IRISH EYES
Sharon Stephenson loses herself in the many delights of the Emerald Isle
Ireland has exceptionally beautiful scenery, but it’s also 50 shades of green and potato bread, and it’s Sinead O’Connor playing in the background while you sip Guinness in a country pub smaller than your kitchen. It’s hard-to-understand Gaelic football and a land with a thick slice of history beneath a modern cosmopolitan icing.
If you’re one of the roughly 600,000 Kiwis who can claim Irish ancestry, or you’re interested in any of the following: history, landscapes, literature, religion, music, craic (fun) and some of the friendliest people on earth – then you’re in luck, because the Emerald Isle will over-deliver on every score.
Divided into Northern Ireland and the southern Republic of Ireland, the only real way to know you’ve passed from one to the other is the change from British pounds in the north to euros in the south and speed limits that switch from miles to kilometres. That ease of access could change with Brexit but for now, the whole island is easy to navigate and because it’s a compact 280km wide and 486km long, it shouldn’t take long to do so.
Most of us visit Ireland with at least a little foreknowledge: Belfast is the gritty place that made headlines during The Troubles of the 1960s-90s that effectively turned it into a no-go zone. But thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the sectarian violence, plus the Titanic Museum and the TV show Game of Thrones, which was filmed here, the city is now pumping.
Dublin, meanwhile, looms large as the home of James Joyce, The Book of Kells, U2 and the River Liffey.
But the bits in between are also worth a look: the beautiful and remote Dingle Peninsula (1, 2), the Giant’s Causeway and the Ring of Kerry, a 170km loop around ancient monuments, World Heritage sites and deserted beaches.
Here are some of Ireland’s best attractions, plus a castle where you get to live out your Downton Abbey fantasies.
GUINNESS STOREHOUSE (3)
If Paris has its cafes, then Dublin has its pubs — close to 800 of them in this city of about 1.36 million people. One you can’t miss is Gravity Bar, at the top of the Guinness Storehouse. This historic site is where Arthur Guinness gave his name to Ireland’s national drink in 1759 and is Dublin’s top tourist attraction.
The 22ha site at St James’ Gate is home to the largest brewery in Europe and it’s estimated around 10 million glasses of Guinness are sipped in 151 countries around the world each day. The interactive tour is a 101 of brewing, as well as a fascinating look back at the history of the iconic stout which is made with just four ingredients – barley, hops, yeast and water.
The tour also details the story of Arthur Guinness and how he helped shape Dublin.
But the real fun is to be had at Gravity Bar, where everyone gets a complimentary drink of what’s been called Irish Champagne or the Black Stuff (nowhere does Guinness taste as fresh as it does here). High atop the seven-storey building, the bar also boasts the best views in town.
CLIFFS OF MOHER (4)
You might know them as the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess
Bride movie or as the backdrop to a million Game of Thrones shots, but these natural wonders just south of Galway are one of Ireland’s most visited attractions.
Rising to 214m and stretching for 14km above the raw, churning Atlantic, the cliffs were home to people as far back as 2000 years ago. They take their name from a ruined promontory fort that was demolished during the Napoleonic wars to make room for a signal tower.
It’s a place of windswept, barren beauty where, on a clear day, you can see the Aran Islands, Galway Bay and the Maum Turk Mountains in Connemara. Since 1979 it’s also been a Special Protected Area, home to Ireland’s largest mainland seabird nesting colony, including puffins (5), peregrine falcons and rare choughs (Celtic crows). Locals who warn “the wind can take out an eye” aren’t kidding: trees grow horizontally here and coats and scarves are required clothing no matter the time of year. But rug up well and enjoy the wild and rugged edge-of-the-world experience on this tapering finger of land that pokes its nose into the Atlantic Ocean.
BLARNEY STONE (6)
Kiss the Blarney Stone, they say, and it will give you the gift of the gab. What they don’t tell you is you have to hang upside down over a 10-storey drop to kiss the rock. It’s perfectly safe, though if you don’t fancy that nor need any help in the eloquence department, then a wander round the 573-year-old castle’s extensive gardens is just as much fun (don’t miss the noxious plants such as opium and ricin that were used for medicinal purposes in the Middle Ages).
This being Ireland, there are numerous legends as to how the hunk of limestone made its way to the castle, which sits just outside of Cork. One of those involves Cormac Laidir McCarthy, the builder of Blarney Castle, who was involved in a lawsuit in the 15th century. He appealed to Clíodhna, Queen of the Banshees, for her assistance and she advised Cormac to kiss the first stone he found on his way to court. He did so and pleaded his case with great eloquence. Naturally, he won. So impressed was Cormac, he incorporated the stone into the castle’s battlements for others to be able to do the same.