Days 25-26

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Day 25: Dublin-Ballindine

We rose latish and, amazingly, navigated our way out of Dublin with hardly a wrong turn, and then set out on the road west to County Mayo. This is not a highway that ring-roads the population along the way, but allows you a glimpse of a succession of towns and villages. Often more than a glimpse, owing to the odd local traffic jam.

The route featured a stop at a weekly village market that was possibly the smallest we’ve ever seen – one table of preserves and one of hand-knits – and elsewhere, two shop windows advertising specials on boys’ communion wear. The journey was about three hours’ drive, but with lunch break and a bit of a walk it was mid-afternoon when we arrived at our cottage accommodation for the next four nights. Cheap as chips and just as comforting. We met the proprietor, Martin, who is taciturn, not especially helpful, yet not unfriendly – he just seems out of his comfort zone in this role, and we suspect Mrs. Martin may be unavailable. Our next-door neighbour Frank is by contrast classically Irish-voluble. He was setting an electric fence in order for his prettily painted one-week foal and its mother to graze on our front lawn for the duration – he and Helen had a merry discussion on things equine – and he gave us valuable hints on local pubs and eating.

On our way out of town for dinner this evening we stopped for a while to watch our first game of Gaelic football, a girls’ match, perhaps U15 or so. The skills were startlingly good, and there were probably 100 people in attendance. Annoyingly, I had left the camera behind. We ate well at Frank’s recommended restaurant in the nearby town of Claremorris, then headed for McWilliam’s Hotel there for the opening of the local Fleadh Cheoil: roughly the Irish equivalent of an eisteddfod, but with a late licence. It appeared that we were the only non-locals in the room. We don’t often leave an event after midnight these days, but the music and dance just kept on coming and was showing no signs of giving up when we finally timed out.


Day 26: Ballindine – Sligo outing

Our tour of Co. Sligo was rather a Yeats day. On the way north we visited a 6000-year-old megalithic cemetery, which boasts some 50-odd burial chambers, a few of them remarkably well-preserved. Most, however, have many stones missing, and a glance around at the dry stone walls of the surrounding fields is enough to suggest the destination of many of the absent.

That site, incidentally, was at Carrowmore. It took a while to find it. After arriving at Carrowmore (which in itself involved a wrong turn or two), but seeing no tell-tale brown tourist signage, we asked a roadside local, who told us pityingly that there are two Carrowmores. Sadly, we were at the wrong one, and we would have to retrace our route to the main road and go on from there. So that was a good start. (Regular readers will be starting to detect a recurring theme here that Ireland is very easy to get lost in.)

A tour around Lough Gill took us to Dooney Rock (as in Yeats’ Fiddler Of), from which there is a pretty view of the lough, and then to a point on the shore with a view of the Lake Isle of Innisfree. It must be said that, pretty as the island is, it would be difficult to see it as romantically different from some other isles in other loughs in western Ireland seen so far, were it not for the tourist signage.

Yeats’ grave, with that of the plucky Georgina, is in the cemetery of the church at Drumcliff, which also boasts a remarkably well-preserved eleventh-century high cross, its readily identifiable carvings little weathered by a thousand years of Atlantic wind and rain.

In the Irish Times travel section the previous week there had appeared a description of a scenic drive, known as the Gleniff Horseshoe, which loops around a valley nestling below the looming grandeur of Benbulben. It was serendipitous that we should be heading for just that district, so – though it was getting late – we drove on the extra distance, and it was well worth it. The drive was made slightly more difficult by several convoys of vintage Minis, obviously on a car rally, traversing the very narrow tarmac of the loop in the opposite direction. Any other make would have been a much greater nuisance. Then on the way home, a couple of deer on the road, larger than the ones we saw in on Ekero in Sweden. They seem to be more sensible about cars than kangaroos are.

- Andrew

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