Farewell to Ireland

The Devil's Chimney walk, Sligo

Dearest, most lovely, Emerald Isle,

We're so sorry. We love you - God, we love you.

It's not you; it's us. Really, it's true - I'm not trying to spare your feelings. Besides, what good would that do? You've been all we could think to hope for, perhaps even more, but that was so before we came along to tell you so, and our absence will take none of that from you.

But we want you to know, although you will keep on in your majesty and delicacy, your buttery golden greens and your dark, secretive greens, your perfect, brilliant greens and every other green under the sun, and you will fade in the winter and spill in May into ever-brighter technicolor - except an oddly specifically green sort of technicolor, which forgot about the rest of the spectrum - and we are no more to you than one kiss among thousands, every second, on your skin -

we love you.

We won't forget you.

And we promise we'll come back.

***

Bunduff Lough, Sligo

We're choosing the very worst moment to cut short our time here. We arrived at the very worst moment, too, when the days were at their gloomiest and the weather at its most uninspiring. And now, when the sun is (miraculously) shining and the countryside has transformed itself into a very heaven, we're off again.

A tiny, idyllic river, found during one of these wanders

Excited as we are for a return to adventure on the high seas (more on that to come on Cruising With the Kitties), our feelings are decidedly mixed. I can't even bring myself to pun (and how perfect would this title have been? 'Farewell' is  just begging for an Eire in it). There isn't, arguably, anything so very new or different or special about Ireland's beauty. Everywhere we've been and found ourselves stunned into cliché by the extravagantly gorgeous scenery, you could find an equivalent sort of extravagantly gorgeous scene in, say, the UK, if you knew where to look.

It's just that here, it's fucking everywhere.

And there's no one else around to spoil the view.

We've developed a habit of picking a nearby road, mostly at random, or on the basis of what's closest to drive to, and wandering along it to see where it goes. These aren't official walks, just little local roads with a grassy strip down the middle that see about two cars an hour, but this hobby has yet to fail to offer us something to stare at and marvel.

Me, ridiculously pleased about paddling in the sea

Or take today when, in more organised fashion, we headed off to Bunduff Lough, a lough so small it barely merits the name, which sits right by the sea. We followed another teeny-tiny rural road around its perimeter, fantasising about purchasing every single house we passed, including one so tumble-down you couldn't see the floor for vegetation and which had grown its very own turf roof, and observed repeatedly, with no diminishing of enthusiasm, that, on a day like today, there was nowhere in the world we'd rather be. 

Which is really saying something! The world has no shortage of pleasures on offer. And this was before we found a little grassy path by the river, covered in daisies, that led to the beach, where we ran, barefoot, into the (shockingly cold) sea.

The way down to the sea; the white on the right hand side is all daisies. You can also just make out a castle in the distance.

And that's how we came to the decision to come back and honeymoon in our own house in a few months' time. It's an unorthodox choice, perhaps, but the only rational one when there's nowhere else you'd rather be.

It's about the only way we could bear to leave.

MEire-y Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Looking down over Lough Melvin, a bit further along the road from our house

The puns are only getting worse, I know, and I'm late using this particular one. Christmas crept up and then by and this blog remained sadly neglected, so I offer here a few choice observations and excursions from our first month in Ireland.

First of all, the place is empty. Ireland isn't a large country, but it's two thirds the size of England, yet has less than a tenth the population. And 40% of that Irish population lives within commuting distance of Dublin. The view from our house stretches for miles, and the only vague attempt at organised civilisation we can see is Garrison, a small village of about 350 people, which is actually in Northern Ireland anyway. Our nearest Irish village, Rossinver, is basically a crossroads where a few houses happen to coincide. Other than that, it's all fields and woods (and a great big lake), with farmhouses and cottages scattered about. And a good number of those cottages are only half built or just abandoned; it's a renovator's dream island. When you drive along the country roads you're as likely to meet confused, lost sheep as other drivers. We've been cheerfully treating the little local roads as helpfully surfaced footpaths. 

The downside of all this emptiness is that it appears to have led to an excess of zeal in cartographers, who have faithfully recorded the tiniest, steepest and least passable farm tracks as 'roads', resulting in our Sat Nav occasionally sending us on shortcuts where we've been forced to climb muddy tracks so narrow, winding and steep that we thought, while we sat at a 60 degree angle spinning our tyres anxiously, that we might never escape them.

Rainbow over the sea, from Bundoran beach

So far, Ireland has upheld its reputation for rain in enthusiastic fashion. We've seen rain in all its various guises, but most frequently moving across the sky in heavy grey bands, leaving rainbows in its wake. I've seen more rainbows in a month than I'd expect in a year.

In between, though, the sun bursts through, and even in this very soggy world in the middle of winter we've been able to sneak out of the house in the precious hours of glossy golden light to take advantage of blue skies while we can. 

Fowley's Falls

With its abundance of rainfall, Ireland has an abundance of water features to match; you can barely drive a mile before having to cross part of its web of rivers, and there are lakes dotted about all over the place. Just down the road from our house is a set of falls called 'Fowley's Falls; we went to visit thinking it would be a sweet little waterfall, only marked because of the lack of anything else to remark on in the area, but we were rather surprised to find it quite impressive - the energy it produces ought to be enough to power the entire village. 

For a more noteworthy excursion we chose a beautifully sunny morning to visit Glencar Waterfall while my mum was staying with us. You can see a tall rush of water falling from the cliffs opposite the main road we take to Sligo, which was particularly impressive after all the recent rain, so we were very keen to view it up close and discover more about it.

What we discovered, when we got there, was that this inspiring cliffside cascade was not the Glencar Waterfall at all. Indeed, it doesn't seem to have a name; we suspect it only appears at times of high rainfall. Tucked away in the hill, with trees surrounding it, was another, more modest but still lovely waterfall, which inspired part of the Yeats poem The Stolen Child* (you can find the full poem here: http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/816/):

We oohed and aahed appropriately, and then went for a wander along the banks of the nearby Glencar Lake, which was only a little bit flooded. With the mountains, still tipped in white from an earlier snow, rising above it and the sun in a bright sky it was incomparably pretty, enough so to make one overlook the fact that much of the time it seems as though the rain always has been and always will be falling. We're still very much looking forward to Spring, however.

Glencar Lake

Glencar Waterfall

*The verse in question reads:

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Are we making a serious Eire-or?

A bare and empty living room

You know how, in advance of a significant event or journey, you think about all the things that could possibly go wrong, over and over? And then you try to talk yourself down from that state of excess anxiety with the rationalisation that it will be fine, shut up and go to sleep?

OK, this probably isn't universal. Some people must be very good at not worrying. But for me at least, you think you've covered everything you had to worry about; no new fears needed here! And then something else entirely goes wrong and you feel highly blindsided, as if your thorough consideration of all the anticipatable issues ought to have protected you from this totally unexpected one.

 Sorry, getting a little ahead of myself. But this was an intensely stressful journey, and I'd like to get the dramatic woe-is-me part out of the way so I can revert to my preferred understatement.

Our trip started off OK, in fairness. We somehow managed to fit everything into the car, and the roof did not collapse under the weight of my books. We remembered that we'd forgotten our bottles of
water only a minute after we drove away for what was supposed to be the last time, and the cats made only the gentlest of protests about being packed away for a six hour car ride. The sun even came out as we drove north, which seemed a good omen.

And then we got the news that, in relation to our house sale falling through, we were being sued*. Yay! It was hard to be too chirpy after that particular phone call.

As if to compensate, though, the cats seemed to have been replaced with angelic furry impostors who wouldn't dream of miaowing their way through the entire journey to the cattery and back. As this was our chief concern when it came to driving across three countries with all our belongings, we welled up like proud parents beholding their child's first expertly filled nappy.

Snow in the Pyrenees - it was worse than it looks!

On the second day, it occurred to me that it might snow as we came over the Pyrenees, but I reassured myself it wouldn't be that bad. It's the main motorway between France and Spain! They must be prepared for such events, thought I. Well, they are, but holy shit does it snow up there. The photos I took don't quite do it justice, but I was really quite scared. We were down to one lane a lot of the time, and eyeing up gritters to decide whether it was worth slowing down enough to drive behind them.

Eventually, of course, we came down from the mountains and towards the border with France and began to relax a little. After that we had only the several miles of traffic jam around Bordeaux to contend with.

'I hate the French,' muttered Peter, as we crawled at twenty miles an hour around the Bordeaux ring road. 'With their stupid cars and wanting to go to Bordeaux.'

Eventually, grumpy and aching and feeling very sorry for our poor cats, we made it to our hotel and collapsed for the evening. Well, I did. As one of us had to stay with the cats, Peter fulfilled the role of hunter-gatherer and went off in search of food to bring back, which he accomplished by hopping across the motorway on foot to get to the local McDonalds. Who says romance is dead?

They actually got in there voluntarily

Our third day's driving was to take us to the ferry port in Cherbourg, fittingly the same port that was our first stop in France when we set off in our boat three and a half years ago. We'd left plenty of time - too much time, in fact - so weren't anticipating problems.

However, northern France doesn't seem to believe in having service stations on its motorways. Its 'aires' were little more than large car parks with horrifyingly unpleasant toilets and a few picnic benches. Having passed three of these in a row and with our range counter beginning to get rather worryingly low, we decided to come off the motorway at the next exit and find the nearest petrol station with satnav. So far so good; there was one only a couple of km away. Which, when we got there, was, inevitably, closed.

Beginning to feel like we were going to use the last of our fuel driving hopelessly around the French countryside, we headed for the next one, which took us through a pretty little town with major roadworks and a diversion in place. Swearing, we followed said diversion, and then -

Bit of background - our car is an English car, with the driver on the wrong side for European roads. This, it turns out, results in reduced visibility at the front left hand side of the car. The diversion, meanwhile, involved a large concrete block being placed in the road to guide cars to the right around the roadworks. With the result that Peter couldn't see it at all and drove straight over it.

'Careful. CAREFUL!' I yelled, too late, as we heard a thud, a scrape, and another thud, as our two left hand wheels jolted over the block.

'Do you think we burst a tyre?' Peter said, slightly redundantly.

There was a distinct hissing sound.

'I think so.'

More swearing.

We coastly gently to a wheezing, uneven stop about 100 yards later, and got out to examine the tyres. One completely flat already, the other sinking quickly to the ground. At this point, catching our ferry four hours later did not seem like a particularly strong possibility.

But then our luck returned, and we noticed that we'd happened to pull in right beside two separate garages, one for motorbikes, one for cars. The guy in the bike garage spoke tolerable English, and summoned the guy from the car garage to help. They had to get in tyres for our niche, fancy English car from another garage, but with a much appreciated sense of urgency they headed straight out to collect them, and called on several other members of staff at the car garage to come to work and pitch in.

Peter attributes their very kind help to my sitting there peering anxiously out of the window looking like my world had fallen apart and kicking into action damsel-in-distress syndrome, but I prefer to believe they were just nice. Either way, in an incredibly short space of time we were on our way again, still with an hour to spare to make our ferry in time.

From there, everything went pretty swimmingly. We were early to the ferry, which meant we sat around for a very long time feeling guilty for submitting our cats to this misery, but eventually we were loaded, put our cats in the kennels (feeling guiltier still) and headed for our four star cabin. The seas were calm, and with said four star cabin came a fruit bowl and complimentary wine. All was basically right with the world.

When it arrived in Rosslare, south of Dublin, we were one of the first off the ferry and had little of the usual rigmarole of sitting in endless queues waiting to go through passport control; in only a few minutes we were out on the road and heading north. Our landlord met us in the nearest town to our new house and offered to show us the way - which was a very good thing indeed as we'd never have found it without him. He bowled along tiny, bendy country lanes at the kind of speed that seemed to indicate he thought he had a racing driver following him, rather than an exhausted pair of humans and a displeased pair of cats, and after we'd taken several alarmingly steep and twisty roads we pulled in, very suddenly, to our drive.

It's quite a remote place, and it was dark and gloomy and rainy, and we were feeling very nostalgic for our little house in the Spanish sun where it doesn't get dark at 4 in the afternoon and barely rains at all.

But we'd chosen this place for a reason. It's not within easy reach of anywhere, and the house, in true Irish fashion, has neither a name nor a number, and it's in one of the wettest parts of Ireland, which is wet enough as it is, but when you stare out of the living room window at this view, it's hard to worry too much about any of that.

*Don't worry. This looks like it will be resolved with only our good spirits and generous dispositions significantly injured.

Up in the Eire

Tomorrow is the beginning of a very long journey, from the south of Spain all the way up to the north of Ireland, and I'm a big ball of restless anxiety. The whole of the past month has been a hellish landscape of uncertainty punctuated by spikes of extra stress and even more uncertainty.

It's a long story, and a dull one, but suffice it to say that selling up and moving to another country is stressful enough at the best of times, and this has not been the best of times. Even now, the DAY BEFORE we move, we don't know whether we'll be moving with a sold house or leaving the agents in charge of selling it again.

Oh well, never mind, no of course I'm not spinning into a homicidal frenzy. Our decision of 'fuck it, we're going anyway' has been a surprisingly calming one, in fact. Moving from a warm country to a famously rainy and chilly one is a grand plan. Bring on the cold and damp, say we!

I'll leave you with a poem, so you can join us in feeling guilty about leaving inanimate objects behind.


A Christmas Tree Waiting

When we packed the car

And drove away for the last time,

Boxes piled right to the roof,

Itself concave under the weight

Of an entire library, we left

A Christmas tree waiting,

In a small and draughty

Storage shed, for the Christmas

That never came.

Still draped with tinsel

Dripping with faux-crystal icicles

Baubles dangling from

Authentic-style branches,

Tinkling in the breeze creeping

Through the gaps in the door.

When, one day, someone finds

Our left-behind tree

With its forgotten decorations, once

Lovingly hung while carols played

A fire sang in the grate,

And glitter drifted into the carpet,

Perhaps they will feel an echo of sadness

To feel the warmth of that Christmas

Discarded.

Or, perhaps they will mark the holes in the foliage,

Sunken branches and fur falling like rain,

The woebegone, lopsided star

Lolling drunk atop its crown,

And curse us for lazy bastards

Who couldn’t even be bothered
To kick it to the ground.