Geez, what a whirlwind couple of days. The dilation of time during extended free-form travel is astounding. It’s hard to believe that yesterday I woke up on a remote beach on the Dingle. With the sunrise at my back, I packed off to the town of Ballyferriter, where the bus only runs on Monday and Thursday. So getting to the bus on time was kind of a high priority. According to the timetable, the bus stopped at the post office. I made it to “town” (which was just a cluster of buildings on one street) and walked up and down the block a couple of times. No post office, and not a soul in sight. Finally I wandered into an open church door and asked the resident church lady. No post office in town, she said. Had there been one in the past? Oh yes, but the fellow who ran it died.
Fortunately, the bus did still stop in town, outside of the shuttered building that had been the post office before the postman made his final delivery. I rode all the way to Cork City, dropped my bag at the bus station, and went into town to check e-mail. Traveling without a mobile phone in Ireland leaves one separated from the goings-on: session information travels by text message, and I’m outside that stream. I had an e-mail from Mick in Cork; he was out of town for the weekend, but I’d find a session at Gable’s on the unfashionable side of town. So I checked into a hostel and wandered about the city until dark.
The session was an odd one. Hosted by members of a band called The Critters, it was a mix of Irish trad, Americana, and gypsy music. And apparently a paid gig – the regulars were good enough to kick me 20€ at the end of the night. Which may be a good thing – the top of my fiddle, after two weeks of wet mountain travel, has come unglued.
Dily, the guitar player, invited me back to his house for red wine and repair work. So a few of us went back to his place and started uncorking bottles of wine and tubs of glue. We smoked, drank, made music and fiddled with clamps until 4 in the morning. Upon waking sobriety, there’s still a bit of a seam that needs more glue, but I think the rest will hold. Until then, there’s a home-made clamp fashioned from a screw, a nut, and two cross-sections of broom handle holding the crack together.
Other interesting happening of the evening – the other guitarist at the session was Mike, husband of Rhiannon, banjo player for the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Small world, indeed. I don’t know how non-musicians manage to meet anybody…
I’m currently enjoying the luxury of a beer on the beach at Smerwick Harbour, on the northwest side of the Dingle Peninsula. I’d like to think it’s a pretty well-deserved beer. Had a beautiful morning, the sun arching up over the hoods of those Renaults. I was out of water, so I struck camp and hiked on up the mountain, where I came upon a fabulous set of waterfalls rolling down the hillside. I sat there and made breakfast, refilled my water jug, and headed off again, but not before slipping and putting one foot into the stream and my arm into a patch of nettles. Drat and ouch.
The next couple of hours of walking rate as some of the best in my hiking career. Up over Mount Eagle toward Slea Head, the views kept getting more and more beautiful. From the crest, I could see Great Blasket Island laid out in the sea, and past that the islands if Inishbro and Inishvickillane – the westernmost point in Ireland. After that, your next stop is Iceland, if you can get that far.
The head is rich with sea cliffs and dizzying peaks. I stopped at a café near the head and played ball with the resident dog, whose name I later found out to be Banshee. Unfortunately, I sent the ball over the fence into the sheep pasture, Banshee went up over the wall after it, and then couldn’t get back. I ended up going over the fence myself, and hoisted the not-at-all-small dog back over, under the concerned gaze of Banshee’s owner. Apparently it’s legal for sheep farmers to shoot dogs that wander into their pastures, and they sometimes do it. Sorry, Banshee.
After a few more hours of stunning cliffs and prehistoric ruins, I just stopped taking pictures. There was just too much. It’s a funny thing that happens in Ireland. Ruined castles are so commonplace that eventually you just stop noticing them. They’re still interesting, but you’ve got all of the pictures of castles that you really need.
So tonight I’m camped at the edge of the sea, and will fall asleep to the sound of the surf. I’ve walked up the main road a way and found some food and beer, and will make my way into town in the morning for the bus to Cork. Then a day to wash some clothes and start making plans for France before I get the ferry to Roscoff.
Today was the day of walking for which I came to Ireland. I woke up in Ennis and caught the bus to Dingle, then started walking the Dingle Way. The first couple of kilometers were uninspiring hiking on asphalt roads, but then the trail cut dramatically up the side of a mountain, with fantastic views of the Dingle Bay and west Kerry. The sun was up, the birds were singing, and I was feeling good to be alone and walking. I composed a little song as I went (“Galway Girl”). Then the mountain dropped back down to the sea and the town of Ventry. And I found myself walking barefoot in the sand, my house and my food on my back. I lingered a long time on that beach, recorded “Galway Girl” into my portable field recorder, and finally struck back into the hills as the sun was dropping into the ocean.
Because I had lingered so long on the sand, I didn’t get too far back into the hills before dark. Tonight I’m camped out in a sheep pasture, nestled in the bush and hidden behind two abandoned cars. The hood of the Renault makes a fine table, as I write this and wait for the stars to come out.
Woke up this morning and had a cup of coffee with Frank (still a king among men), and then got a lift from him to the bus in Gort. Then a short ride to Ennis, where the hostel turned out to be closed for renovation. After some walking back and forth across town, we managed to negotiate a fair price for a B&B, dropped our bags, and made our separate ways back into town. My mission was simple — find some Irish set dancing. I went to the public library and used the Internet (cheating, but still..) and found a number for one Mike Mahoney. I gave him a call, and he directed me to a set dancing workshop on the other side of town. After a short picnic dinner in the park, we walked a couple of miles to the dance.
The sets themselves aren’t completely unlike American squares. It’s a four-couple set, lady on the right. The footwork is different (no jigs in American old-time music) and the dances more regimented. A dance will have a name (e.g., Kilfenora) and be composed of six or seven parts. Each part has its own figures that you do in sequence. The dances aren’t called, so learning a dance means memorizing all six or seven parts in order. Kind of daunting. The parts are repetitive, of course, but not identical, which kind of makes it worse. So we fumbled along through the workshop, at least enough to get a feel for the thing. The instructor gave us some worksheets, which may be interesting source material for writing some square dances later.
Tomorrow Marie is off to Stockholm, and I continue south probably to the Dingle peninsula for a few days of hill walking. If the sun holds out like it’s been, it should be some amazing hiking. Otherwise, I’ll be back to being soggy.
After waking up in Doolin, Marie and I made our way down the coast by bicycle to the Cliffs of Mooher, tourist trap extraordinaire. Thing is, the cliffs themselves really are spectacular, but the gift shop called “The Gifts of Mooher” kind of spoils the thing. So we took a few pictures of the cliffs, then headed back to Kinvarra by bus, listening to the recording of the session from the night before.
Back in Kinvarra, we returned the bicycles to Hayden and walked back to Frank’s place for dinner and tunes. Frank is a king among men — he fed us, made some music with us, and then packed us off to an old-time session that he had assembled. Some of the tunes were familiar standards; others I had never heard. But it was some good craic, the pub kept us watered, and we wound up back at Frank’s for the night, sacked out on the floor.
Tomorrow it will be on to Ennis, hopefully for some set dancing, then Marie is back to Stockholm, and I’ll be going south. Maybe to Cork, maybe to Kerry; I don’t know. Wherever the tunes take me, really.
