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.
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