From the Ring of Kerry to Cork City

Waking up early, we left Dun Chaoin. I said farewell to the hosts' dog Rua as Gaeilge. So his mistress remarked that I was Irish, given my brief chat in the native language. I silently wondered, as her husband had a Scots name and an English accent, if she was one of the many who had left for Britain after the war and one of the few who had returned to retire in such a lovely setting, rewarded by the scene that opened up below of the ocean and the Blaskets. Although the b+ b  we'd stayed had prominently on its business card an Irish-language name, I feared that Gaeilge was not long for this corner of a globalized nation that we all loved so much that our English onslaught, as the lingua franca of the EU too, drowned the voices. Still, a few of us try to practice it.

Past a long stone wall overlooking the waters, as the sun shone in rays through the clouds towards Iveragh, we headed back through An Daingean, past signs for beehive huts at Fahan I figured were closed for the season, and glanced down at a lovely stretch of rare sandy beach at Inch where Ryan's Daughter was filmed. We set out to traverse the Ring of Kerry. We had to take advantage of the relatively sunny day, for night crept up rapidly on the ocean's edge late in the year. The road swung towards a series of market towns half-heard long from maps and songs, sights new to me and Layne. This region was unfamiliar to us both, so this time, it was our turn to see it. The weather had held out, lucky for us.

We veered towards Castlemaine and then Killorglin, bypassing Killarney The roads were narrow again, but we sped, as we had to keep up with traffic. Irish radio played the same stories, hour after hour. A drunk man's sentencing for a child's death on the road. A molester with a sordid record caught after abducting a girl; her brother hanging onto the vehicle long enough to get a partial plate number that led to the rapid apprehension of the culprit. Many callers and texters wanted the man put away for far more than the actual misdeed legally warranted, but even his past could not be admitted in court. A Dublin homeless couple "tortured while in their sleeping bags" as the radio put it, from what seemed nothing much more than a muttered threat and a tossed firecracker. These headlines droned on, with subtle twists in their repetition to keep listeners alert or intrigued as the day passed.

The towns were picturesque, and the road meant, in the old style, we'd have to pass through each one. No Puck Fair, but Killorglin bustled. By the time we got to Caherciveen, we stopped for a break. I walked the narrow sidewalk, past many shops gone under, and across a fair share of a place that seemed to be suffering from the "downturn." Christian charity shop, tiny grocery sellers, a C of I church lichened and dampened on its dull brown walls, turned into a pottery or craft seller's niche. But the air enlivened me, and I needed the walk of a half-hour up and down the main road, mid-day.

Bridie had told us about Valentia Island beating out her husband's family's Dingle for beauty, and it looked enticing. But it was a one-way road into it, and it was already late in the afternoon. I feared as in Dun Chaoin or Co Monaghan getting caught after nightfall searching boreens for our dim b+b. So, on we went, past the tiny and shrinking Gaeltacht of Iveragh's peninsula. Charlie Chaplin's statue featured in Waterville/ An Coiréan, and I later looked up that he and his family loved spending time there at its large hotel facing the shore. A crowd of Italian sightseers took photos of the statue. We curved back at Derrynane and soon hit An Snaidhm, or the knot where of all people the first president of Israel, Chaim Herzog, was born, his father being the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, an easy job I guessed.

The road sped us on, past meadows and through trees, into Kenmare, down to Co. Cork. But we never saw the sign welcoming us to the Rebel County. Our GPS detoured us into Priest's Leap at our peril, as you can read in my Irish-English blog post here. That harrowing ride was one neither I nor Layne will never forget. You hear hyperbole about jarring roads, and sudden drops, but this was true.

That over, we descended back onto the main road, 10km on and perhaps a few hundred feet cut off the Glengarriff route, our hearts in our mouths. Around Cobduff and a school letting out, we were glad to stumble out of the Tibetan-like landscape, all sheared earth slopes and barren heights between precipitous canyons, akin to the Badlands or a Tanzanian section of a primordial Great Rift Valley.

Woods sheltered us, and the scenery of autumn, even if the radio bore no new tale to tell. Bantry looked big as we wound around its sudden roundabouts and by sheer intuition I kept to the main road. We kept going, Ballydehob and Skibbereen, where I imagined flocks of German artists painting landscapes of sheep and not of the Léim na tSagart's deadly drops and terrifying Badlands panoramas. I wondered where David Mitchell lived around here for he places Cape Clear Island in his novels, and certainly the handsome storefronts we passed in this area spoke of prosperity, as did the splendid if hidden Parknasilla "resort" which had entertained the affluent since Victorian days.

Leap was full of funny figures costumed around its signs and shops, out to grab some Halloween prize. Rosscarbery looked handsome, and we then found our way to our last big metropolis, Clonakilty. It was clogged with construction and one-way streets and barriers. So, I nearly lost it here, so tired of driving as I was, but after we stocked up on food at the Dunnes and the checker, an elderly lady, told us that she was the only one of eight children not to emigrate to America, we got directions at a gas station (the first clerk did not know; I suspected she was German) for Ardfield. My sense generally guided us right. But I made a wrong left turn, ending up in a deadend at dusk in the middle of a farm full of muck on Inchydowney Island. The causeway stunk of algae, the fields of manure.

A woman walking her dog briskly told us where to turn, and we made it. The host of the b+b waited at the local pub, where he'd had at least some of its wares, and we settled into the last of our Irish rural haunts, a refurbished farm shed made into a homey cabin. There, as rain finally settled us in, Layne cooked the smallest portion from the honor-payment organic farm down the lane, a giant mess of carrots, into soup. We watched British (not Irish oddly on the satellite feed, but again we had an elderly Irish woman and her English husband as hosts) tv and I kept changing channels as Layne's beloved "Judge Judy" was on a lot in the afternoon, drifting from one station to another, however.

The rooms were so small that I could not stretch out full length to do my exercise. But it was comfy. We left for Cork city our last day in Ireland, and I liked seeing Harry Clarke's illustrations for Keats and Poe in the Crawford Art Gallery. I enjoyed many of the "Irish school" of paintings from a century ago and more, while more contemporary ones appeared often far duller and less engaging. The painting above is by Sir Gerald Festus Kelly (grand name, that) of anarchist Peter Kropotkin's daughter, Sasha. He painted it in 1924; her husband was a Soviet revolutionary, Boris Lebedev. I had just read Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread last month; but I did not know he raised a family. Sasha in this portrait captures for me a whiff of Cork women, with their grace and confidence, on the street.

Kelly was an English painter in oil of portraits and landscapes. During his travels he painted some of his most characteristic and charming figure studies. He became famous for his portraits of elegant women, his technical brilliance and colourful, wide-ranging subject matter.
The woman in this painting is Sasha Kropotkin, daughter of the anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin, and wife of the Russian revolutionary Boris Lebedev. - See more at: http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/pages/paintings/GeraldFestusKelly.html#sthash.Lbys830F.dpuf=

Kelly was an English painter in oil of portraits and landscapes. During his travels he painted some of his most characteristic and charming figure studies. He became famous for his portraits of elegant women, his technical brilliance and colourful, wide-ranging subject matter.
The woman in this painting is Sasha Kropotkin, daughter of the anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin, and wife of the Russian revolutionary Boris Lebedev. - See more at: http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/pages/paintings/GeraldFestusKelly.html#sthash.Lbys830F.dpuf

Kelly was an English painter in oil of portraits and landscapes. During his travels he painted some of his most characteristic and charming figure studies. He became famous for his portraits of elegant women, his technical brilliance and colourful, wide-ranging subject matter.
The woman in this painting is Sasha Kropotkin, daughter of the anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin, and wife of the Russian revolutionary Boris Lebedev. - See more at: http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/pages/paintings/GeraldFestusKelly.html#sthash.Lbys830F.dpuf

Kelly was an English painter in oil of portraits and landscapes. During his travels he painted some of his most characteristic and charming figure studies. He became famous for his portraits of elegant women, his technical brilliance and colourful, wide-ranging subject matter.
The woman in this painting is Sasha Kropotkin, daughter of the anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin, and wife of the Russian revolutionary Boris Lebedev. - See more at: http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/pages/paintings/GeraldFestusKelly.html#sthash.Lbys830F.dpuf

I ferret out odd links as that, however tenuous, to my interests. Cork has a history of lots of subversive mutterings and a proud defiance. Layne shopped for plane fare at a sandwich stall at the English Market, which on the Irish-language sign I noted was rendered as "the old" market as well. Yet there I heard Irish spoken again, to my joy, as an older man ordered from a butcher. I passed him twice to be sure it was that, and not, say Polish, and it was, for once, the once and former language.

Cork felt a bit more posh. Its strollers and shoppers seemed slightly more cosmopolitan. The women often dressed up better. Even if a young clerk, in a smart short woollen outfit, marched up in front of me as we climbed Easons' escalator, her raw rank odor at odds with her groomed exterior. Could that be a millennial Sasha? Or would a daughter with an aristocratic pedigree scent herself? I would have stayed long in the bookstore of Liam Russell Teo., but we had to get on the motorway to Dublin. More radio, more roundabouts slowing the pace of the fastest car every few miles for miles on end.

The countryside looked identical all the way through Tipperary until night took over. At Naas, we filled up, far enough from the airport to get our euro's worth and keep the gauge at F. Rush hour clogged its streets, and from then on, it was a crawl. But we made it and the rental car shuttle driver even took us not to the hotel's lagging shuttle, but all the way down and around, back on the motorway, to the deceptively close Hilton. We tipped him accordingly, took our humble fare in from Dunnes made into sandwiches and beer,, and ate and readied for our 4:30 wake-up. A long walk to the terminal through a plastic tube. Off again, and after an uneventful wait, we boarded for Rome.