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adventures / history / Ireland / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
Mar 26

Blacksod Lighthouse

We made a quick stop to start the day at a place that’s been historically relevant in more than one way and in more than one time. Blacksod Lighthouse has been in operation since 1866. It remains an active lighthouse. It is waymark for local fisherman, has been a post office for the community, and still serves as a fueling stop for the locals and also emergency operations.

Just out of view here is a small collection of signs memorializing the vessels and people that left from these shores during tough times. This was the place where struggling, starving people set out for Great Britain and Canada and the United States. You can just come to the little beach here and do a little genealogical work if you are of Irish descent.

The lighthouse hasn’t opened for seasonal tours just yet, and it’s a quiet spot in the midmorning. Just two other people were there, having a picnic on the stone wall overlooking the water. Behind the building is the rocky beach. Just off the right of the frame is where you’ll find the garden with all of the immigrant vessels.

Then, in 1944, the people working here played their role in saving the free world.

Blacksod, as a weather station, measured atmospheric conditions and made regular reports to Britain and the US. There were no satellites or computer models, of course, there was only first-person observation, extrapolation, and educated guesswork. A young woman, Maureen Sweeney, was a part of that effort. She worked there in the mail office and also made hourly weather observations from this key spot, one of the first stations on the western coast. On her 21st birthday she saw the coming storm that threatened the armada assembled in the English Channel for northern France. Men were sick in the boats, nervously waiting to go ashore or jump into France or ferry others here and there. It was the world’s largest military operation and it came down to secrecy, timing, the tides and the moon, and the weather. What Sweeney saw helped generate the forecasts that convinced Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, to postpone the invasion by a day.

There’s a movie due out this summer about the weather, full of wonderful actors all delightfully miscast. But the star will be the history, and that weather. Some of it was recorded and reported at this spot, at Blacksod.

Maureen Sweeney stayed on there, running the mail, until she retired in her 80s. She died at 100, just a few years ago. Working here is a family business. Her son runs the lighthouse these days.

adventures / Ireland / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
Mar 26

The Wild Atlantic Way — between Gweesalia and Silgo

We got into the Erris Coast Hotel last night just in time for the last seating at their restaurant. I know that because at a certain point, our view from the corner of the rustic looking place showed a lot of empty tables and the music changed mid-song. We had a dinner package at the hotel, which offered us a special menu but was mostly important because you didn’t see anything else on the way in. Lovely little hotel, comfortably modern and in the middle of nowhere. The woman that served us dinner also saw us off this morning. Twice she discussed our plan and her suggestions for the day, and she approved of all of our choices for the day.

And there was so much to see! I’ll break it up into several posts again, but before that, here’s a place to start.

Great views, incredible history, and places we had no idea we’d encounter are ahead of us, so let’s get to it.

adventures / Ireland / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Mar 26

Sheep of the road

It’s a family joke, but we call them Schmid. Some years ago my lovely bride took her parents to Ireland. And somewhere along the way they met someone and that person was named Schmid, or at least misremembered as Schmid, and that got transposed on some of the sheep. And it turns out if you say Schmid in the same way that you might say “Baaaaaa!” you’ll often get a response. It was funny, it worked, it stuck.

The schmid … the sheep … are everywhere around here. Some are in fenced pastures. A great many run free. In fact, this is about the only photo I took of a roadside without schmid … sheep … on it.

We saw this one near Keem Bay and stopped especially to take this photo. It’s a winning shot, to be sure.

This one was walking by as we drove from here to there this morning, somewhere between Dumhach Beag and where we found the Spanish Armada commemoration.

This little postcard took place around nothing but the most beautiful landscape that you could imagine never being remarked on or capitalized upon in anyway.

The time stamp says I took the next photo just two minutes later.

Not to worry, I’m sure we’ll see more schmid in our journey. If you somehow missed it, there are schmid on video in the day’s first post.

Ten (!!!) posts, 42 photos, and a five minute video today. I hope you’ve gotten your money’s worth.

There will be even more tomorrow.

adventures / Ireland / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Mar 26

Tra Dhumha Goirt and Doran’s Point

Here’s another two-for-one post, featuring our last two stops on the Wild Atlantic Way today. But not my last post of the day.

So it’s another quick one, just to get it all down, and to show the places, and to challenge myself to share video later. Is there video? There is video. Now I’ve mentioned it, you’re reading about it, and I must follow through. That’s how that works.

Up first is Tra Dhumh Goirt. (Or Dugort, or Doogort, or Pollawaddy, or Silver Strand … getting directions around here must be a challenge.) This is on the northern side of Mount Slievemore, so we’ve come around from where the deserted village sits on Achill Island. There are quite a few sandy beaches in this area. Also a lot of wind. And some grazing sheep and, most importantly, several lambs.

And this sign. You still see reminders like this. We should see more. I’m never sure if I’m more surprised by how people have so desperately tried to forget this, and how our institutions are largely engaged in that effort, or by the occasions when you see some reminder.

I wonder what the last such reminder will be. Will you even remember it? Someone, some day, is going to come to Tra Dhumh Goirt (or Dugort, or Doogort, or Pollawaddy, or Silver Strand) and see that sign. And then they’ll never see another one, or a rumpled piece of paper taped to a wall or window, or a battered sticker on the floor. And then one day after that they’ll try to remember the last time they saw something about the two-meters thing … “What was it called again? Ahh, yes.” Will they remember it here?

And the thing about a sign like this, here, is that you have to realize the Mayo County Council is invested. There’s no way that’s the original sign they posted here. No way that’s withstood the elements for approaching six years. Six years!

I wonder what was happening at Doran’s Point six years ago.

Functionally, this place’s pier serves a twice-daily ferry to get you over to the next island. There’s also a bus line that goes away from the point. It’s remote, rugged, quiet, ecologically diverse, and beautiful.

Also, there are monsters in the water. The Dobhar-Chu, the water hound of Celtic legend, lives out there. It’s said to look like a giant otter, but with a dog-like head. It swims the lakes and the sea, dragging victims into the water, where it kills and eats its prey. We both made it safely away from there, even if we weren’t prepared for an encounter. The legend goes that if you have a piece of the Dobhar-Chu’s skin, you’ll be protected from all many of nautical calamities. Also, you have to figure out how to get a piece of it’s skin.

And like all good monster stories, people have of course seen the thing. Most of the sightings seem to be in a lake, just six miles from where that photo was taken. Six miles would be close enough. I don’t need a piece of it’s skin that badly.

So those are our last two stops on the Wild Atlantic Way today but not overall. Not even close. This isn’t even the final post of Tuesday. What a day.

adventures / history / Ireland / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Mar 26

Sliabh Mor-sli Oidhreachta, or the Slievemore Heritage Trail

We stopped by a little ghost village, which has a different meaning entirely in this part of the world. This is a on a low mountain, or a tall hill, and people have been living there for almost six millennia. You can still see megalithic monuments and tombs if you take the full hike.

We walked around the more recent village. Slievemore is today a place where some 90 stone cottages lie in ruins on the southern slopes of the mountain. They’ve been abandoned for quite a while, and the people that lived here last worked the same fields as people did in medieval times.

Slievemore was also the largest seasonal settlement on Achill island. Booleying, as it is called, is about the agriculture, not about vacations. People moved their livestock here for the summers. This was also the most recently abandoned settlement, which was reduced largely during the Great Famine and changing agricultural practices. And surely some of their descendants live in that community in the background of this photo.

Also, right in here is where I slipped and fell. Not really sure what happened. I was standing, and then I wasn’t. The ground was level, the grass was slick, and I was laying on it, scrambling quickly, in vain, trying to avoid getting wet and muddy. Failed at both of those.

Fortunately all of the clothes that I have in this hemisphere are in the car a short walk away! So after making sure I hadn’t seriously hurt myself — I seemed to land on my elbow and shoulder and jammed that up a little — and cleaned a bit of mud off off my jacket and jeans, we made our way back down.

I think a ghost pushed me.

The research, which continues there annually through an archaeological field school, has put settlement in this spot back to the Anglo-Norman period, so roughly the 12th century. But, again, if you hadn’t fallen in the mud and kept on hiking, you’d work your way up to a tomb that indicates habitation in the area some 5,000+ years ago.