Questions of integrity

We haven't made our mind up yet about how Ireland fares as a motorhome destination, in one aspect though it may be world beating - the cost. With campsites around €30 per night it seems a little churlish to charge extra to use the shower, but it happens a lot. Privately owned motorhome 'aires' average about €20 per night, though to be fair the municipal ones at Dungarvon and Cobh quayside were half that. With an unassuming bottle wine from SuperValu costing between €12 -€16 we congratulated ourselves on having the foresight to pack what was left of the stash we bought in Spain and France in March. Direct comparisons are always somewhat haphazard, but overall I think it is our most expensive destination so far in the van, costlier even than either Sweden or Switzerland. 

Pecuniary considerations are not everything of course. However, once you factor-in that it rains so much that a day which is merely overcast counts as fine, or I found myself pining for the standard of rural roads you find in other parts of Europe, such as Portugal or Greece, setting aside romantic notions of celticity, I have to conclude that Ireland does not come out positively in any hard headed cost balance analysis. 

However, generalisations never tell the whole story. For the past couple of days we have been staying in a small port on the southern side of the Beara peninsula. Castletownbere is delightful, as jolly a place as anywhere we've stayed. Unexpected delights are always the best, and we had no expectations whatsoever, our main reason for stopping in the village was the motorhome overnight parking by the harbour, amazingly it was free!

There is a lot to love about the place - not least the location, craggy mountains provide the backdrop, across the bay the green hills of Bere island shelter the village, creating one of Europe's deepest natural harbours. Up until independence the Royal Navy used it as a base as it gave direct access to the North Atlantic. As WW2 loomed Winston Churchill put pressure on the Irish government to allow Britain to reinstate the base; they resisted as it would have compromised their neutral stance.

These days the harbour is Ireland's second largest deep water fishing port. A few hi-tech ocean going trawlers were moored, among the smaller craft. When we visited the English Market in Cork I observed that so far as food culture is concerned Ireland looks to the land rather than the sea. Castletownbere fish quay reinforces this rather than refutes it. 

The place does have a significant fishing fleet, but small in comparison to others on the Atlantic seaboard, like Santoña in Cantabria or the Breton ports of Concarneau or Douarnenez.

The village is small, its population well short of a four figures, nevertheless the place buzzes with activity, the main street is busy all day and attracts enough local custom to have an excellent range of high quality locally owned shops. How can a place this size retain a local butchers and bakers yet still support a small convenience store and a branch of SuperValu, Ireland's equivalent to Waitrose, but better? 

It is also home to MacCarthy's bar, not you might think a particularly unique achievement as half the towns in Ireland seem to boast one. The name's ubiquity is the joke behind Pete McCarthy's celebrated travelogue, 'McCarthy's Bar,' an account of his journey around Ireland in the late 1990s, where he vowed never to pass a pub with his name on the front. 

Castletownbere's is arguably the archetypal one as its frontage graces the book's cover as well as being the focus of one of its most enjoyable chapters, where the author goes in for a pint then becomes inadvertently embroiled in an all night hooley celebrating the owner's birthday. The front hasn't changed much over the past two decades. Though observant fans of the book will note that the name on the front cover has been Photoshopped so it matches the spelling of the authors's surname, which differs from the owners' by one letter.

I am not a big fan of pubs and bars, I prefer cafés, though I might be persuaded to change my mind if MacCarthy's was my local. It is a very welcoming place, the food is excellent (I had chowder, Gill poached salmon sandwiches).

Like many of Ireland's small bars it doubles up as a village shop. Judging by the products on sale it appears that locals are often struck by a minor panic as they sup their Guinness that they may be running low on HP Sauce. 

Memorabilia covers every inch of the walls asserting that the place has been a convivial spot for generations. In fact it was the present owner's great-grandfather who established the business in the 1860s supplying victuals to the British navy then based in Castletownbere Haven.

It is difficult to work out what it is about this unassuming small bar that exudes such warmth, it goes beyond customer care, as a stranger somehow you feel simply included. This sentiment applies more widely, collectively the village itself feels inviting. Posters in shop windows promoted local voluntary services, particularly for the older and younger inhabitants - a befriending services for elderly people, support for young people with mental health issues, a drop-in centre for teenagers down by the harbour. I particularly liked the poster aimed at the young LGBT community, "Whether you're thinking 'I am' or 'Am l?' phone us for a chat." 

It's a symbiotic thing, the more a place cares for its people, the more people care for the place. A small, but telling example - a two metre high concrete wall runs down one side of the motorhome parking area. Four big wooden planters painted in primary colours have been placed in front of it to brighten-up the place They are filled with a mixture of flowers and herbs. One afternoon a young woman arrived to do a bit of weeding. "Who put the planters here? They're lovely." Gill remarked. 

It transpired it was a communal effort, volunteers look after the beds, local businesses sponsor the planting, including the nearby restaurant who provided herbs on the basis their chef could pick them. Having finished weeding the woman noticed that the refuse collectors had made a bit of a mess when emptying the nearby skips, she fetched a brush out of her car and tidied the area. Maybe the remoteness of the village and the fact that less than a thousand people live in it helps create a sense that we're all in this together and how we treat the place and one another counts.

Gill uses a particular term to describe these small beacons hope we happen upon in our travels. She says the places have integrity. It's a geographical term, but she broadens its usage. Typically the term refers to the invisible lines that delineate what we think of as a place - county borders, city limits, town boundaries, wards, villages and parishes. However when Gill uses the term she also means the place's unique qualities, perhaps its purpose, like a market town or a somewhere associated with a specialist product - like Wensleydale, Bakewell or St Nectaire. Or simply the places that are memorable not because they are famous but because they have character and heart. We will always remember Castletownbere not just because of its spectacular location, but also its welcome and kindness. It's a small place with a big heart. It has integrity. 

 

Beyond the view

We continued westwards. The area around Bantry has several places to stay. We decided to head for Eagle Point Camping a few kilometres north of the town. It had positive reviews and looked to be in a scenic spot right by Bantry Bay. Our Ireland road atlas is useless for journey planning. It's not the fault of the mapping but reflects the idiosyncrasies of road categorisation in the country. We joined the the N71 trunk road at Clonakilty which at that point accords with what you might expect a major road to look like, not a dual carriageway, but wide and smooth with a hard surfaced hard shoulder.  At the quirkily named town of Ballydehob the route turns north, the green pastural countryside of Ireland's south coast quickly becomes more rugged. 

The road narrows, grassy verges disappear to be replaced by steep banks and dry-stone walls, the speed limit drops from 100 to 80kph. Given the bendy road I rarely achieved that. It becomes a tad alarming as trucks bomb towards you, whooshing past with less than a foot to spare forcing you uncomfortably close to the dry stone wall on the passenger side. Gill showed true fortitude only intermittently squeaking in alarm as tankers, bulbous wheeled tractors, delivery trucks and every white van man from Cork and Kerry hurtled past. To make matters worse the road surface deteriorated too, pot-holed sections that jangled the crockery and cutlery followed by a few hundred metres of imperceptible undulations, the rear suspension creaking in complaint as we bounced along.

Then you top a rise and drop down, the blue expanse of Bantry Bay fills the windscreen, rugged mountains ranged beyond, in the far distance, half lost in cloud, the summits of Macgillycuddy's Reeks. A fair trade-off, iffy road for epic view.

We squeezed through Bantry's narrow streets, slow going, but everyone knows the score; to get past the parked cars you need to take turns, give and take, everyone bides their time, no-one gets hot under the collar. It seemed like a pleasant town, albeit somewhat traffic choked.

Eagle Point Camping is a few kilometres further on, we were glad to arrive. We had only driven 60 miles but the roads made it seem much longer, time to stop for a day or two. The place is undoubtedly the best Irish site we have been on so far. It is extensive, spread across an entire peninsula towards the eastern end of Bantry Bay. Though there are lots of static caravan, the site is zoned into a dozen or so smaller enclaves, each divided by trees or rock outcrops.

There are wild areas in-between them, you can even find a bit of solitude, wander down tracks and find grassy banks covered in wild flowers. 

 I paused to watch a thrush hop across in front of me, it paused, cocked it's head to one side and stared back.  It's a nice, quiet place. 

So far as practicalities are concerned, the shower block is excellent (and token free), the drive-through motorhome service area well designed, the access roads wide and the pitches generous - most positioned so you get a view of the bay.

What is not to like? Here's the odd thing, in the previous post I observed, "it is perfectly possible to feel miserable even when visiting somewhere amazing." This is exactly what began to happen to the pair of us the longer we stayed on the site. The question is, why? As I say, it is a perfectly nice place in a beautiful setting.

I think it this was all to do with the location. Although the place is called Eagle Point Camping, really it is designed around the needs of caravanners, not just the scores of statics dotted about, but tourers too.

The ideal caravan site is in a pretty rural location, with a nice view that you can admire from your 'outfit's" big lounge window. Not too remote though, well enough connected so you can have 'grand days out' visiting nearby attractions and local beauty spots. With direct access to the N71 then many of the delights of southwest Ireland from Killarney to Mizzen Head are within an hour's drive by car from here. So far as 'grand day's out' go, Ireland specialises in creating visitor attractions, from sub-tropical gardens to opportunities to go kayaking with seals.

However, for us the place was far from ideal as we like to park-up and explore our surroundings on foot or by bike. The nearby area is quite inaccessible without a vehicle, the N71 is certainly not suitable for walkers or cyclists with a nervous disposition.

I toyed with renting a kayak - there's a watersports centre on site - but in the end we took to mooching about, pausing from time to time to use Google lense in the hope of identifying unfamiliar wayside flowers, stopping to simply admire the view, or entertaining ourselves by people watching.

By day two I progressed, and combined two activities from the previous day by observing other people admiring the view. The entire site might be described as being vista orientated. White benches are scattered about so inmates, um.. guests might rest a while and appreciate the glories of the scene before them.

It's a a big site, and being early in the season half empty. Given choice you might think that people might park close to the facilities, but no, they clustered together on small knolls, low outcrops and gentle slopes, surreptitiously competing for the best spot to eat a perfectly scenic breakfast or a short stroll from a romantic sunset.

A Dutch couple went one better. They erected a kitchen tent next to their van, but instead of it housing a cooker it contained a small picnic table and two chairs. Three of the sides were zipped up, the fourth fully open, so every morning, rain or shine, they could eat breakfast in lone splendour before a perfectly framed idyllic view. I admired their resolve.

We don't tend to question why we unconsciously 'frame' the natural world in order to re-imagine it as a beautiful view. Hold your phone sideways to take a picture and the aspect becomes 'landscape'. This is not some kind of 'given' it's a curiously 'Western' notion rooted in Albertian linear perspective developed in Florence in the early fifteenth century. Over the centuries these aspect ratios have become so ubiquitous we regard them as natural, nobody wonders why TV screens aren't circular or your mobile phone oval to better fit the palm of your hand .

In fact it is striking how new technology supercharges established conventions as much as creating new ones. Here's a screenshot of my phone cameras settings: 

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The grid and levelling feature harks back to Alberti. Similarly, the smart composition gizmo 'rule of thirds' is a simplified version of the Renaissance ideal proportions of the 'golden section'.Even though I don't use the auto features, nevertheless the pictures I took today probably look similar to everyone else's - because we have shared notions of what constitutes a 'nice view'. The landscape itself cannot be innately beautiful, it looks that way because we have shared cultural values; by and large we are conditioned to admire similar things.

Having spent far too much time looking at the view then thinking about it, then watching other people looking at the view then thinking about that, it was definitely time to move somewhere else and think about something else altogether . But... finally, I now realise why Mr Noyer and I chose the exact same spot to compose a very similar picture of Garylucas Bay though we were separated by 167 years.

 

We share the same pictorial conventions, so we chose the same viewpoint.

There is something intriguing about the how unspoken cultural assumptions have been embedded within the auto-compose feature on my camera phone. History tends to foreground what changes, but what prevails over time, what stays the same, is equally fascinating.

Not always straightforward, sometimes intriguing, occasionally beautiful

Motorhoming somewhere unfamiliar always has its idiosyncrasies. In Ireland these include campsites that won't accept guests who have not pre-booked even when they have spare pitches, site owners who insist on taking all your bank card details including the three digit code on the back when you phone to make a telephone reservation. Their explanation is always the same, "It's just for security." Whose would that be? Not the customer's!  Then there is the mystery of remote campsites listed as having 150 pitches, but when you try to book one for the weekend in the shoulder season they are all full. It is only when you manage to stay on one mid-week that you understand the issue. They do have 150 pitches, but 130 of them are filled with permanently sited statics complete with decking and hi-tech gas BBQs, another 12 pitches have been block booked by caravanners for the season and two of the remaining eight are full of rubbish and wrecked lawnmowers. This leaves six available pitches to accommodate the dozens of camper vans and mohos from Great Britain and Europe all eager to do the 'Wild Atlantic Way' off-season, as well as a clutch of weekenders from Dublin or Cork seeking a romantic short break.

So, appearances are deceiving, rural Ireland seems uncrowded and remote, in fact it is uncrowded and remote and browsing 'Searchforsites' there seems  plenty of places to stay in a motorhome, particularly around the coast. However, this doesn't mean you can simply wander about at will, like you might France, Iberia, Greece or Scandanavia. For all the reasons given above it is best to book ahead, and if you do plan to wing it, have an alternative in mind if your preferred place is unavailable.

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I am writing this from Garrettstown House Holiday Park which is on the western side of Old Kinsale Head. After three unsuccessful attempts to find somewhere to stay over the weekend on the coast between Kinsale and Skibbereen Gill managed to book us in here; on the phone the manager implied they had 'loads of room'. In the event this proved to be simultaneously true and untrue. 

As the name implies the site is in the grounds of a country house. The large mansion is now a roofless ruin; built in the early eighteenth century but abandoned in the 1950s as too costly to maintain, the old estate was turned into a static caravan park. The former outbuildings now house guest facilities, including a laundry - we needed a washing machine, that's the main reason why we are here.

The manager was affable on the phone and, chatty when we arrived. Squeezed between a lengthy explanation of why Irish voters under forty tend to support Sinn Féin, the outrageous cost of bar food in Reykjavik and Brisbane, the fact that because Kinsale Head was a peninsula it had the same water on each side (?) somehow, mixed in with this gush of mis-information he managed to drop in a useful fact or two - such as the touring pitches for motorhomes were in two locations, half a dozen with hardstanding in the camping field and a few more among the static caravans at the top of the site in an area designated as a 'child free'. 

We took a walk around to check out the options. None the pitches on the camping field were level enough for a 7m van, even with ramps we still would be on a wonk. There were four empty pitches among the statics, one was full of scrap metal, another was on a corner and involved a nifty bit of parallel parking to access, which left only two possibilities - you see, not straightforward!

This is not to say that Ireland is not without its delights. The green rolling pasture land to the north of Kinsale is lovely, especially in late spring. 

Parking the van in the town looked tricky so we drove straight through. Viewed from the cab Kinsale seemed like a pleasant seaside place, more stylish than Dungarvon where we had stayed previously. 

The countryside surrounding the campsite looks interesting too. Tomorrow we'll unload the bikes and explore the roads running alongside local beaches, they are marked on our map as having 'blue flag' status. Today we have set aside for more practical matters - doing laundry.

After a week of blustery weather forecast for the next few days promises a more settled spell. The cold wind has dropped and in the sun occasionally it almost feels pleasant. Time to get out the Cadac and grill the Wagu burgers we bought in the award winning butchers in Roundwood. 

For once I managed to get it just right, the grill hot enough to get a bit of caramelisation on the outside but timing it so the inside remained medium rare. Wagu beef is a great product, it would have been a shame to cremate them.

When you eat good quality burgers it makes you realise how the ones we buy habitually from supermarkets are really second rate. We are definitely eating less meat these days, we should make the effort to find a good quality local butcher - consume less, but better.

This morning was sunny and warm We cycled down to Garrettstown beach. When I say sunny and warm, we are in Ireland, so the term is relative. As a visitor this meant risking a lightweight hoodie; natives are made of sterner stuff, in swimsuits, some even splashing about in the sea.

Every culture has its very own seaside fare, ours, fish n' chip shops, France, moules frites vans, Spain, chiringuitos, Italy, gelateria, lreland - beach car park chuck wagons. It was Saturday, the sun was shining, the car park filling-up, five different food trucks were drawn up in a line. The biggest was an articulated truck with a trailer kitchen which looked more suited to mass catering at Glastonbury than a remote beach in County Cork. The food on offer was basically greasy caff. However this was not the case with the others. One trailer offered authentic Breton crêpes, another coffee and cupcakes. 

The latter moveable emporium had serious competition from stylishly logoed 'Running Goat Artisan Coffee'. Finally there was the inevitable ice cream van.

The diversity of the offer reflected a broad social mix on the beach. Lots of families - a chill wind ensured the smaller the kid the bluer tinged they became. Still, the gradual onset of hyperthermia did not seem to reduce the queue for ice creams.

I guess the artisan coffee trailers were pitched primarily at the surfers and outdoorsy types - tri-suit suit clad wild swimmers, hikers heading for the path to the Old Head of Kinsale. 

We pedalled towards the next bay. It was called Garylucas beach, raising the intriguing question, who was Gary, and what did he do to have a beach named after him?  We locked the bikes by the beach car park. Somewhat bizarrely clumps of Yuccas had been planted on the the low dunes bringing a bit of a Baja California vibe to the Celtic coast.  Decrepit picnic tables were sequestered  amongst waist-high dune grasses like ancient remains. At some point the area must have been developed as a kind of coastal country park, but abandoned for some reason. The fact that the Yuccas seemed to to be thriving must mean lreland's south coast more is or less frost free. We have come across other 'exotics' in hedgerows here, like arum lilies, all indicators of mild winters hereabouts.

We decided to explore the cliff-top walk which headed off from here towards Old Kinsale Head. The beach was not exactly heaving, but it was quite lively. Two minutes from the car park and we had the magnificent coast to ourselves, gorgeous, both on a grand scale and in its smallest details

There seemed a kind of perfection to Courtmacsherry Bay as it stretched out before us to the west, a pleasing bow of sandy beaches, low dunes and rocky outcrops, with the grey outline of Seven Heads beyond, and paler still, in the far distance, a wisp of land. Galley Head, we speculated, consulting our trusty travelling companion, Google maps.

Nearby, on the cliff edge the grassy knolls were covered in wild flowers. One of the lines from Van Morrison's 'Streets of Arklow' that I recalled last week when we visited the town reoccured to me, 'gay profusion in God's green land'. On the dour streets of Arklow it had seemed hyperbolic, but here, not quite so ridiculously over-sentimental.

Still, I am very wary of romanticising landscapes, either with a big or a little 'R'. Luckily there was plenty of geology hereabouts to keep Gill occupied and me grounded. We took some photographs an as aide memoire so Gill could think about the strata a bit more later on.

Others I took simply because I found the patterns pleasing.

Meanwhile Gill was trying to figure out what we were looking at. "Is it all slate and shale, or mixed with layers of limestone?" She queried. I treated this as a rhetorical question, as any sort of sensible answer was beyond me. However, being clueless did not deter me from muddying the waters a bit,

"There seems to be patches of a paler coloured rock dotted about too," I observed. This prompted a noncommittal "hmmm" from Gill, I was uncertain if this signalled assent or slight irritation.

 

When we got back to the van I searched for some information about the geology of Old Kinsale Head. The first thing that came up was a general map of the geology of the whole of Ireland. This helped a bit, showing that the nearby coast was predominantly sandstone and shale laid down in the Carboniferous era around 300 million years ago.

A link from the page brought up a local geological map, and though it largely re-iterated the information on the large scale one it was fascinating for a slightly different reason. Geological Survey Ireland have digitised their archive, I inadvertently downloaded the map from 1857, it is a lovely thing if happen you like old maps.

Aside from the beautiful draughtsmanship what is exciting about the document is its date. By 1785 the Scottish geologist James Hutton had worked out that the earth was millions of years old by studying local rock formations and strata revealed by coastal erosion. However 'catastrophism' remained the prevailing view - the notion that the earth was shaped by a series of cataclysmic events such as the Biblical flood, all occuring within the last few thousand years. Only with the publication of Charles Lyell's 'Principles of Geology' in 1833 were the basic principles we know today accepted.

The map of Old Kinsale Head was produced little more than two decades later, imagine the scale of the scientific enterprise it took to map the geology of the British Isles at a local level. In fact you don't have to imagine the scale of the endeavour, the Geological Institute of Ireland have digitised much of its archive, which is why I could find the first geological map of the area on line. The notes accompanying the image mentioned the area had been surveyed by G V de Noyer in 1857; the name was hyperlinked - click!

It transpired that not only did de Noyer make a significant contribution to the four decade long project to map Ireland's geology but he was also a superb watercolorist, often illustrating the topography as well as surveying it. In fact a painting of the exact bit of rock Gill and I had been discussing earlier appeared as if by magic on-line.

Amazingly, despite 167 years of being battered by the Atlantic the outcrop has not changed much.

There are always two journeys, one on the ground and one in your head. It is perfectly possible to feel miserable even when visiting somewhere amazing; equally you can feel quite perky in miserable surroundings. Occasionally headspace and real space both feel great - a wow moment, like now, as an illustrious, but obscure Victorian geologist and I shared a landscape even though we were centuries apart. 

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Cobh and Cork

More Oirish factoids - the big inlet next to Cork is the second deepest natural harbour in the world. We are staring at it right now, from Cobh's dockside motorhome parking area. A silvery expanse fills our windscreen, every so often big boats thrum past - chunky container ships, bulk carriers, the ferry to Roscoff, an Irish frigate berthing at the naval base opposite. 

It's a great place to stay, a short walk from Cobh railway station which has an half-hourly service into Cork, and next to a very pleasant esplanade that takes you straight to Cobh town centre. 

The municipality has made a real effort, next to us there is an adventure playground and a brand new, well equipped outdoor gym that no-one uses. The waterside walk into town is lined with flower beds and shrubs, but also strawberry tubs, miniature apple trees, and raspberry and gooseberry bushes. These are well tended and the whole area, like public spaces in Ireland generally, is pristine and litter free. Here It feels like people care about the locale, back home so many places are litter strewn and unkempt.

We decided to walk into town. Cobh houses the cruise terminal for Cork and southwest lreland. The town has developed a Titanic themed tourist industry, as the port then known as 'Queenstown', was the doomed liner's last port of call before failing to arrive in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There's a certain irony in herding cruise ship victims ashore to entertain them with a multi-media exhibition of the world's most celebrated passenger ship disaster. Happily the place was not thronged with bewildered septuagenarians called Hilda and Brian, and the quayside was empty apart from a couple of tugs, on standby probably for the arrival of some TUI or MSC behemoth.

Our ambitions in Cobh were modest, find a bar that would serve us a couple of glasses of 'the black stuff' (more challenging would be to find one that couldn't!) Strictly speaking we should have chosen Murphy 's as it's brewed down the road in Cork, but we settled for Guinness from the aptly named 'Kelly's Bar'.

Gill posed a tricky question, "When was the last time we drank Guinness?" It must be more than twenty years we decided. In fairness, in our twenties we probably downed more than enough of the stuff to last a lifetime. It was a go to beverage in our student days (well, Gill was a student, I was a drop-out!). Maybe we developed our liking for it when we were regulars at 'The Bottles' - a favourite student haunt. When we moved from Northumberland to Manchester our local Irish pub - 'The Clarence' in Rusholme - had live traditional music on a Friday night. It would have been deemed culturally inappropriate not to have downed the 'black stuff' by the gallon before joining in the heartfelt rendition of 'O Danny Boy' that signalled closing time. A biscuit tin was always passed around, people put in a quid or so 'for the players'. I never did work out if the Irish guy next to me was simply winding me up when he claimed, "not a penny of it goes to the fiddler, it's all for the Provos!"

Anyway, how would Guinness taste after a gap of two or three decades? Different, thinner, and the flavours flatter and less complex than I expected. I don't think the drink itself will have changed that much, but our beer drinking habits have. We drink less, but our preferred beers - Leffe, Goudale or craft beer IPAs are 2.5% stronger than draught stout. They have more body and much more complex 'notes'. Maybe Murphy's is the way to go we wondered - another time.

We headed to Cobh town centre. It is built on the slopes above the harbour, somewhat dominated by the grey, enormous bulk of St. Colman's Cathedral, a ghastly late Victorian neo-Gothic monstrosity designed by Pugin and Ashlin.

Aside from this, with its brightly coloured Georgian terraces stepped up the above the waterfront Cobh looks rather lovely, particularly when viewed by the small park by the water's edge.

Next day we caught the train into Cork, it takes 35 minutes and the return fare is inexpensive at €6.90. Don't be tempted to fare dodge, there were three inspectors on the train ( 'Revenue Assurance' written in bold letters on the back of their hi-viz). Each one checked our tickets and still we had to go through electronic barriers when we arrived at Cork station. 

We had no particular plan other than do a pants and socks shop at M&S then have lunch at Cork's famous produce market. The English Market got its name because it was founded in 1788 by the municipal authorities who at that time were English speaking protestants. 

It was interesting to compare the place with the grand municipal markets we know in Spain. The English Market is similar both in terms of its size and the range of the produce on offer. 

The difference is in the mix. In Spain fruit, vegetables and herbs predominate, more cured meat than butchery, and quite often a big fish market occupies the whole basement. In Cork the opposite pertains, essentially it is a meat market, there are a couple of vegetables stalls, two fishmongers, two cheesemongers and quite a few delicatessens and places selling cheffy type condiments. 

The contrast reflects the difference between the cuisines of the north and south, not least in the way specialist international products are available in the English Market, but in Spain things like couscous or risotto rice would be a rare find in a municipal market. 

One thing that has surprised us about Ireland is, aside from a few small inshore boats, it does not appear to have much of a fishing industry. Its cuisine looks more to the land than the sea, which is odd given such a long Atlantic seaboard. 

We had lunch in the Farmgate Café which occupies most of the wrought iron gallery that overlooks the main market. It specialises in Irish classics. 

We chose the lamb stew which came with a baked potato. The stew was excellent but the baked potato was a bit too floury for my taste and overcooked. 

We headed out onto Grand Parade, one of Cork's main thoroughfares. We needed to find somewhere that might serve us a decent macchiato. This proved trickier than we anticipated, given Cork's reputation as a cool, vibrant city. Things were not looking good - when TripAdvisor lists a chain - Café Gusto - as the 4th best café in the city, then in all likelihood disappointment is looming. We ended up at a place down a side street called Café Suma.

 The cake we shared was unremarkable and the coffees too strong to achieve that perfect balance of lusciousness with a bitter edge you get from a macchiato that truly hits the spot. Mounting disappointment prompted an outbreak of sentimentality - I recalled our macchiato apotheosis, "Remember the ones we had in that gelateria in Noto, just along the street from the cathedral... " It's a slippery slope to seek reassurance from the past, but sometimes needs must; few things are more guaranteed to make Gill grumpy than an unbalanced macchiato.

The centre of Cork feels familiarish, the same but different. The shopping streets resemble most medium sized cities in the British Isles, one vista momentarily reminded me of Leicester!

I don't know who decided to forest the pedestrian areas with diagonally leaning street lights. They looked like a scaled-up version of a dreadful IKEA lampstand. They achieve the effect of not being able to see the wood for the trees, but only using street furniture.

Though the style of the buildings are more or less indistinguishable from what you would find in an similar sized English city, there are some differences. In particular Cork seems to have escaped the wholesale re-development that happened in most UK city centres in the 1970s - Eldon Square in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Arndale Centre in Manchester. For Cork it seems this was a close run thing. The English Market website mentions there were two proposals in the 1970s and 1980s to bulldoze the old market and replace it with a shopping mall.

Of course some urban renewal in the UK was the result of wartime damage, which I assumed Cork would have escaped entirely. However, this is not quite the case. In 1920, during the war of independence a contingent of British soldiers abetted by Black and Tan reservists ran amok in Cork and torched many buildings in the city centre. 

Most of the big department stores on Grand Parade and St Patrick's Street are Edwardian, however the former Debenham's building and a few smaller shops look distinctly Art Deco, maybe these 1930s redevelopments were the result of rebuilding after the conflagration.

The county and city of Cork were flashpoints during Ireland's final war of independence and the civil war which followed it. So it comes as no surprise that at the far end of Grand Parade, overlooking the river Lee, is a national monument to the city's fallen in various uprisings against British rule from 1798 to the 1920s. 

From an Irish perspective I imagine it remains work in progress. With Sinn Féin in ascendancy in both the Republic and Northern Ireland - the preferred choice of most younger voters on both sides of the border - it does seem there is an unstoppable trajectory towards a united Ireland, though maybe not in my lifetime.

We decided to head back to the station. Cork is an interesting city, not quite as architecturally alluring as I anticipated, but fascinating, partly because of its history but also because it feels vibrant and vivacious. Judging by the leaflets we picked up and posters advertising events just been and a summer full of forthcoming ones, then you would never go short of something interesting to do here. A French New Wave film festival finished a couple of weeks ago, Cork poetry festival is happening right now (I received a complementary pamphlet of Polish Irish verse with my lamb stew), next week is the city's LGBT extravaganza. So, there we have it, a day in Cork, to summarise,vibrant place, strange lamp-posts.