, gentle-voiced woman who loved Ireland, who wrote about it and encouraged her friends to do what they could for the country – friends such as George Bernard Shaw, J M Synge, George Russell (AE) and her good friend and neighbour, W B Yeats. Two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature are included in that list, so it was no mean circle of acquaintance!

But while Lady Gregory was welcoming visitors to her grand house at Coole Park and helping to found Ireland’s national theatre in Dublin, the Abbey Theatre, a simple girl from No 4, Bowling Green, Galway city caught the eye of the greatest novelist of the twentieth century – James Joyce. He saw Nora Barnacle walking along a street and he fell in love with her on the spot. Joyce, who had surely seen the loveliest girls in the city of Dublin, was smitten by this Galway girl and she became his muse and his lifelong companion, wife and mother to his children. The day chosen by Joyce to be his Bloomsday in Ulysses is June 16th 1904, the day on which Joyce had his first romantic encounter with Nora.

In our own times the Galway girl remains something special. She stands out for her independence and her style. The Galway girl doesn’t follow fashion – she sets it. Any street in the city will deliver evidence of how the young women put together a look that is attractive and distinctive and right across the county, from Athenry to Kinvara, and from Portumna to Tuam to Clifden, they know that appearance gives out a signal about personality, so they add little touches, little quirky twists to the high street look, and they achieve something original and pleasing. The Galway girl has never been, nor is ever going to be a slave to fashion or listen to what other people tell her to do. The Galway girl has a mind of her own and a look of her own.

Think of Maureen O’Hara, giving back to John Wayne just as good as she gets, and better, in the iconic film The Quiet Man, much of which was shot in Co Galway. That red-haired, white-skinned style is another look that you find among the women of the west. You’ll see Galway girls with thrilling flame-coloured tresses and a fine sprinkle of freckles across a white skin that would make any Hollywood star envious.

If you haven’t yet been convinced, then all you have to do is travel to that county on the far shores of Europe and see for yourself what the girls of Galway are really like. Passionate and proud, beautiful and daring, independent and light-hearted, they might just steal your heart away.

Galway girl…spirit of style