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

Ceann Iorrais

We saw another landmark that people use from the sea. It’s a point on the tip of a peninsula. And we didn’t see the whole of it, but we got close to Ceann Iorrais, or Erris Head.

The scenic viewpoint of Erris Head is said to give you views of the ocean and rocky cliffs. You have to go across a number of fields. Today, they were very muddy fields. It’s also a conservation area. Seabirds nest on the cliffs, included gulls and falcons, Irish crows, and more. You’ll also see geese, seals and other critters depending on the season. You can sometimes sea the dolphins and porpoises at sea.

If you could walk the route — up and off to the left from these first photos — it’s about three miles, and you’d see some old naval watch posts, and the ancient stones that make up some of the most exposed coast in this part of the world. The cliffs, made of quartzite, gneiss, and slates aren’t especially tall, rising just 295 feet above the sea.

Some of them are thought to be the oldest rocks in Ireland, dating back 1.8 billion years.

When the first people came to this area, it was native woodland, and had been since (relatively) shortly after the last Ice Age.

During the Neolithic period, about 6,000 years ago, the first people living in Ireland began to cut down the forests to clear land for growing crops and grazing livestock. Just below a thin layer of soil were those old rocks, and so erosion took its toil. When the crops began to fail, and this probably just took a few years, the Neolithic people had to clear the native woodlands further and further inland for their crops.

In the 1930s R. L. Praeger, a naturalist, described this as “the wildest, loneliest stretch of country to be found in all of Ireland … ”

Ocean and wind energy are the future around here. Folklore is a part of the past and the present. There’s one tale about a jealous stepmother who doomed her kids to spend 900 years as swans on the lakes and waters around the island. Another good one is about the mounds of the earth near a nearby village. They haven’t been explored, but are apparently not naturally occurring. The story goes that you had to pay a toll to come onto the peninsula or you were never seen again. I’m not sure if you can call that a case of highwaymen, since roads are a relatively new development around here, the first having come into service less than two centuries ago.

adventures / Ireland / photo — Comments Off
18
Mar 26

Dún na mBó

Here’s a spot you’ll want to see, but you need to figure out the timing.

Dún na mBó is a natural blowhole created by the patient pressure of the sea eroding landward and upward, is located near the site of a fort that perhaps dates to the Iron Age.

At high tide, you can see the water erupting up through it. That’s probably the ideal time. The water was low when we visited, but we still had dramatic views. There’s also this sculpture that gets you pretty close to the blowhole and keeps you safe. This is probably a lot more necessary when the water is coming at you.

This stonework sculpture was built by Travis Price, an American, in 2002. It is meant to commemorate those lost at sea.

And here it is, though you can’t see down through it too well. There are a lot of places in Ireland where you’d think there should be ropes and fences and other cautionary devices. That something was built here feels like it should be respected. No thought was given to trying to get over the low rock wall.

Besides, there’s all of this to see out there, too. It’s a panorama. Click to see the larger photo.

The early Celts called this a thin place, a geographical location scattered throughout Ireland. In the thin places a person experiences only a very thin divide between past, present, and future times. You’re somehow able, if only for a moment, to encounter a more ancient reality within present time; or places where perhaps only in a glance we are somehow transported into the future.

I did not see the past or the future, but the idea of a thin divide seems somehow right in this place. Some places you can become keenly aware of the bigness of things, the smallness of things, the foolishness of things. Some places here are like that. Some place are big and you are small and you’re foolish for thinking otherwise. And that can make a lot of things feel pretty thin.

Just down the lonely little single track road you can see a nice view of the Eagle Island Lighthouse.

It isn’t difficult to see why you’d have a lot of lighthouses here. To me, a landlubber, it seems as though there aren’t enough. That’s what it means to find yourself in a thin place.

On our way out, we stopped to visit a few sheep.

Schmiiiiiiiid.

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 / 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.