It’s taken us a long time to get to Ireland. For Catharine, who left over 30 years ago, it was a long overdue homecoming. For me, it has been a much-delayed return to my Irish Hamilton roots. And so, after 18 years of marriage, our children safely away in Canada – one working at camp (Alexander), the other doing the tour with relatives and a 2-week stint at the same camp (Charles) – we are here.
The trip from Paris was potentially fraught – an 18-hour ferry crossing from Cherbourg to Rosslare that could have been difficult if the weather had been bad – but everything was remarkably easy. The weather was sunny, the sea, calm. Other than a gentle sway to the boat and the vibration of the big turbines driving it, we could have almost been on land. We enjoyed a lovely evening and sunset from the deck; a good night’s sleep in a cozy little berth, and we woke the next morning to sunshine and big puffy clouds over the Irish coast.
Our first stop was Waterford, the home of the world famous crystal. Not a usual destination on the tourist’s itinerary, but it was lunchtime, we were hungry and it was a place to stop. As it turned out, it was an ideal starting point for our trip. There is an award-winning museum in Waterford that we visited, after a lunch of Thai fish cakes (a strange choice for our first meal in Ireland, perhaps, but much has changed here and it is as prone to international lifestyle trends as any other affluent Western country).
Waterford played a very important role in the early history of Ireland. Its key moment perhaps being during the reign of Henry II (husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine and father of Richard the Lionhearted – 12th century), when the overthrown King of Ireland, Dermott MacCourragh, invited Henry and the Normans to help him re-take his thrown. The key Norman knight who helped accomplish this was from Wales and named Strongbow. In exchange for restoring the Irish King, he wed his daughter in Waterford, and thus the Normans were established in Ireland, a century after they had conquered England. The Irish weren’t too keen on Dermott after that.
Our first day ended at a B&B in Cobh (pron: cove) on the Great Island at the mouth of Cork Harbour. This is where Catharine spent 5 formative years, leaving when she was 14 years old for England. Although she lived in Portugal, France and England before coming to Canada – now her home and native land – Catharine’s strongest childhood memories come from here. It was a very emotional experience for her to be in Cobh for two days. Especially with a visit, the first day, to Libby Heckett’s beautiful home, where she and Libby caught up on over 30 years of comings and goings of people that both had known in the early 70s when Catharine lived here.
We left Cobh the following day and took the circuitous route along the southern coast through Kinsale (quickly, because packed with tourists) and onto the Head of Kinsale where we peered over cliffs hundreds of feet above the ocean and watched the seabirds reeling and swooping in the air below us. From there we wove and wound our way over to Bantry where we had lunch and then did a quick tour of Bantry House. An 18th-century aristocratic home with a small collection of interesting European treasures, including some large Gobelins tapestries made for Marie Antoinette’s marriage and mismatched pieces of furniture that had been collected from all over Europe. The house was really the major attraction, with a magnificent view of the bay and some really lovely big rooms.
We then set off for our destination, Kilgarvan, outside of Kenmare, where we had rented a cottage for the week. We made the classic mistake of trying a shortcut on the map, which turned into a bit of a nightmare, as the road turned into a mountain track, barely one lane wide, with no guardrails and took us almost 3 times as long as we had planned. Of course, we survived without incident, but needed some hot tea and freshly baked scones (prepared by the cottage owners for our benefit) before we recovered our composure.
The cottage is delightful, a small stone structure that the owners restored. Low beamed living room with fireplace, a small but efficiently appointed kitchen, and two bedrooms and a bath (with shower) upstairs. All modern amenities and fittings, but with the stone showing here and there, it is a nice combination of old and new – and very cozy.
Since then we’ve spent our first three days hiking in the area. The first day, just up above the cottage, the second on the Beara peninsula, and yesterday, being very ambitious, a windy climb and eventually rain-soaked descent on Ireland’s highest mountain (Carrauntoohil, 3,000+ feet). For me, this was the completion of the four highest points of the British Isles, having done Snowdon (Wales), Skargill Pike (Lake District) and Ben Nevis (Scotland) 30 years ago on my first visit to the U.K. For Catharine, this was her first mountain ascent. It was the most difficult of the four, with the weather being nearly as bad as on Ben Nevis (in November). The wind knocked us off balance several times and we saw some water spouts on one of the lakes we passed. Fortunately, this time I had polar fleece and Gore-Tex, so it was much more comfortable. But after 6 hours of walking on shifting, wet rocks and mud, we were happy to arrive back at our cozy cottage for warm baths, hot tea, Guiness and several hours of Harry Potter – which we’re reading to each other.
The world has a way of reminding you that you are part a larger community, even when you’ve struggled to the top of a lonely, wind-swept aerie, far above it. We arrived to find an Irish couple crouching in the lee of a stone shelter, eating a snack before their descent. We chatted as the clouds blew in and the wind howled around us; they too were on a hiking holiday (although they were much more ambitious hikers, trying to bag every moutain over 3,000 feet in Ireland in one week); he too was testing out his new GPS navigation gadget (we compared notes); their children were also older and on holiday somewhere else; and both couples were reading the new Harry Potter book during our evenings. It was a bit like looking in a mirror, albeit an Irish one.
Watch the slideshow or look at the photos.
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