We continue on our way along the western coast of Ireland. We are driving the Wild Atlantic Way.
Our next stop is Dumhach Bheag, which is a beach. We’re going to see quite a few Bheags, I think.
Dumhach Bheag sits at the northern edge of Clew Bay, which is shaped like a rectangle, and you’d sail to the east, and pass Clare Island to get to the open ocean. Before that, though, you’d go by the hundred-plus small islands, drumlins, which were created by glacial action which creates elongated hill shaped like half of an egg shell, or the backside of a spoon. When you have a bunch of them together, as they do here, they’re called swarms, and this is a ‘basket of eggs topography.’
The beach is near the village of Mulranny, a former winner of a ‘European Destinations of Excellence’ award. They have a heather festival each summer. The local population is only 315, but at one time the Nobel Prize winning biochemest Ernst Chain (penicillin) and the actor Desmond Llewelyn (Q, from James Bond), each had homes here.
The railway linked Dublin, on the other side of the island, to the coast in 1894, as had been prophesied. Two centuries earlier, a seer named Brian Rua O Ceabhain told of a line to the nearby island. The story goes that he saw smoke and fire and iron-wheeled carriages. Maybe it’s not so far fetched. He was said to have been born in 1648. The first known tracked transport in England began in the mid 16th century. Then again, James Watt only patented a design for a steam locomotive in 1784, with the first working model produced later that same year. It wasn’t until 1804 that the UK had its first full-scale working railway steam locomotive. But, hey, talk enough, you’ll say something bombastic that turns out right. So maybe that’s not spooky.
But this is. Rua O Ceabain said that the first and the last trains would carry the dead. The first train moved the remains of 32 people who’d drowned when their boat capsized in the bay. And then, in 1937, a special train brought home the bodies of 10 young people who died in a fire in Scotland.
The line closed two weeks later.
Visitors who like to hike will enjoy the trip up the nearby Corraun Hill, which tops out at just 524 meters, and offers beautiful views of the area.
Only we’re not hiking just now. There are still sites to see, and the next one involves the 16th century, and shifting European powers.
