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.
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