Ancient and modern

We needed a place to stop for a couple of days between Cork and Dublin close to the M8. Inland campsites are few and far between in Ireland but Gill found a place in a town called Cashel beside the motorway. The weather forecast remained poor, we assumed Cashel would be dour and workaday like most of the other country towns we had driven through. In the event we were pleasantly surprised twice, firstly the weather improved slightly from wet to merely dreary - in other words a fine day by Irish standards; secondly, Cashel exceeded our expectations, architecturally more interesting and historically significant than we had anticipated.

The campsite was situated in the grounds of a guest house in an attractive location overlooking the Rock of Cashel. The outcrop has an important 12th century ecclesiastical monument on the summit. However the importance of the site goes back much further, Cashel means fortified place, the location of the prehistoric palace of the ancient kings of Munster. The monument made a big splash into the 'written' past' - not as some footnote in an obscure early mediaeval chronicle, the Rock of Cashel is thought to be the place where St. Patrick converted King Aengus of Munster to Christianity in 540 C.E., as such it makes it one of the most historically significant sites in Ireland

The 12th century abbey on The Rock is one of the earliest Romanesque churches in Ireland, unique due to its Germanic influenced architecture and rare frescoes. There are still more ecclesiastical remains in the town itself. 

Beyond them Cashel's centre is prettier than most, a wide high street lined with Georgian town houses; nearby, in extensive grounds, the former Archbishop's palace built in the early seventeenth century, is now incorporated into a 5 star spa hotel complex. 

However, edifices alone are never going to make somewhere historically significant in Ireland, something terrible has to have occurred to confer truly iconic status to a place. In this instance, notoriety was supplied by the Protestant Parliamentarian army commanded by the Earl of Inchiquin, who in 1647 set fire to the abbey church on the rock where most of the townsfolk had taken shelter. Almost a thousand people died in the assault.

Today Cashel is one of the more thriving country towns we have come across in Ireland. A market town with a functioning cattle market - rare these days! A local farmer's cheese business is also flourishing, 'Cashel Blue' can be found on the deli counter of most Irish supermarkets. 

On the edge of town there is a big pharmaceutical factory. Compared with places like Tipperary it feels more prosperous. If you are looking for a 'vibrancy indicator' on the high street then an artisan gelateria is a promising sign. Our travels in Italy have turned us both into ice cream snobs. 

Ok, Grogan's ice cream parlour is not going to compare with somewhere by Lake Garda or the Tuscan archipelago, but it serves delicious enough ice cream to get locals queueing-up on a Sunday afternoon just like they would in Italy.

Nevertheless, the town's main industry is heritage. Aside from the significant religious monuments on The Rock and within the town itself, other visitor attractions include Brú Ború Irish Cultural Centre (traditional music and dance), The Cashel Folk Village (War of Independence, Famine, Workhouse) and a big store specialising in Irish knitware. 

It struck me that my plan to escape the historical Disneyfication of the Queen's platinum jubilee by running away to Ireland failed to factor-in that I was simply swapping one delusional view of the past for another. I had not reckoned on the ubiquitous presence of Oirish heritage. 

The only place I know that is more shameless in promoting a ludicrous version of its own history in order to pick the pockets of unsuspecting visitors is Scotland. Is there anything on planet Earth quite as ghastly as the vision of a Scotsman in full highland regalia playing Scotland the Brave on the bagpipes? Maybe a row of anorexic looking Irish girls doing that weird Riverdance thingy has to be a close second.

I am interested in history but I find heritage creepy. History is a method, heritage a commodity; the former is about investigation and debate, the latter seeks to affirm, inviting affiliation; it amounts to a contemporary tribal ritual, ancestor worship updated. Maybe travelling for five months a year has reduced my interest in the past. What is happening now seems equally fascinating, and the recent past as interesting as what occurred centuries ago. I think visiting Benidorm seafront was at least as interesting and as culturally significant as the Alhambra.

This point of view proved useful as we headed back towards Dublin. Struggling to find a place to park for lunch we ended up in the coach park of Kinsale Designer Village. With hours to fill before our evening ferry we decided to take a look. For me this was not an alluring prospect as I hate shopping. However, it proved more entertaining that I anticipated.

The place is run by the same company as the Bicester Designer Village in Oxfordshire. Their pitch is a bit more up-market than the rival company that runs Cheshire Oaks in Ellesmere Port, but proposition of both places is essentially the same - high street goods at discount prices in a faux village setting exuding all the authenticity of Disneyland's Main Street.

All human cultures have aspects that are profoundly strange - the Mexican day of the dead, the ritualised violence of the Roman Colosseum or Spanish bull-ring, the shamanistic trance, the hajj in Mecca, Valentine's Day in Las Vegas, we are a weird species. I guess by comparison retail therapy is quite innocuous. Nevertheless, while Gill browsed around 'Sweaty Betty's' I found myself musing about who exactly would consider the jazzy patterned 'bum sculpting' leggings reduced from €134 to €84 a must have bargain, and why? I suppose Malvolio provides an august precedent for this particular example of human folly.

Onwards, after a brief visit to a Lidl on the outskirts of Dublin where most people seemed to be speaking Polish, we arrived at the ferry port two hours early. After a while the sight of big gantry cranes robotically stacking and restacking the wall of containers in front of us became strangely fascinating. Eventually all good things must come to an end, later that evening we found ourselves queueing up for dinner in the ferry cafeteria. The evening sailing offers a reduced choice, fish and chips, burritos or a chicken curry. Sadly two thirds of the three items were unavailable, so fish and chips it was going to be. They were terrible.

We arrived in Holyhead at midnight, parked on the roadside by the yacht club, at night the area is quiet so we slept well. As we drove past Snowdonia the following morning I felt pleased to be back in Wales. Usually we drive off a cross Channel ferry and end up in a service area on the M1 fulminating about some aspect or other of British culture. So it felt odd to be feeling positive about being back. I am not sure why this was the case. Generally Ireland had been interesting rather than enjoyable, hardly one of our more epic trips. Perhaps arriving in Wales made all the difference. I think you could make a good case for the Principality being the least fucked-up of the five nations that make up the British Isles. Maybe visitWales.com should adopt this as their stap line -

Cymru! Llai fucked-up na'r gweddill...

It's striking you have to admit.

The long way through Tipperary

Three days until we need to be back in Dublin to catch the ferry, a wet, cold and blustery forecast - what to do? We found a small paid for parking south of Midleton overlooking one of the many small inlets on Cork Harbour. So one night there, then Gill booked another couple of days in a campsite in Cashel, a small town near the M8 motorway about 90km north of Cork.  

Instead of backtracking along the N71 which follows the south coast we cut across country towards Bandon on what looked on the map like a more minor road. It's not easy to predict what Irish roads are going to be like. The minor one was straighter, better surfaced and broader than the 'N' road we took last week to get to Ireland's southwest corner.

Dull and damp described both our spirits and the weather. In better weather the small motorhome parking overlooking Cork harbour would have been pretty, but the rain was persistent enough for me to become anxious about getting the van off the pitch which was ever so slightly sloping. 

In the end it wasn't a problem, and once we had negotiated the bank holiday traffic on the Cork bypass soon we were heading north up the motorway. Our original plan - to head up the West coast towards Limerick then take the motorway towards Dublin - would have taken us past Annacotty. A small place on Limerick's outskirts of no significance whatsoever apart from the fact it happened to be the birthplace of my Irish grandfather.

Michael Ryan died in 1930, 25 years before I was born. I don't remember my grandmother speaking about him much and my mother had scant memory of him as she was eight when he died. All that was known about the man was based on unsubstantiated family lore - that he came from Limerick, was a watchmaker by trade and had once worked in Malta. Sometime in the 1970s my cousin, holidaying in Ireland, attempted to find out more, but to no avail. Unsurprising really given how many Michael Ryans must have been born in Limerick sometime in the 1880s.

Brexit motivated me to have another attempt, as tracking him down would allow me to claim Irish citizenship and retain the benefits of unrestricted travel in the Schengen area. I obtained a copy of my grandmother's marriage certificate which stated his date and place of birth - 1886 in Limerick. I also discovered his father was called William. This helped a bit, but still there were a dozen or more Michael Ryans born in Limerick city and county in 1886 with a dad called William. Armed with a month's free access to Ancestry.com by a process of cross checking birth, death and marriage records with census records I become 99% certain that I had tracked down my Irish ancestors. It turned out my mother had an uncle and aunt and five Irish cousins she knew nothing about. The on-line records stated they came from Annacotty, a small settlement on the edge of the city of Limerick. When I obtained copies of their certificates it turned out that they actually resided in the rural parishes to the east, in hamlets and farmsteads alongside the main road linking Limerick and Tipperary.

In the end, though I had collected the necessary documentation, I decided not to pursue Irish citizenship. The reasons were purely practical, it is expensive, almost £2000 by the time all the fees for a birth certificate and passport have been paid; it is a protracted process, even before the pandemic at least a two year wait, then Covid put a moratorium on new applications. Theoretically EU citizens and their spouses can travel freely in the Schengen zone, but we would have to carry our marriage certificate as proof. It seemed like a faff, in truth we can work around the 90/180 rule, we don't tend to live in our van for more than 150 days a year anyway. So my interest in an Irish passport was as much a rude gesture from an affronted Remainer than anything else, and I am not particularly given to puerile foot-stamping, especially given the price tag.

 

The older I get the less I have a sense of tribal belonging to a particular place. Nevertheless, as well as my attempt to rescue Michael Ryan from oblivion my sister has done a lot of research into our Scottish forebears. Then a few Christmases ago my kids bought me a DNA testing kit. So over recent years I have become much more knowledgeable regarding my 'origins'. Somewhat counter-intuitively I think this has resulted in me becoming more sceptical about 'belonging'. I do like watching 'Who Do You Think You Are' because I enjoy history programmes on TV. However, the inevitable scene where a minor celeb. stands in a cemetery weeping over some distant forebear's sticky end strikes me as contrived and ridiculous. I think unbridled nostalgia can be a very dangerous thing.

However, since our planned route back to Dublin would have taken us right past Annacotty it would have seemed deliberately contrary not to visit the birthplace of my enigmatic grandfather. Now we had deviated from that plan I told myself missing the place was no big deal as we sped northwards from Cork up the M8. Maybe Gill knows me better than I know myself. As we approached Cahir she remarked, 'its not a such a big detour along the N74 through Tipperary if you still wanted to visit where your grandfather came from'. So we did, even though it was quite a detour really. 

 In good weather the route by the Galty mountains may be attractive, but we had low cloud and drizzle. Perhaps it was the dull conditions, but the country towns like Bansha and Tipperary seemed depressed and impoverished.

Annacotty lies northeast of Limerick's outskirts near the University campus. These days it is close to an area of retail parks, halls of residence and mid-rise post-modern blocks, mainly housing academic departments. We passed a sign to a science park specialising in pharmaceutical research. It's as good a vision as any of the economic development over the past two decades that has gifted Ireland the second highest GDP per capita in the eurozone after Luxembourg

However, Annacotty itself is a workaday place, its centre little more than a parade of shops and a pub, bypassed by the R445 on one side and the M7 motorway on the other. 

I knew this already because before we arrived in Ireland I had checked it out on Streetview trying to find a place to park the van so we could have a mooch about. We repeated the procedure in a Lidl car park a mile or two from our destination, coming to the same conclusion as before, parking on the street opposite the shops was the only option, if the bays were occupied or would be a very brief ancestral encounter indeed.

In the event there was a parking space, I did manage to hop out and take a photo of the local 'Ryan's store'. Any notion that this might be owned by an undiscovered relative was put into perspective by the fact that every other business we passed on the road between Tipperary and Limerick seemed to be owned by a Ryan.

After photographing the pub and the shop I just stared around, struck by a growing sense of bewilderment as to why exactly I had come here. Momentarily, looking at the antique cigarette adverts on the front of the pub I wondered if the young Michael Ryan had frequented the place. A sign by the door boasted that the place had 'served the community for generations. In reality, though transcripts of censuses recorded his family as residing in Annacotty, the detailed records reveal they lived at a number of different places in rural parishes to the east. In 1901 Michael, his father and older brother were listed as 'farm servants', his mother had died in the previous year. You sense a precarious existence, no evidence whatsoever that he was a watchmaker; it seems that was just family lore, a bit of blarney on his part perhaps.

 We headed back the way we came, arriving at the campsite we had booked in Cashel in the late afternoon; the persistent rain eased. Had the detour been worth the effort? Maybe, not because I felt some sort of connection to my long lost grandfather, but because I didn't. My quest to resurrect Micheal Ryan  clarified feelings about my own past and issues around 'ancestral roots. Two commonly held views struck me as particularly wrongheaded. Firstly, the idea behind the programme 'Who do you think you are?' - that somehow our identities are shaped by distant forebears seems somewhat preposterous. I can see how my blue eyes, once fair hair and myopia are probably gifts from my Gaelic ancestors, but my beliefs, attitudes and attachments are conditioned by my up-bringing and the culture I have lived in over the years as well as the personal choices  made. 

Furthermore, the older I get the more sceptical I become regarding attachment to place. It seems to me that the sense we have of a 'homeland' or place of origin is as much a yearning for the kind of uncomplicated security of childhood than any real connection to 'blood and soil'. Consequently it is no accident that as mass hysteria and the puerile pantomime surroundING the Queen's platinum jubilee unfolds at home I arranged to be safely ensconced in a nearby republic.

One of the great myths surrounding our sense of belonging is that in the past  most people were rooted in a particular place and tended to have ancestral roots there. In fact, people have always moved about as much as stayed put. The resultant tensions is the central theme of Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan quartet - its second volume is titled 'Those who stay and those that leave'.

After we settled into the site at Cashel I found a scrap of paper and wrote down the initials of my grandparents and their offspring, fifteen people in total as far as I could recall. Among my immediate forebears who stayed and who left? I decided the definition of staying put was living most of your adult life within 25 miles of your birthplace. By these criteria seven people moved within their native country, four emigrated, three died prematurely and only one, my mother, stayed put. Wanderers greatly outnumbered the people who stayed.

Yet many of us, I suspect, remember the place we grew up in as a stable community, displaying all the home comforts of an old neighborhood. After more than half a century I still can recall most of the names of the the people who lived on street where I grew up, I remember the jobs they did, what they looked like and their differing characteristics. It would be very easy for me to romanticise this as some kind of golden age where the sense of community was stronger and people had 'roots'. The reality was quite different. I was born in 1955, the council estate where I grew up was only a couple of years old, it was a community of newcomers, but as child it seemed it had been there forever because it was the only world I knew. 

For most of us our 'roots' are shallow. Our imagery of ancestry is sylvan, we have roots, relatives are describe in terms of being different branches, we share a family tree. However, if as many of us leave as stay, then maybe we should also regard ourselves as seeds, adrift, but adept at putting down roots elsewhere,  slow moving  like a swarm, not fixed like forest.

Local Colour

Of course it makes no sense whatsoever to begin making breezy generalisations about somewhere when you only arrived a little over a week ago. Equally, it has never stopped me in the past, so why make Ireland an exception? Two things have struck me since we arrived. Firstly rural Ireland feels 'un-peopled' compared to England. Secondly its smaller settlements look quite similar to those on the other side of the Irish Sea, but more austere. The English village has picturesque connotations, its Irish equivalent less so. 

When I Googled the question of why rural Ireland looked so empty I happened upon a startling statistic - in 1840 about 8 million people lived in Ireland, today the population is around 5 million. Considering that over the same period England's population increased threefold then Ireland's de-population seems truly remarkable. I assumed this was a combination of the effects of the famine in the mid-nineteenth century and large-scale emigration over the following decades. Although this was a factor, an article I came across on-line made the point that other parts of Europe suffered devastating famines and mass emigration but nevertheless their populations increased dramatically during the final decades of the nineteenth century.

The piece argued that it was the peculiarity of land tenure in Ireland that suppressed the birthrate. In the nineteenth century much of rural Ireland was a land of smallholdings, many worked on a subsistence basis by peasant farmers. Though most were tenants, families held the land in perpetuity. This made marriage difficult as the holdings were too small to support multiple families but newly weds had neither the means nor the opportunity to acquire their own land. In some rural areas almost forty percent of the adult population were unmarried in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The number of births lagged behind the rate of emigration and so the population plummeted.

What is odd is the evidence on the ground seems to contradict this. The majority of the buildings you see as you drive through Ireland's country towns and villages largely date from the last half of the nineteenth century. It seems counter intuitive that at the peak moment of depopulation a building boom occurred. I can only presume that the rural buildings prior to this date were so rudimentary that replacing them rather than adapting them became the only option.

Many of these cement faced Victorian houses look dour . On the coast their plain aspect is brightened somewhat by colour washing. This seems to be a bit of an Atlantic seaboard thing, you get jolly coloured houses in the West Country, like in Hotwells in Bristol. Furthermore, coastal the settlements in Asturias and Galicia are rainbow coloured too. Maybe wholesale jollification is a response to the grey sea mists that roll in from the Atlantic. This theory is borne out by the fact the further west we went more dazzlingly day-glo the paint jobs became. 

Eyeries, where we are staying today, markets itself as the west of Ireland's most colourful village. It is true, even on a dull day its jolly multi-coloured facades shine brightly.

A coastal footpath winds its way around the small bays and craggy headlands of the Beara Peninsula. It is 128 miles long, we managed about 1% of it, but enough to appreciate are beautiful emptiness of Ireland's far west. In late spring the lanes' steep banks are covered in wild flowers, quite a few unfamiliar. 

Gill snapped away with Google lens hoping to identify them. It works sometimes, but often the suggestions are way off, the algorithm seems to work purely on visual similarity, otherwise you would not get results suggesting we were be looking at Wahlenbergia albomarginata, a variant of harebell found throughout New Zealand.

Though it was still six days until our ferry home we started to think about the route back to Dublin. Next weekend includes a bank holiday. Campsites and motorhome parking places get crowded on Fridays and Saturdays so we needed a plan. Originally we had thought of heading back through the lake district around Killarney then taking the motorway to Dublin via Limerick. However the main road north from Bantry is not recommended for larger vehicles. The alternative route involved a long detour through Macroom, this would take us halfway back to Cork, so in the end we decided to go that way even though it meant retracing our steps rather than covering new territory.

On the way to Beara we had driven through Bantry and passed the motorhome parking area at the marina. We reckoned if we got there around midday on Friday we would beat the weekend rush. We did not figure in Bantry's Friday market. The streets are narrow and the tailback started a mile or so from the town centre. After twenty minutes of edging forward we managed to make it to the opposite side of town to where the marina is located.

 

The market was packed, with a real hubbub about the place, the nearest thing I've seen in the British Isles to the kind of vibrant country markets you find in southern France. Gill found a fish restaurant on the main street with positive reviews. We headed there for lunch. Most times you choose fish and chips you are almost guaranteed disappointment. However, if cooked on demand with care, using good quality fresh produce it can be delicious, like the one today. Was this the best fish and chips we've eaten, or those in Rick Stein's place in Padstow last year? We decided to call it a draw.

Bantry was buzzing.. Irish people are renowned as great talkers and the family sitting right behind me conformed to the stereotype. They seemed to be celebrating a windfall of some kind, perhaps a win on the local lottery. They also appeared to know every passer-by - the wellbeing of uncle Seamus and great aunt Mary discussed in detail, an update on big Micheal's operation and the whereabouts of young Siobhan who was 'off across the water' blithely shared with all and sundry; they in turn reciprocated with their own tribal tall tales, interspersed with banter about the number of empties on the table. There was an assertiveness and swagger to the exchanges that felt quite foreign. Like in America, the fact we shared a language serves to emphasise cultural difference rather than signalling similarity.

It stayed dry, though big bellied clouds on the hills threatened rain. We decided against taking a trip from the marina to nearby Whiddy island. Instead we walked around the harbour to the Supervalu on the opposite side. It's a modern building styled to look like a row of old wooden warehouses. It manages a post-modern vibe while fitting the scale and ambience of its surroundings. The foyer features an exhibition of old photos. The area had once been Bantry's railway station and the harbour more extensive, able to accommodate small cargo ships.

When we returned to the moho the parking area was almost full, though the bay next to us remained vacant. Not for long, a van squeezed in. Then a sharp rap on our driver's door. Our new neighbour demanded rather than requested that we snuggled up to the next van along. We had no choice given his explanation - that his cable was too short to reach the ehu point and he needed power to charge up his disabled daughter's electric wheelchair. It was a request no-one was ever going to refuse, so why be so aggressive about it?

Over the next hour or so three more vans turned up and parked across the car bays behind us. It soon became clear they were friends or relatives of our new next door neighbours. They all had kids, ranging in age from babes in arms to mid-teens. It took less than half an hour for the lively social gathering to morph into a full blown hooley. While the adults got pissed the kids ran riot. Highlights included the moment a seven year old boy clambered out of a motorhome skylight and danced on the roof doing an excellent impression of John Travolta circa 1977. More alarmingly, the rest of the kids invented a version of 'chicken' which involved running at full tilt along the edge of the quayside, getting ever closer to the sheer drop. I think it was a futile attempt to get some parental attention who were too drunk to notice.

Things died down about tennish; we turned in. Three hours later the menfolk returned from the pub. They were roaring drunk, shouting and swearing at the top of their voices. It was tricky to work out if they were having a violent row or simply arsing about. Things calmed down from riotous to merely rowdy when their WAGs decided to join them. Around 2.15am  and the corks were still popping, we could here some of the older kid's voices too. At no point did I feel confident enough to complain. We have spent hundreds of nights in unsupervised free camping spots or paid for 'aires'. Occasionally we have been disturbed by impromptu teenage parties or revving hot-hatches, maybe blanked by standoffish locals. Occasionally we might have felt slightly discomforted, but never threatened or scared. We did now, lying in the dark with mayhem outside. Motorhoming long term you need the optimism to rely on the kindness of strangers. Most times you can, but not tonight.

Eventually we did fall asleep, in presumably so did our neighbours, for contrary to our expectations next morning the quayside was not littered with stupified bodies. We needed a quick getaway. Sadly the sound of our engine stirred the guy next to us. Give last night's shenanigans he looked surprisingly perky. He decided to assist Gill in seeing me out as the people who had parked across the bays behind us made reversing tricky. I could see him in my wing mirror, cocksure and gesticulating grandly. One slight slip on the clutch and I could have flattened him.... so tempting.

Leaving Bantry felt like an escape, you can have too much local colour we agreed.

Eat Truro Feesh

Wikipedia on the glittery grey expanse to our left:

"Bantry Bay, long inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, southwestern County Cork, Ireland. The bay has a maximum length of 30 miles (48 km) and is 10 miles (16 km) wide at its broadest point; it separates the Beara peninsula to the north from the Sheep's Head peninsula to the south and is surrounded by mountains." 

What the piece fails to mention are the bay's two islands, both large enough to support permanent populations. We like small islands, so we made plans to take the bikes across by ferry and have a pedal about. Whiddy Island is the smaller of the two. Its population has diminished over recent years to 20 people and a flock of feral goats. In the event we never managed to make the short trip there from Bantry, we don't do rainy cycle rides.

However, we did make it over to Bere island, which we could see clearly from the Castletownbere motorhome area; its rocky hills were only a few hundred metres away, sheltering the town's natural harbour from Atlantic storms. On the way back from MacCarthy's Bar we called in at the ferry landing and checked the times - outwards at 11.30am, back at 3.30pm. The island seemed to have a few places for lunch, the forecast for tomorrow was fair, which is as good as it gets hereabouts; we had a plan. 

Next morning we presented ourselves at the quayside at about 11.15. The ferry had docked, the front ramp was open, but there was no-one to be seen. Then a few others turned up, all on foot, though the craft's small deck is large enough to accommodate half a dozen cars or a couple of vans. We all boarded and waited for something to happen.

A man arrived and began collecting fares. "Eat Truro Feesh" he asserted when it came to our turn. Gill looked puzzled, I wondered why someone in one of Ireland's premier fishing ports was so positive about Cornwall's. He repeated the phrase more slowly for the benefit of dense English people - Eeat... Trooros.. Feetch. It clicked! 'Eight euros each!' He took the cash and moved on. We presumed he was associated with the ferry and not some local drunk on the make, but we couldn't be sure, he had no identification and we hadn't been given a ticket.

It took less than ten minutes to cross the narrow channel between Castletownbere and the island. Apart from the ferry landing, a couple of wooden buildings on the pier and a few houses scattered across the hillside beyond, there is not much to the western end of Bere Island. The nearest thing to a settlement, Rerrin, is a few kilometres east at the opposite end of the island  A rival operation, "Murphy's Ferry' operates a service from different pier located near Castletownbere Golf Club, about five kilometres east of the village.

It soon became obvious that it would have made more sense to use Murphy's ferry rather than the boat from Castletownbere harbour. We had two problems. Firstly, the small café up the hill from the jetty was closed despite Google maps asserting the opposite. We hadn't even brought a bottle of water with us. It would have been easy enough to cycle over to Rerrin where there was a small shop and a another café. However the hill between here and there looked mightily steep, and a challenge for Gill at the moment. She is on a waiting list to talk to an orthopedic surgeon about her knee, but given the state of the NHS it could be a year or more before her appointment.

A signpost to the Bere Island heritage centre pointed up the hill, it was a few hundred metres away and the incline not so steep. Part way there I stopped to take a photo of the view across the water to Castletownbere on the mainland. A man was weeding his garden nearby, and began to chat. People do in Ireland, no English social awkwardness here! Well, apart from on my part, because like the guy on the ferry earlier, it was difficult to understand his local dialect. I wondered if Gaelic maybe the first language of older people hereabouts, though unlike the Dingle peninsula to the north, Beara is not officially designated as Gaeltacht area. I tried as best I could to smile and nod in the right places, I think we had a conversation about the beautiful view, but I can't be sure.

The island's heritage centre is based in the island's former National School. It is excellent, opened about 15 years ago it was deemed important enough for the President of Ireland herself to attend the inauguration. Five or so tall information boards tell the island's story from earliest times to the present day. In the 1840's Bere island had a population of 2,200, was self sufficient in food 

With a mild climate influenced by the Gulf Stream a wide range of produce was grown, but the staple was potatoes supplemented by pork and fish. The effects of failure of the potato crop and resultant famine are stark, a decade later the population had halved. It has declined ever since, though augmented from time to time by military personnel; over the years the island has housed a naval base, large gun emplacements and POWs during the civil war. 

The curator was very friendly, we chatted about this and that - how the centre had recently installed a fast fibre network and established a co-working space, that the island's population had stabilised in recent years to around 180 and the primary school had about 20 children now. Maybe the culture of remote working prompted by the pandemic gives hope to remote communities threatened by second home ownership, Airbnb and ageing populations, connectivity making Schumaker's vision of a globe of villages rather than a global village a possible future rather than a utopian dream.

Our conversation also provided some practical information. We knew from the information board at the ferry landing that today - 1st June - marked the start of the summer timetable. What was unclear how this affected the ferry scedule that as the times posted up seemed identical to the winter one. It transpired that there was usually a bit of a time delay in publishing the new timetable, but the afternoon ferry back to the mainland was now at 2.30 not 3.30. It was fortunate that the curator mentioned this otherwise we would have been marooned here until late afternoon without food or water. So the earlier sailing actually worked better for us Even so we still had almost two hours to kill before the next boat.

We cycled towards the western point of Bere Island, stared at the ruins of the old gun emplacements, and considered walking along the coast path towards Ardnakinna Lighthouse. The path looked uneven and the stile over the high dry stone wall rickety and steep. Not dodgy knee friendly, so we mooched about staring at the wild flowers - "Pyramidal orchids! Early spotted are more common back home," Gill advised. 

We found a couple of boulders, sat down and stared at the view. The clouds parted above the Slieve Miskish mountains, somewhat reluctantly the sun broke through; momentarily it felt not quite so chilly. We have concluded that a warm day here is essentially an aspirational concept. 

After a while we decided to return to the jetty, it took less than five minutes on our bikes so we still had around half an hour until the next ferry. We found a nearby picnic table and resumed staring at the same view but from a different angle. 

A few minutes later a lone hiker arrived. She had completed the 'western ring' hike that passes the Ardnakinna Lighthouse. "How was it?" I enquired. Good, but steep in some bits and boggy in others came the reply. The circuit is about 11km, it had clearly been a bit of challenge as she then lay down flat on a nearby concrete bench, but continued the conversation. This felt a slightly peculiar, especially as it was a bit of a one sided exchange. She asked a few questions about what we were doing in Ireland, which we were happy to answer, but when we enquired what her plans were, her replies were vague and evasive. She exuded an air of superiority somehow, as if she was accustomed to being in charge. In mid sentence she suddenly rolled off the bench and stood up straight. "Time for the boat!" She announced, and strode off. 

"Perhaps she is somebody important, or a famous actress," Gill mused. It was true, there was something theatrical about her demeanour.

A few minutes later we wheeled our bikes down the jetty too. This time a white van and a couple of cars squeezed onto the small boat. No-one bothered to collect fares or check tickets, clearly the 'eat Truro feesh' had been for a return. In fact the curator in the heritage centre had explained the arrangement along the lines that every visitor who used the ferry was going to have to return to the mainland at some point, so what was the point of having fares for a single journey or anything as needlessly bureaucratic as a ticket. Irish logic!

We arrived back in Castletownbere around threeish, a little earlier than anticipated. Aside from needing a few bits and pieces from a supermarket we had no other plans. Aldi and Lidl seem to dominate food shopping in Ireland with a few big Tesco's in cities and big towns. Are there any higher quality supermarkets here, we had wondered the other day, like Pingu Doce in Portugal and Waitrose back home? There is, and we stumbled upon one accidentally at the far end of Castletownbere's straggling high street. 

We had passed-by SuperValu stores assuming that they were bargain basement like Kwiksave used to be. They're not, far from it in fact. The shops feel spacious with wide aisles, reminiscent of Spain's Mercadona chain. SuperValu's produce is top notch, great looking fruit 'n veg and fresh meat and fish, quite a lot locally sourced. The chain makes a point of showcasing the area's producers - farmers, bakers, cheesemakers.  As well as that they stock a good range basics and 'world foods'. As would expect the prices are higher than in Aldi and Lidl, but only in the off-licence are they eyewatering, otherwise, given the quantity and range on offer they do live up to the promise of their brand name.

The stores appear to be franchises not branches, Murphy's Supervalu here in Castletownbere, the outlet down the road in Bantry badged-up as 'O'Keeffe's. It seems to be an impressive hybrid of national chain and local grocery store.

Back at the van Gill resumed her impossible knitting puzzle involving circular needles and a novella length pattern translated from Slovakian downloaded from Etsy. I became bored and decided to go solo to the a nearby Bronze Age monument. Derreenataggart Stone Circle was marked on Google maps about 2kms from where we were parked. 

There is no footpath, you need to use minor roads to reach it. My experience of driving down Irish country lanes had convinced me that only people with a death wish would be happy to walk along one, but I was open to persuasion. In fact I'd already had a brief conversation yesterday with the guy parked next to us about walking to the remains. As we arrived back with our shopping, he and his girlfriend came past, they were wearing chunky trainers and small day sacs, I guessed they had taken a small hike to the place and more importantly not been flattened by a white van man called Seamus. They assured me that the country roads were quiet and it was an easy walk, but there were cows grazing on the site. I am not too keen on cattle, in fact I am wary of any animal bigger than a rabbit, and even then, from bitter experience I know bunnies can be very vicious when cornered. Nevertheless, throwing caution to the wind I decided to visit the stones.

It wasn't far but the lanes were steep. Beyond the village there was a great view of the mountains, but because of the lie of the land I was soon out of sight of the sea; I could easily have been in a remote valley miles from the coast. I used Google maps to navigate. It indicated the stone circle was a few metres down a farm track on my left. The view became even more spectacular, the nearby coast reappeared stretching away beyond the Ardnakinna Lighthouse on Bere Island 

Over the fence a small herd of cattle grazed, but there was no stone circle. I returned to the road and was just about head back when I saw a well camouflaged green finger post half hidden in the hedgerow opposite - there it was, Derreenataggart Stone Circle and not a cow to be seen!  It's unwise to rely on Google maps for finding your way about in rural areas because their accuracy depends on having a good mobile signal and that is rarely the case.

A notice next to the stones stated that the monument was three thousand years old, but gave little other useful information. By my reckoning that made it late bronze age, and I wondered if the Allihies copper mine situated in the far west of the peninsula had been worked that far back. It would explain why Beara has a cluster of Bronze Age monuments. 

The situation of the stones is magnificent, with a prospect of the sea and ringed by mountains. Like many sites of ancient ritual there is something powerful about them, a tad unsettling, the sense that cultures come and go, nothing is forever, our age will pass, as will we.

Though it was only a little more than two kilometres to the stones, because of the steep hill and inadvertent detour it took longer than anticipated to reach it. I WhatsApped Gill to say I was heading back, it was an endearingly silly exchange.

We've had a memorable couple of days here. Tomorrow we are heading over the hill to the northern shore of the peninsula. When you get a pang of regret about leaving a place then you know something about it has struck a chord. Castletownbere is special, we've had a great time. 

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