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travels in my own country

~ idle thoughts

travels in my own country

Tag Archives: Ireland

Day 176: an Gorta Mór

24 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Dunbrody, famine, famine ships, Ireland, New Ross, population of Ireland, potato famine

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 70

The population of Ireland in 2012 was approximately 6.4 million. The population in 1841 was approximately 8.1 million. There is no other country on the planet that can produce similar figures. Something terrible and something avoidable happened here that changed everything about the country. There is no crueller death than starvation other than to starve, and see those you love and care for, starve before your eyes. Terrible famines have punctuated human history but this one reverberates with senseless wrong, cruelty and an overwhelming sadness. At the height of the hunger Ireland was producing enough crops to feed the entire population, granaries were full and kept locked and over £6 million a year was being collected in rents from the impoverished Irish and sent across the water to absentee landlords in England.

Over a million people died in their homes, on the roads and by-ways, in the blighted fields, outside the houses of the wealthy. A further million emigrated. The country had been on the verge of starvation for hundreds of years, had been dreadfully served by a British parliament, had suffered under laws that made catastrophe inevitable and had stayed loyal to its British rulers during that whole period. The famine changed all of that.

The optimist will often look into the darkest cloud and see a silver lining. Only a cynic would do the same about the famine. No matter what the future brought, and it was hardly a future of milk and honey, the price was too dreadful.

British rule over Ireland happened in stages. It began during the reign of Henry II when an army led by a number of Norman Knights overcame the King of Leinster. The invaders were under the leadership of Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow. A larger scale invasion followed and for 800 years the country strained under an English yoke. Some historians seek to diminish the English culpability in the troubles of Ireland. I find this hard to swallow. Being guilty of appalling acts that led to centuries of suffering is bad enough. To adopt a revisionist view of history; to say it was never our intention; to wash our hands makes me feel deeply ashamed  in the same way that I am deeply ashamed to be part of a country whose wealth was in significant part, built on the slave trade. Ashamed of these parts of our history, not ashamed of the entire history. We’ve done a lot of good in our time.

And it was the same classes of people who did it. The wealthy merchant classes and the aristocracy. Those we are still told to look up to. Those who, once again we have made our leaders even though, once again, they have brought enormous pain and suffering down upon the ordinary people. Be they eighteenth century plantation owners and shipping magnates, nineteenth century absentee landlords or twenty first century capitalist bankers, the crimes are real and they remain largely free from punishment whilst the pain is taken by the poor and the weak. Centuries of poverty and exploitation had left the Irish tenant farmers and their families weaker than anyone else in the entire continent. A royal commission in the 1840s set out its view that the “patient endurance which the labouring classes have exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the people of any other country in Europe have to sustain.” Historian Robert Kee puts forward the painful opinion that if the famine had hit anywhere else in Europe, the death toll would have been much greater. That the Irish endured it better simply because they were used to coping with the unendurable.

The cause is put down to blight in the potato crop, and this may well be true. Farms and small holdings had been so sub-divided, by exploitative landlords, as to make potatoes the only crop that could sustain a family. The failure of the crop wasn’t the cause but the inevitable effect of years of failure to look after the population, of mis-rule, mismanagement and a total lack, in modern legal terminology, of the duty of care the British government and landowners owed to the people of Ireland. To highlight this point, a fact. During the height of the famine between thirty and fifty ships sailed from Irish ports every day with their holds full of food.

Some historians see the famine as an unfortunate failure in agriculture. Others view it as genocide.

For those who survived, the situation was just about as bad as can be imagined. I still find myself feeling sad about the death of my father. He died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 89 after a full and successful life. The famine survivors had seen their loved ones die the most painful deaths before their eyes, had endured unbelievable suffering and now had nowhere to turn. For decades the solution had been emigration. The famine accelerated this process. There are fewer than 7 million souls living on the island today. There are over 100 million Irish living elsewhere. Of every one hundred people born in Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century, forty permanently left their native land.

Ulster and Leinster were less badly hit. Though relative comparisons of suffering are meaningless here. It would be more fitting to say that the greater horrors were to be found in Connacht and Munster. The further west or the further south the worse the hunger.

I’d stood on the hard in Sligo next to a haunting statue of a famine family. Throughout my journey I had never been far from a famine story, a village that had been destroyed and field where someone died. At New Ross there are two monuments, and I’m not at all sure how I feel about either.

Against the quayside fully rigged, The Dunbrody looks almost ready to sail. Built in the twentieth century with money from the JFK Foundation, it is a replica of the ships used in the mass emigration and a museum to the times. These ships weren’t the end of the story. Finding the money to get on board was not the end of your troubles. Twenty per cent of passengers died on the six week trans Atlantic voyages to a new life. 20% went unquestioned. Questions were only asked if the figure went over fifty per cent. Conditions were dreadful. Some of these ships had been used as slave vessels. Survival rates were often higher on slave crossings where profits were dependent on the number of living souls arriving in port.

Further down the quay is a statue of John Fitzgerald Kennedy along with many photographs as he stood on the quayside in New Ross in June 1963. Kennedy was one of the 100 million. He may have stood for something that America gained through the famine ships that took his family from County Wexford to New England. Many countries gained immeasurably from an influx of the Irish. Their gain was Ireland’s loss. As I stand by the River Barrow in New Ross I feel most dreadfully sad.

Day 151: Get Your Own Back Day

30 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe, Uncategorized

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bicycle tour, George Hotel Huddersfield, Gleeson's Townhouse and restaurant, Ireland, Roscommon

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 51

It is just possible that they know what they are doing. The girls in the restaurant I mean. There are a good number of people in for breakfast which doesn’t surprise me at all. It seems a good value hotel. And you can’t beat it for the full Irish welcome.

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Unless you want to be served breakfast and the two girls have taken against you.

They are both remarkably pretty. And they both are giving the appearance of being remarkably busy while finding time to do things at their own pace. I’m sure they’re playing a game I used to play in my bar tending days. A game you could call “getting society’s revenge”. I worked in The Tudor Bar of Huddersfield’s George Hotel. Being a town centre pub it drew in a busy lunch-time trade from all walks. A group of counsellors came in three days a week and made everyone else aware of their importance by blocking the bar and shouting conversations in the manner only perfected by fat Yorkshire tossers.

“Planning permission? Oh I think not.”

“Another half Roger?”

“Well, I’ve reached a convenient depth.”

“How about you Rodney? Barman. Seven halves of IPA.”

“I’ve never voted for it in my life”.

“Not a lot of point if you ask me.”

“What about that new place. Have you tried that.”

“I said seven halves barman.”

“I’m not sure that he isn’t ignoring me.”

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The game can only be played by the discerning and the put upon. The purpose is to make sure anyone with a redeeming feature is served and made happy before you even notice the self-important twerps holding court and holding forth. In the Tudor Bar there would be seven of them. And that meant seven different conversations as they all waited for a convenient pause to say their piece. There was no continuity or natural flow. Just a succession of monologues delivered with as much gravitas as being shaped like a conference pear (huge arse and no shoulders) and having more beer inside than you can cope with. The loudest was called Furness and the squirtiest was called Cock.

We took it in turns to see how many other drinkers we could serve while they waited. These girls were playing the same game and I am delighted to say that they found me a table (for five) within a minute of my arrival in the dining room. They then made a party of five loud English know-alls wait nearly twenty minutes because there was no table big enough to accommodate them. Ahead of them was an impatient little man who made the mistake of letting everybody near him know that he was not only in a hurry, but that he was far too important to be made to wait. He didn’t say it in so many words but he may as well have done.

It was get your own back day in the kitchens of Roscommon.

I’m pointed towards the fruit and yoghurt. The prunes and apricots are a welcome treat. The yoghurt is tangy and creamy and altogether exceptional. I don’t know if Gleeson’s have a dairy but if they don’t they know someone who keeps a very good one.

By the time I finish this, the group of five are being squeezed onto a table for four and the little man with the lifts in his shoes is tutting and toe-tapping and looking first at his watch and then at his phone and then at his watch again. I smile across to let him know that his efforts to gain attention have not been completely over-looked but I fail to use my sympathetic smile and I’m afraid he may have interpreted it as containing more than an element of schadenfreude.

I was encouraged to help myself to other treats but I had my mind set on the “house special breakfast”. I played a wait and see game on whether I’d have room enough for some extras afterwards. It was a rare treat. I may have become predictable in my breakfast orders and I was trying as hard as I could to avoid the big breakfast every morning. The fact was that I simply couldn’t.

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And it was fabulous. A huge portion of perfectly cooked viands balanced with beans and eggs and mushrooms. There were white and black puddings which gave me a taste challenge. I preferred the white but it was close. The very best part was the bread. The whole balance of a British or Irish cooked breakfast is wrong. By all the rules of good eating the fried breakfast is a terrible meal. All the rules except a sense of feasting, a sense of treating and an abundance of taste and texture. If the ingredients are inferior, it isn’t worth eating. If the sausage and the bacon are of the best, it is a treat worth travelling for. Somerset Maugham’s famous advice rings true. “To to eat well in England, you should have breakfast three times a day.” The same holds true across the Irish Sea.

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The little man finally gets seated in a corner where he is quietly ignored. He has made a big effort; ironed jeans with creases, colourful shirt outside his trousers, public school accent, bright red face. He was my age and I was very glad I wasn’t him. The girls had chosen their victim well. The great skill in playing this game is that no-one should be absolutely sure you are playing it. If they were, then these girls were brilliant. His pomposity had been both pricked and exposed but he was reeled in before he reached apoplexy.

I mop up the juices with chunks of sourdough. No, it isn’t sour-dough. It’s brown soda bread. It is delicious. I reckon the full Irish is even less healthy than the full English but the puddings, the potato scones and the soda breads make it a winner by a couple of lengths.

I spin out the whole experience for as long as I can. The rain is falling steadily and I’ve got a bag of clothes I’ve washed and dried overnight. I don’t want to drench them straight away. But there’s no putting off the departure. The young man who booked me in was as friendly a fellow as I had met on the island. I was hoping to meet him again on leaving so I could say thank you. I met his brother instead.

“Pleased to meet you Simon. I’m Eamon. I’m the son. Did you meet the folks? Well, you were staying in their old bedroom. Nice room isn’t it. Oh, me brother – the red head. Oh, we all call him the ginger ninja. Is it far you’re going? Now, that’s fantastic.”

Stephen Roche remains most proud of winning the 1987 Tour de France

All of this is delivered in an even broader accent than his brother. So strong that he made Stephen Roche sound like Peter Bowles.

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“We went to Lone on the bikes once when we were younger, and you know, when you are younger you are supposed to be fitter.” At this point he lights the first of several cigarettes. “D’ye know where Lone is?”

A slight inflection before the l told me that he meant Athlone. “We got there, and that’s only twenty miles. But, on the way back we had to call Connolly to come and pick us up in the car. It was too much for us.”

He checks my tyres and brakes and generally admires and ensures everything is as it should be. I’m sure a good ostler would have done the same for my horse in the old days.

On his third cigarette he adds, “Oh no, I’m cutting down. Just ten a day and then in four months I’ll make it nine a day.

“Well, fair play to ye.”

“What do you do if it starts to rain again?”

“Oh well, fair play to ye.”

And so, weighted down by the biggest breakfast yet, and full of admiration for the friendliness of the good people, I leave Roscommon. I’d come in on a main road. I left on the smallest road I could find.

Day 144: Mansion on the Hill

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe, Uncategorized

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Tags

Celtic Tiger, double garages, housing, Ireland, Property Boom

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 45

In the two years from 2005 to 2007 house prices in Ireland rose by over 30%. The Celtic Tiger was roaming the Emerald Isle and the money seemed to be endless. After generations of playing the poor man of Britain and the poor but well beloved lost son of Europe, the Irish were finally rolling in it. Well some of them were. The economy was booming and an ancient landscape was beginning to pay the price. (Or show the benefit; depending on your point of view).

Between 2007 and 2013 Irish property prices fell by an average of 65%. The tiger had a powerful sting in its tail.

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The term Celtic Tiger was coined by Kevin Gardner of Morgan Stanley. He saw the rapid growth in the Irish economy akin to that of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. It caught on to the extent that the whole country became known by the term while the money poured in.

The initial growth was sustainable and impressive. Ireland became a world leader in information technology and was handily placed between America and Europe to capture a large share of the pharmaceutical market. What followed was mirrored across the western world but rarely quite so dramatically.

I visited Ireland last in 1987 when a fellow in a Clare pub bemoaned the state of the country. “Sure”, he said, “The whole country’s in a terrible mess. We should hand the whole place back to Her Majesty the Queen and apologise for the state we’ve left it in.” He wasn’t being entirely serious. In fact he was merely having a melancholic moment between songs in a rare old Lisdoonvarna session. A moment later, armed with a fresh pint of Guinness he was hooting and a hollering and making ironic requests of a lisping Chesterfield troubadour with a speech impediment to give everyone his version of “Wed is the Wose!”

IMG Mr O'Brien

There was certainly no-one in mind of re-forming the old union in the boom years of 1995 – 2008. Great change was afoot. Housing projects got off the drawing board with indecent haste. Whole estates were built, never occupied, and some were later demolished. Areas of Dublin changed beyond recognition. The doors at the ports and airports had people pouring through on their way into, not out of the country. Ireland finally began to embrace multiculturalism.

The builders were making huge profits. Wage packets were bulging and property seemed the place to double, and even treble, your money; as well as giving people the chance to live like the old Lord of the Manor.

All across Ireland four and five bedroom mansions started to appear. The way it was put to me was that the plasterer would build himself a house with a large frontage, an acre of lawn and a double garage. The plumber would go one better and add a treble garage including space for a land cruiser and a quad bike. The bricklayer, not to be outdone would match all of this and then add the stable for the horse.

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Who can tell where it might all have ended. The vast majority of the people continued to work hard and leave the property bubble well alone. The speculators made a killing and then some of them lost it all and more. Many people lost an awful lot. The country had to go to the European Commission and the European Bank for a bail out and the population were told to put up with austerity measures to pay off the sins of the profiteers. The country has dealt with austerity with remarkable forbearance and dignity and is once again showing itself to be a healthy economy.

The legacy of the Tiger can be seen all over the countryside. The new build, plaster still damp and no green on the lawn, mansions that all look sad shadows of the egos that built them. Four and five bedrooms and garage space to park a fleet of taxis. There is very little beautiful about them and they steal an awful lot of historic, rustic beauty from any location they have come to dominate. Many are lived in but many are not. They stand like clubhouses of not very tasteful golf clubs. The architecture has nothing to do with Irish heritage, the positions have less. Some share fields with reed beds and streams and are destined to flood come a bad winter. Some have proved bargain buys for those who rode the last flicks of the tiger’s tail. All, in my opinion are a blight on the landscape.

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Ireland has suffered a great deal through being poor. There is little dignity in poverty but it created a culture and nation as strong, and rightly proud, as any in Europe. The countryside survived. Agriculture and farming survived. Villages survived and held onto their unique character. Twelve years of over-exuberant spending and a great deal of the charm of rural Ireland has been lost under the quarry tiles, crazy paving and turfed lawns of the nouveau riche.

I ride along wishing I could obliterate them with a flick of a disappointed wrist.

Of course there are vast areas of unspoiled countryside. I saw miles of it this morning between Ballygawley and Ballyfarnon. I also saw too many stretches of road where the view was dominated by a temple of poor taste. I began to assume that there is no planning regulation in the country. Either that, or worse, money turns a blind eye. I hate to come across as a bleating outsider bemoaning the loss of quaint but unsuitable housing and the right of the Irish to live in some comfort. The views here are my own but they reflect a great number of Irish people I spoke to on my journey. These houses represented perhaps one in every two hundred properties at most and yet they changed the character and flavour of whole areas. We are talking less than half of one per cent of the population at most. You might as well have shoved up a MacDonalds or a Wal-Mart. My lament was for the loss of Irishness, of identity, of beauty and grace and all the things that Ireland has been a world leader in for generations. It will survive as a cultural world leader but it’s been given a considerable jolt.

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I reached the River Shannon an older and a wiser, and not a little sadder man. The car had once again made everything in these parts accessible. No-where was out of the way. It increased my desire to go west again and see Mayo and Connemara. I trust the golf houses and garages and stables never got that far. I’m sure that they won’t look so bad when the trees grow up around them and they don’t all look so new. The world is changing. We are told we cannot stop progress. But is it progress?

Day 143: Simon the Navigator

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe, Uncategorized

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bicycle tour, Budenell Social Club, Ireland, Leitrim, sat navs, Sligo

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 44

You can get sat navs for bicycles. I’ve never much seen the point of them for cars but each to their own. I was once driven to a concert in Leeds by someone who was over proud of their digital navigation device. Granted, I was impressed by him swinging up a few roads I never would have taken and parking on a piece of no-man’s land that the device announced as our destination. Credit where credit is due, we were right outside the Budenell Social Club in good time to listen to Sam Baker sing some of his excellent songs. I have nothing but respect for this. What I question is whether we had to have the bloody thing on from junction 26 of the M1 in order to find an enormous city at the top end of the same road.

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I’m not much for the music of artificial voices whether it is a satellite system, Professor Stephen Hawking or Ken Bruce. I don’t listen to radio two in the morning because I find it inane and repetitive. Being told to continue straight on every thirty seconds for the best part of an hour was much the same experience. I suppose, like mobile phones, they are old hat now and don’t have to be used by borderline inadequates to bolster their perceived social status.

I rather like getting lost. My chest infection meant that I had to give more than usual consideration to the destination, but the natural shape created by me and a bicycle is a meander. I’d come to see Ireland, not get a glance at the view from the side of a big road. But I found myself on a big road anyway. The N4. In England this would be a terrible mistake. In Ireland it works out rather pleasantly. There is a wide section on the kerbside of smooth carriageway for the sole use of the cyclist. I don’t think that was the intention, but it was the result. The line painters had given me my own private motorway. Smooth and free from danger. The road itself carried only about a fifth of the traffic you would get in the west of England; be it Devon, Gloucestershire or Cumbria. The views were magnificent, with mountains rising on either side of the road. It was uphill, sure, but only uphill enough to give strong legs a proper warming up.

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I was with the conundrum of having a chest infection that would make singing impossible and even a brisk walk unlikely, and yet I was still a strong cyclist, eating miles that two weeks earlier I had been struggling with. My legs looked like a professional cyclist’s legs. They had become shapely, strong and muscular in the first week and then, over the next week they simply became strong, thin and elegant.

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The mystery of recent Tour de Frances was being answered. In the eighties and nineties you had to have legs like a rhino to get up the mountains, and now, we have riders like Bradley Wiggins and the Schleck brothers who were climbing cols with legs like pipe cleaners. I’d suspected something in the supplements, but here was I, fuelled with black pudding, bacon and a fried slice, carving up hills I couldn’t have managed at snail’s pace with bigger calves. And I was flying up these hills without the engine of my lungs.

There is no great mystery about the illness. I had a lung infection. Back home I was put on strong antibiotics and several courses of steroids. The cure took a long time. My doctor, cognisant of the fact I’d been a long term smoker until a few years ago, and aware of the schlocking I’d given my vascular system, said they were knackered and would take some time to recover. The mystery is partly solved by the levels of fitness I had reached before infection set in. The lungs may have only been working partially but they were working very efficiently. There was an awful lot more oxygen circulating than I had any right to expect.

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Cycling is an amazing exercise. I couldn’t have jogged a mile yet I could cycle for eight or ten hours a day so long as I kept in the mid range.

The uphill lasted ten miles. I’ve always found that once I’ve done ten miles the rest of the day is relatively easy. Anything over ten miles is perfectly respectable so you can stop where you want to  and say, “Well, I’ve done thirteen miles. That’s enough for today.” You find when you are cycling that you can very easily become addicted to covering distance. Not is a maniacal way, but you get the groove. The same thing happens when you strike up the guitars with the right company. You may only have intended to sing a couple of songs but you’re still belting out favourites two and three hours later.

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At the ten mile reach there is a big petrol station with a Mace mini mart attached. There’s a toilet, and they serve coffee. It was two hours since I finished breakfast; another Full Irish; and I was ready to celebrate the top of the climb. The view of the mountains had gone but a packet of Maryland Cookies seemed the order of the day. It is also on the corner of the little road I’d been looking for since I left Sligo. I had miles of rolling Irish countryside and a gentler road all the way to Carrick-on-Shannon. If I’d had a sat nav I could have saved myself five or six miles. I tend to think of it as gaining some miles I would otherwise have missed.

I put this to a man I met later in Roscommon and he said it was a glass half empty thing. I agreed with him because he was an amiable fellow and he was sure he was right. It’s not about an outlook on life, it’s about how you consider the journey. Is it the journey itself or is that just a means to the destination. I ride as I try to live. Enjoying the moment, the freedom and chosen-ness of it. The passing view, the people that you meet. I try not to repeat things and that is perhaps the main reason I felt I’d drunk enough from the bottle and the barrel. There really aren’t that many ways of being drunk. Cigarettes went because I finally wanted to be a non-smoker more than I wanted to be a smoker. I wanted the sensation of having clean lungs and gulping down litres of air. I’ll probably never experience that feeling. The legacy of my previous smoking is too strong. I was gulping down enough to keep me going.

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Suddenly I’m the only sound I can hear. Cows chew cud lazily in the same fields as sheep. I see my first hay stacks since the sixties. Swallows dance in the skies, the sun comes out and the world feels just about the way I want it to feel. There is a feel of the timelessness I had sought. You can find it in parts of England. I found it in Upper Wharfedale and the higher reaches of the Eden. I’ve encountered it in parts of rural Kent and Dorset. You find it in France and Northern Spain. This is why we walk and cycle and head to be renewed in the countryside.. Hardly a car passes. There is no rush on the pedals. The warm air and the smells of summer waft me across county borders; Sligo then Roscommon, then Leitrim, then Roscommon, then Leitrim again. I am almost completely happy.

 

Day 142: At the Evening of the Day

21 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by simon682 in A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe, Uncategorized

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blueberries, Heston Blumenthal, Ireland, Sligo, traditional irish music, Yeats

A Cycle on the Celtic Fringe … Part 43

There was a quietness in the evening. The buildings and thoroughfares announced a substantial city. The population suggested a big and contented village. This wasn’t a gastronomic tour but if it had been I wouldn’t have suffered through lack of choice. I’d been told about the quality of the seafood out in the west. Here there seemed to be good food, of every kind, around every corner.

Most of my days began with enough food for the day in the form of a lavish breakfast. After that it was merely a matter of topping up. I’d taken a strong liking to cheese, to oatcake biscuits and to apples. The combination satisfied taste and texture and sat lightly on an overworked stomach. I didn’t mind working my gut, on overtime, to digest yet another monstrous fry, so long as it had the rest of the day to recover. Once I’d stopped exercising I wanted to lightly and safely graze.

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Hotels were going to stretch my budget; restaurants would have taken it to pieces. And, anyway, I don’t much care for solo dining. There is something wasteful in not being able to share the experience of good food. I imagine Heston Blumenthal makes himself a decent snack but I doubt he prepares and serves himself full dinners.

By eight o’clock I’m enjoying an alfresco supper by the banks of the river. In addition to my usual oatcakes,and cheese, I’ve picked up a punnet of blueberries. They’ve had quite a press as a super fruit. I’m not expecting wondrous things from them. I bought them because they were going cheap. As usual, I am slightly disappointed. They promise to be everything a bilberry is except bigger. They may be full of all sorts of goodness, but I’d choose bilberries any day.   

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 Several swans, some swallows and a pair of yellow wagtails provide the floorshow. The gentle flow of the river provides the drone to the traditional music crossing the water from a pub on the other bank. The last time I was in Ireland I followed the mandolins and fiddles all over the County Clare and drowned myself in the black stuff. This time I was happy to spend an hour listening. The players were good and were playing for the benefit of each other, it being a little early for the crowd. 

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I dropped a berry in the stream to catch a little silver trout. There were fish rising. Further up stream fishermen settled in the gathering dusk. This was the middle of a major city. It didn’t feel a bit like England. It had a special magic brought about by a different pace and a different set of values. Not slower and more mellow, this isn’t an over-romanticed idea of Ireland, but,  perhaps a little more in tune with the world around.

Darkness descended and I sat on. No one was in any hurry. No-one was disturbing the darkening streets. I could make out the great and little bear as I made my slow and contented way back to the hotel.

A mug of hot chocolate and a few more chapters of Inishowen sent me to sleep. The day hadn’t been without incident. Had given me ample opportunity to practice getting in a bit of a tizzy and then realise the futility of it. I’ve had a fine old day. I’ve crossed my first border, visited the oldest town on the island, traced the roots of Rory Gallagher and William Allingham. Traced the journey of The Spanish Armada, uncovered stories of great brutality and hatred. I’d visited the grave of one of the truly great poets of the twentieth century and almost doubled my reading of him. I’d spent time among the good people of Sligo and got a tourist’s feel for a very fine city. I’d been filled with frustration as things went wrong and filled with admiration and gratitude when un-looked for acts of kindness set me straight and on my way again. I had experienced a fall of evening as peaceful and lyrical as any I can remember and I fell asleep a tired and happy man.

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I had a ream of notes ready for the man in the post office. It was the first time I’d got to post my morning letter into a green post box. I queued politely behind two others and a helpful man allowed generously for my unfamiliarity with polite and helpful post office staff. I was thrown. There were four people working behind the counter and not one of them had a “position closed” sign up. I was definitely not in England.

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He sold me an envelope and a stamp for 27 cents. It didn’t seem enough. The post box had E:R on it. (Edward VII). It really wasn’t all that long ago that Ireland had been a part of Great Britain. The idea seemed preposterous.

My only problem was that I was not well. I had to get myself within reach of places I could abandon the tour if I had to. I was going to keep going as long as I could but recognised that what was wrong with my chest was a matter for a doctor and not a pharmacist. I was way out in the north west of Ireland. This isn’t a great country for trains. As far as I could see I had four basic options if I were to fulfil my ambition to cycle from my front door, round the British Isles and back to my front door. And those options were ferry ports; Larne, Dublin, Rosslaire and Cork. Cork was always my intention but it seemed an awful long way off.

I’d been abandoning all sorts of things along the way. It was in Sligo that I, with great reluctance, abandoned plans to keep to the west, to visit Mayo and Connemara, to ride through Galway and visit old friends in Clare. It was a tough decision. I cannot regret it. I returned home in a bad way. I was laid up at home for weeks. I found climbing stairs almost beyond me and wasn’t able to ride my bicycle for months. If I’d headed out west I don’t think I would have got home under my own power. The west will be there for another tour.

I took a final walk around the city of the shells and, passing Halfords, I found a quiet road that took me into Leitrim.

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Scotland 1987

Burns' Memorial
Burns’ Memorial
Glenfinnan
Glenfinnan
Rannoch Summit
Rannoch Summit
Erskine Bridge
Erskine Bridge
Rannoch Moor
Rannoch Moor
Glencoe
Glencoe
Glenfinnan Viaduct
Glenfinnan Viaduct
Lion & the Lamb
Lion & the Lamb
Coniston Water
Coniston Water
West Highland Way
West Highland Way
The King's House, Rannoch Moor
The King’s House, Rannoch Moor
Rannoch Moor
Rannoch Moor
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond
Way out west
Way out west
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond
Sunset from Ayr
Sunset from Ayr
Burns' Cottage
Burns’ Cottage
Ben More
Ben More
Ulverston
Ulverston
Dalton
Dalton
Near Crianlarich
Near Crianlarich
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond
Ayrshire
Ayrshire
Loch Tulla
Loch Tulla
Rhinns Of Kells
Rhinns Of Kells
Coniston
Coniston
Ayr
Ayr
Near Crianlarich
Near Crianlarich
Way out west
Way out west
The Clyde
The Clyde
Ben Nevis
Ben Nevis
Glencoe
Glencoe
Brig o' Doon
Brig o’ Doon
Pennington
Pennington
Glencoe
Glencoe
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond

Categories

  • A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe
  • A Jaunt into The West Country
  • A Journey into Scotland
  • A-Z of England 2014
  • Day Tripping
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Categories

  • A Cyclist on the Celtic Fringe
  • A Jaunt into The West Country
  • A Journey into Scotland
  • A-Z of England 2014
  • Day Tripping
  • Mostly Concerning Food
  • Music and Theatre
  • Pictures and Poems
  • Reading Matters
  • Travelling Companions
  • Travels with Jolly
  • Uncategorized
  • Western Approaches

Award Free Blog

Aberystwyth Alan Ladd Aldi asparagus Ballinasloe Barrow in Furness Betty's Bicycle bicycle tour Bill Bryson Birr Bonnie Prince Charlie Caithness Cardigan Carlisle Charles Lapworth Chesterfield Chris Bonnington claire trevor Cumberland Sausage Cumbria Cycle tour of England cycle tour of ireland Cycle tour of Scotland Cycle tour of Wales Cycling Derbyshire Dumfries Eli Wallach England Glencoe Halfords Ireland James Coburn James Hutton james stewart John Ford john wayne kedgeree Kilkenny Kris Kristofferson Lake District lidl Mark Wallington National Cycle Network New Ross Newtown Newtownstewart Northern Ireland Offaly Oscar Wilde pancakes Risotto Robert Burns Roscommon Scotland Scrambled eggs Shakespeare Shrewsbury Slieve Bloom Mountains Sligo Sperrin Mountains Staffordshire stagecoach Sutherland tagliatelle The Magnificent Seven Thomas Hardy Thurso ulverston vegetarian Waitrose Wales Wexford Yorkshire

Award Free Blog

Aberystwyth Alan Ladd Aldi asparagus Ballinasloe Barrow in Furness Betty's Bicycle bicycle tour Bill Bryson Birr Bonnie Prince Charlie Caithness Cardigan Carlisle Charles Lapworth Chesterfield Chris Bonnington claire trevor Cumberland Sausage Cumbria Cycle tour of England cycle tour of ireland Cycle tour of Scotland Cycle tour of Wales Cycling Derbyshire Dumfries Eli Wallach England Glencoe Halfords Ireland James Coburn James Hutton james stewart John Ford john wayne kedgeree Kilkenny Kris Kristofferson Lake District lidl Mark Wallington National Cycle Network New Ross Newtown Newtownstewart Northern Ireland Offaly Oscar Wilde pancakes Risotto Robert Burns Roscommon Scotland Scrambled eggs Shakespeare Shrewsbury Slieve Bloom Mountains Sligo Sperrin Mountains Staffordshire stagecoach Sutherland tagliatelle The Magnificent Seven Thomas Hardy Thurso ulverston vegetarian Waitrose Wales Wexford Yorkshire

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