Memories to treasure from wild Connemara
AFTER a recent feature on Southern Ireland, I received two enquiries about the country which really made me smile, they played into my hands if you like.
Firstly, where would I go, to ‘get away from it all’, and ‘what was your most memorable trip’?
Easy-peasy, as both questions lead to one place. It was 35 years ago, when I first visited the Wild West of Connemara, a vast and lonely expanse of bogland, lakes and mountains, which run away into the whitefringed Atlantic, where aquamarine waves rise apple green and dash up the white strands in a frothy fillagree, scattering sanderlings and oystercatchers, who defy the foam.
I’m talking 50 miles beyond Galway; long before the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger, when run-down cottages could be snapped up for £5,000 or less, and I’ll never forget passing the ancient bridge seen in the film The Quiet Man for the first time, I just knew it was a special place.
At the time I wrote the following, which is also on my dad’s headstone.
He was called John, and although born in England his grandmother was from Wexford, and he loved places like Connemara.
He was first taken to the west by my mum, a Dubliner, and I’m sure he would have liked the sentiments of the verse.
Even in winter, fuschia hedges bloom in mild Connemara, and donkeys hold sway on roads that last saw real snow in 1963.
Has it changed? Not on your life. Okay, there’s a few more houses, and the roads a little busier, but the vital attractions remain intact, including Roy Griffin’s O’Dowd’s Bar at Roundstone for the finest Guinness and Seafood Chowder.
However, there is one thing I expected to be long gone when I returned, but as I drove away from Dog’s Bay last week, as if by magic, a fine-looking donkey ran down the middle of the road just after I had thought of my words above. Spooky does not do it justice.
I thought of my dad, my 26-year-old twin sons, Oisin and Culain, my 15-year-old daughter Niamh, all Irish names you’ll notice, and indeed all the friends who have made the pilgrimage with me over the past three decades.
It was a moving moment, but Connemara is like that.
You need to go to make your own, and believe me, they will happen.
The Connemara National Park, established in 1980, is quite literally packed with wildlife.
In a recent competition to record as many species as possible in one day, the park team recorded 542 different plants and animals.
By any standard, the tally is amazing and included everything from the rarest of rare bog plants, to the speedy peregrine, and from the humble dulse – seaweed – to the mighty raven.
For readers intent on following my footsteps, Shamrock Cottages at: www.shamrockcottages. co.uk is your best bet.
My friend Matthew Boyd individually checks his cottages, for location and standard, and over the years I’ve stayed in many of them; from the one habitable house on the uninhabited Oilean Maisean, just off the coast by Carna, to the beachside Rossadilisk House near Cleggan. You can go posh, or you can go basic, but one thing they all have in common is that they are all sited in beautiful locations.
The house on Oilean Maisean, where this picture was taken, sleeps up to 11, and, if not booked, would cost you £269.00 for one week from this Saturday – May 16 – and that includes the ferry from Holyhead.
The island is completely uninhabited for most of the year, with no facilities or shops, and is about half-a-mile wide and nearly three quarters of a mile long and is situated about a quarter-of-a-mile off the mainland.
Small white beaches, derelict cottages and amazing bird life with fine views of the intriguing coastline and numerous islands make this location ideal for artist, naturalist or for those who just want to be alone.
The owner will carry clients across to the island in his traditional fishing boat, called a currach.
As Mrs Doyle said on Father Ted: “Go on, go on,” you know you want to. And when you do, let the rest of us know about our own Connemara moments.