“Be gentle with me,” I whispered, as I placed my hand in the delicate palm of the wrinkled old woman standing beside me. “It’s my first time.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” she chirped. “Me too!”
Having established that we were both novices at Irish dancing, we lined up shoulder to shoulder on the scuffed wooden floor of a cozy dance hall at the Jolly Roger pub – the hub of night life, such as it is, on Ireland’s Sherkin Island. With a year-round population hovering around 100, the isle seems to look upon visitors as a welcome diversion – fresh ear to hear their tales over a pint of Guinness, or a potential new dance partner.
The blurting notes of an accordion drowned out all further conversation as this particular jig – a six-part gut-buster known as the “Siege of Venice” – began. Amid a blur of bent elbows and high-flying feet, there was more partner switching going on in this rocking little pub than at a champagne bash at the Playboy mansion.
I whisked past an intense-
looking Sinead O’Connor doppelganger, do-si-do’d with a round-bellied man who was surprisingly quick on his feet, and exchanged sympathetic glances with a freckle-faced boy who was dragged onto the dance floor by his mother. Dizzy and winded, sides aching with laughter, I finally found myself thrust into the arms of a lean young oyster farmer who advised me to “Just hold on!” before leading me off again into the fray.
When I signed up for a walking tour of the Emerald Isle, a week-
long trek that would take me from the windswept Causeway Coast of Northern Ireland to the briny isles off the southwest coast of the Irish Republic, this was not the kind of exercise for which I had bargained. Part of the appeal of plodding through Ireland on foot was that it forced me to slow down, to appreciate the scenery and allow the experience to unfold.
“Nothing happens in a hurry here,” said Paddy O’Mahony of Failte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority, whom I met in County Cork on the 10-minute ferry ride from the village of Baltimore to Sherkin Island.
“To see the countryside while walking is in perfect harmony with the pace of life. There is no Irish word to denote the urgency of tomorrow,” he said, as our ferry sidled up to the dock at Sherkin, whose sandy beaches and proximity to the mainland make it a popular weekend retreat.
As we disembarked, Linda Woods, our island guide in the Irish Republic, led the way up a steep incline for a behind-the-
scenes tour of the 15th-century stone monastery that sat at the crest of the hill. Though it is under renovation, the monastery long ago fell into disrepair. The graveyard seemed to have seen the most current use, as the poignant grave of a fisherman, draped with a rope net and a faded orange life-preserver, attested. Woods explained that fisherman’s wives often knitted their husband’s woolen sweaters in a unique pattern, so that if the unthinkable happened, they could identify his remains by his clothing, if nothing else.
Woods, who founded SouthWest Walks 12 years ago, possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Ireland’s history and lore and readily could rattle off the origins of Irish words and the name of every plant in our path. But she shared really practical tidbits too, like how to break the ice with a stranger.
“Go into a pub and order a pint,” she suggested in her low, husky voice. “Guinness is the best thing to order, because it takes so long to pour. Then just say to the person beside you, ‘Terrible weather.”‘
John Ahern, Linda’s husband and business partner, believes that Ireland’s mercurial meteorology is part of its charm. “If you just want to walk, go to the Sahara. But if you want an experience, come to Ireland,” said Ahern, who joined our group with daughters Vivi, 6, and Katie, 7, when we arrived on Cape Clear.
On Ireland’s southernmost, and arguably most ruggedly beautiful island, Cape Clear is an hour’s ferry ride from Baltimore. It stretches a scant 1 mile wide by 3 miles long and is home to just 150 permanent residents, many fluent in Gaelic, as well as English. The island boasts a few modest hotels and bars, as well as a goat farm run by a blind Englishman who supplements his income by selling ice cream.
At the farm, dozens of agile goats clung to precipitous slopes that tumbled down to the sea, dividing their attention between grazing on tufts of grass and socializing with their visitors. “That goat is going to eat my new trousers, I just know it!” Katie protested, as we clambered over a stone wall, escaping up to the cottage for a cup of ice cream. Minutes later, still licking our spoons, we were knee deep in mounds of purple heather and thistle that carpeted a central valley, nearly obscuring a snaking path leading to a Napoleonic lookout on the opposite coast.
“Every time you round a corner, the view changes,” Ahern observed. “Today, the sea is blue. Tomorrow, it could be green.”
Even those days when the sea is a turbulent steely gray hold a certain melancholy appeal, as I discovered when I flew into Belfast, the formerly strife-ridden capital of Northern Ireland, which is enjoying a relatively peaceful détente between Protestants and Catholics. A chilly drizzle splattered the windscreen as our van headed from the airport toward the Causeway Coast, but Chris Murphy, a chipper, bespectacled bird-lover who served as our driver and guide throughout Northern Ireland, was undaunted.
Herding my walking companions and me out of the van at the Causeway Hotel, Murphy led us at a rapid clip along an undulating asphalt ribbon that slunk across dramatic cliffs and pebbly shores toward the showstopper – a towering collection of 37,000 hexagonal columns, some thrusting forty feet straight up out of the sea. Geologists say the rock formations, known as the Giant’s Causeway, were created 60 million years ago when boiling magma crystallized upon encountering the cool water along the coast. Murphy, however, told a different tale, about feuding giants building a bridge from Ireland to Scotland, which features the same phenomenon at Fingal’s Cave. “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story,” he advised with a merry grin.
Taking a cue from Murphy, we didn’t allow the leaden skies to dampen our spirits the next morning as we boarded a ferry for a 45-minute ride across surprisingly glassy seas to Raithlin Island. A rolling green patchwork of fields perched upon forbidding cliffs, Raithlin draws dozens of bird species, but only about 70 hardy humans roost here year round.
A bus deposited us at a prime bird-watching spot, the West Light House, where Sheila Blane, a volunteer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, flitted about dispensing binoculars and training telescopes on the orange-footed puffins and kittiwakes nesting among the cliffs. “On a small island like this, people say, what do you do all day?” said Blane, a petite, coifed blond who left her home in Belfast to spend the summer on Raithlin. “Well, you sit and watch what’s happening with the birds. You go for a walk over the mountains, or go down to the harbor and sit with the seals. It’s nature as it is, undisturbed. What more could you want?” Walking slowly back to the harbor, savoring the grassy hillocks, fuchsia hedges and low stone walls unfurling beneath the rising mist, I couldn’t think of a thing.
Amy Laughinghouse is a freelance writer who lives in Alpharetta, Ga.
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If you go
Getting there: There are two international airports in the Republic of Ireland (Shannon and Dublin) and one in Northern Ireland (Belfast International).
Tour guides: Linda Woods and John Ahern, SouthWest Walks Ireland 6 Church Street, Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. Phone: +353-66-7128733.
southwestwalksireland.com.
Chris Murphy, Murphy’s Travels, The Old Grainstore, The Square, Killough, County Down, B730 7QE, Northern Ireland. Phone: +44 (028) 4484 3141. E-mail: travel@murphys.dnet.co.uk.
Lodging in Northern Ireland: La Mon Hotel + Country Club, 110- 200 ($200-$360). 41 Gransha Road, Castlereagh, Comber, BT23 5RF, Northern Ireland. Phone: +44 (028) 9044 8631. lamon.co.uk.
The Bushmills Inn, 68- 248 ($122-$446). 9 Dunluce Road, Bushmills, County Antrim, BT57 8QG, Northern Ireland. Phone: +44 (028) 2073 3000. bushmillsinn.com.
The Bayview Hotel stretches out along the Atlantic Ocean, 110- 160 ($200-$288). 2 Bayhead Road, Portballintrae, Bushmills, County Antrim, BT57 8RZ. Phone: +44 (028) 2073 4100. bayviewhotelni.com.
Lodging in the Irish Republic: The Islanders Rest, Sherkin Island, County Cork, Ireland. E45 – E60. Phone: +353 (0)28 20116. islandersrest.ie.
Cluain Mara , E28-E50. North Harbour, Cape Clear Island, County Cork, Ireland. Phone: +353 (0)28 39153. e-mail: capeclearcottages.eircom.net.
Where to get jiggy: The Jolly Roger, Sherkin Island, County Cork, Ireland. (+353) 028 20379.
For information: Tourism Ireland, 800-223-6470, tourismireland.com.
-Amy Laughinghouse
