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.