Postcard from Ireland - Glengarriff to Dublin

Just when you think you’ve seen all the rugged beauty of the wild west Atlantic coast, you round (yet) another bend and some other view is revealed. If you gave into the temptation to stop the car and take a picture every time you wanted to when driving through the Killarney National Park, your progress would resemble a stop-motion animation crossing of the hills and valleys.

There are those of course that have to drive the roads every day – like the chap with the van stopped by the side of the road hefting a sack of sheep feed onto his shoulders. The feeding troughs for the hillside sheep are within easy tipping distance of the road and the sheep seem terribly pleased to see the feeder – I don’t know what sheep feed tastes like, but it’s obviously an improvement on the normal fare of tuft and thistle.

In Killarney itself we stopped for coffee and cheesecake. In accordance with the rule that no meal or snack in Ireland shall consist of less than seven million calories, the huge slice of cheesecake comes with a scoop of ice cream. Nothing sets one up for a long journey quite like metabolising a lot of sugar.

The motorway in Ireland was a revelation – a smooth ribbon of tarmac and, compared to the crowded motorways at home, blissfully free of traffic. Possibly the locals are put off by the signs that adorn the junctions, explaining that motorways are not the place for scooters and learner drivers and, right at the bottom of the list of prohibitions, stating ‘no animals’. Trap racing may have its place in Ireland still, but that place is not the overtaking lane.

The road signs on the motorway continue in gaelic and English. Normally having signs in both languages is a sign of trying to resuscitate a dying language that is dwindling but here in Ireland people do actually speak gaelic and for those who don’t, it adds a delicious sense of being abroad. Visiting Ireland, English speaking and driving on the left, can be somewhat unsettling. There’s much that is familiar but you’re constantly reminded that the place is different to home, in a way less obvious than when you visit, say, France (which is bloody different from home, what with everyone being French).

Gaelic and English may be thriving languages in Ireland, but the most common language is Romanian. I’ve never been anywhere were there are so many foreign workers – including abroad. Obviously the thing that’s done is that

After the wild romance of the south, Dublin is a much more cynical place. It’s the capital city of course and, as cities go, it’s intimate but still manages to hang on to some charm with a historical centre, making much of the Georgian architecture. And, indeed, if you’re looking the craic, then Grafton street is the place to find it. Buskers busk and tourists move along slowly in a Brownian motion of gawking. Possibly the best addition to the street are the flower stalls. They turn street corners into tropical gardens, with the flowers raked up, like waterfalls of colour against the drab city centre.

Tourists too at Temple Bar, this time French school children, all sporting identical orange backpacks, clustered round a busking rock and roll band. Tres cool.

Postcard from Ireland - Cork to Glengarriff

Taking the N71 from Cork to Glengarriff; a word about Irish main roads. One of the most charming things about them, as they twist and turn along the wild Atlantic coast or wind through beautiful countryside (FACT: Ireland contains over 90% of the world’s twists) is that they will suddenly plunge straight through a wee village. You’ll be happily hammering along with only bemused sheep there to witness your speedy progress and the next thing you know you are in a street rather narrower than an anorexic’s belt (usually with cars parked on either side of the street) and pondering the possibility of shopping for a newspaper simply by extending your arm out of the car window, into the newsagent next to you.

To get to the Drombeg stone circle, one of the most famous tourist attractions in the area, you turn off a road, turn off the side road and, just when you’re starting to wonder whether or not you’re actually on a goat trail, you enter the car park.

Walk past the tiny model circle of stones that some wag has put in a nearby field, along a twist in the path and there, emerging from behind the hawthorn hedge, is the stone circle and, behind that, the Atlantic.

This is no henge, so don’t expect something on the scale of Stonehenge or Avebury, but it’s impressive. You can walk around it, touch the stones and take a moment to think.

Or leave an offering. People had – a few coins and a flower (a daffodil, the flower currently in season and, perhaps more importantly, the flower of the Marie Curie cancer charity in the UK and also the leading cancer charity in Ireland) or, on one of the uprights, a mound of coppers in a sea shell placed on top of the stone.

Looking round, you can see why the circle was raised here. Circles are raised in sacred places, they do not make the place sacred. With the hills embracing the field and the Atlantic stretching to infinity, this is a special place.

Knowing how seriously the Irish take their food, it comes as no surprise to learn that next to the stone circle is a Neolithic kitchen. There are two rock lined pits in the earth; one for fire, the other for water. Sudies showed that hot rocks from the fire depositied in the pool of water could raise the temperature to boiling in eight minutes, and it would stay hot for three hours. If this is true then it shows that the priorities in neolitic times were boiling meat; the lack of a soap dish shows that this was a kitchen rather than a bath. So, Neolithic Cork man was well fed with hot food, but smelly.

Glengarriff is a small village running either side of the main road, like many other little villages. The only thing different about this one was that it had our hotel in it. Like otrher irish hotels, this comes with a pub attached to it (that’s right, sod the hotel bar, why have one of thjose when you can have an entire pub?). This was the second pub I happened across a breast feeding mother in. Nursing her three and a half month old baby the lady and I had a brief conversation, while I practiced the art of looking anywhere but at junior and resisted making some quip about draught versus bottled.

Thirty twisty turny minutes away is Castletownbere, a fishing village with a particular claim to fame. There are, I learned, very very many pubs called McCarthy’s bar in this part of Ireland. But this is THE McCarthy’s bar that adorns the front of the book of the same name by the late Pete McCarthy. After walking through the town and trying to wrestle with the apparent defiance of logic that suggested there were more pubs in the town than there was actual town, I ended up in McCarthy’s bar. It is, indeed, a grocers at the front and a bar at the back (actually it’s more like two thirds bar) and it is, without doubt, one of the most charming places to drink I’ve ever been. There must be something about a pub with a literary connection – the Woody Creek Tavern in Aspen is the same, it has a certain quality; maybe it’s the relaxed bar staff, maybe it’s the slightly shabby furniture or maybe it’s the beer (it’s the beer), but the place was fantastic.

It also served, without doubt, the best Guinness in Ireland.