Buffalo Spree Magazine

THE IRELAND LESS TRAVELED

By Kevin J. Hosey; photos by Val Dunne

Cliffs of Moher? Check. The Burren? Check. Galway Bay? Check. Carrowmore? Check.

The Blarney Stone? No. The Guinness brewery? No. Dublin and/or Belfast? No. Tour buses? No.

There are many sites and attractions to consider when traveling to Ireland, and where/what you visit is affected by whether you travel as part of a tour group, usually with a strict itinerary, or on your own to a certain extent and rent a car. During our visit to Ireland in June 2003, my wife, Val Dunne, and I took the second choice, renting a car, staying a night each at three bed-and-breakfasts, and spending about five nights at the house of our friend Toby Sachsenmaier, who moved there from Lancaster.

The Carrowmore Passage Grave.
Photo by Val Dunne.

We did not take the extreme route of making up our entire itinerary on the fly, but we enjoyed the freedom of choosing where we went and how much time we would spend at each place. Yes, we did have a basic schedule, but we followed some great advice from Sachsenmaier, who warned us not to try to pack too much into one day, but to slow down to fit the pace of Ireland. We ended up visiting about ninety to ninety-five percent of the sites we wanted to stop at, saw others we either weren’t too sure about or had no idea existed before, and were able to cut the time we planned for some to spend more at others.

While I am Irish on both sides of my family, I was relatively unaware or barely aware of most of the sites we visited, and except for visiting the town my mother’s family comes from, I had the best times at the places I had barely known about before we planned our visit. We spent the largest part of our trip in County Clare, on the Republic of Ireland’s central west coast, and the experiences that stayed with me the most were there.

A barren beauty
The Burren, a region along the coast that basically stretches from the border with County Galway south to almost the middle of County Clare, has a stark landscape dominated by limestone and rock with sparse grass and very occasional small flowers. The rocks go all the way to the beaches, which are used much more for walking along, throwing sticks into the ocean, and letting dogs run along than for swimming or sun-bathing. At times, the Burren reminds me of a lunar landscape, at other times of dried lava flows that have either killed or driven the inhabitants away. It is rumored that Oliver Cromwell or one of his officers said that the Burren was not totally occupied or burnt to the ground because nothing could live or grow there. But this is not a region of death or pessimism. It is one of beauty struggling over difficult environments.

From the Burren, you can see the Cliffs of Moher, just north of the town of Lahinch, which rise almost 700 feet high and are as sheer a drop to the Atlantic Ocean as one could imagine. There is an unofficial viewing area on a fifteen to twenty-foot rock patio of sorts where people go to peer over the side, sit while hanging their legs over the cliff, or actually be held hanging over by friends to defy nature and sometimes take photographs. The breathtaking site of hundreds of feet of rocky cliffs with green plateaus shrouded in fog can barely be properly described, but unfortunately, its deadly attraction was illustrated too well to us; the day before we visited the Cliffs of Moher, a pile of men’s clothing and shoes was found at the top of one of the cliffs, and later that day a body was found in the water. Due to the wind and treacherous waves, it took the Coast Guard three days to recover the man’s body.

The Cliffs of Moher.
Photo by Val Dunne.

The Cliffs of Moher, which also feature O’Brien’s Tower, an ancient lookout post, draws people of many faiths and beliefs, particularly those who believe in powers of nature and the earth. There are also many outdoor merchants hawking jewelry, clothing, wall hangings, and other items. Indoors, there is a full gift shop and snack bar. The large parking lot and part of the outdoor area also feature a large number of dogs getting walked or accompanying their merchant masters.

Celebrations and friendly denizens
The village of Doolin, located on the coast a bit north of the Cliffs of Moher and the closest port to the Aran Islands, is known for its nightlife and its traditional Irish music. Surprisingly, there are also several good restaurants featuring more than just the expected; seafood and fresh dairy products stand out. We spent parts of four days and nights in Doolin, always spending at least some time at the legendary McGann’s, which featured a session (basically a rotating gathering of musicians playing traditional Celtic music) every night. The talent was never less than good, and if you enjoy guitars, fiddles, pipes, bodhrans, and voices of all registers, you would think you were in heaven, as we did.

We made friends, and not in the tourist information manner, for despite the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol by others (Val and I no longer indulge), people not only said hello but also remembered our names throughout our visit. People genuinely relaxed at McGann’s and elsewhere; we did not witness one bar fight or violent incident, and public drinking outside of bars was simply accepted, even at the summer solstice bonfire we attended.

A major event in Ireland, the solstice occurs at a time when the sun stays up from relatively early morning until 10:30-11 p.m., particularly in the north. The children of the village, from about age eight or nine to about fifteen to sixteen, gathered the wood and combustibles, and built the bonfire, led by an alpha male of about fourteen in a blue and gold soccer jersey who spent his time instructing the other youths about how high and wide to build the bonfire and where to place certain items. He joked and all but flirted (with the females) to get the job done; a future in politics seems imminent.

One of our side trips, on our first night with Sachsenmaier, was not only a wonderful musical experience, but also one with a strong, coincidental Buffalo angle. Living just outside the town of Ennistymon, she took us to the county seat of Ennis for a session at a bar she had frequented and where she had made friends. When we approached it, I looked up to see its name: James Griffin. Some things you just can’t escape. We entered the bar and, after a round of “hello, Toby” greetings, heard the session in the back room, down three stairs. The music was simply the best live traditional Irish music I had ever heard, played on a couple of acoustic guitars, a fiddle, pipes, spoons, and voices that ten to fifteen different people supplied throughout the night. After several songs, I mentioned the quality of the music to Sachsenmaier, who remarked that this wasn’t like the usual sessions she had attended here, because one of the all-time masters of Irish music, Johnny Moynihan (yes, of Planxty fame), was playing guitar, spoons, and singing.

We were able to hear almost three hours of this session, which included frequent performances from the audience, some of whom regularly attend and sing, others who come only once in a while. One woman apparently in her sixties, primly dressed, sang a lovely song of a working wife without accompaniment and was matched by a younger woman who sang, with a bit of fiddle, a song of a farm family that stunned the gathering with its beauty. A couple of the regulars asked Val and I where we were from and appeared pleased that some Yanks had come so far for the session.

Roots and more
We spent several days in the north of Ireland, visiting our family hometowns of Castlebar, County Mayo, for Val’s father’s side, and County Sligo for my mother’s side, and enjoyed not only some larger towns without large-city problems but the chance to go to bed near midnight with some sunlight remaining. A few miles from Castlebar, just

Dunguaire Castle.
Photo by Val Dunne.

outside Westport, we visited Croagh Patrick, a mountain with much spiritual meaning. While it is now known for allegedly being the mountain from which Saint Patrick reportedly drove the serpents from Ireland, it was—like many Catholic sites—formerly an important pagan ritual mountain site. The mountain rises dramatically above the surrounding country and hills. Pilgrims walk up it, often in bare feet and even on their knees. Just across the street are two more impressive sites, the National Famine Memorial, a powerful metal sculpture of a boat with skeletons hanging from the rigging; and the Murrisk Abbey, which dates back to the fifteenth century. On the drive back, we visited Carrowmore, the largest Celtic megalithic cemetery dating back to 4800-4200 BC, two miles outside Sligo township. Several tombs, stone circles. and other sites are located here, most on public parkland but some on private land allowing public access. Many of the circles and tombs are interconnected and/or aligned with the sun or to a distant tomb of an older Celtic queen on the top of a nearby hill. A walking tour offered by the staff is structured enough to provide information while allowing people to go off on paths at their own pace. One reason our tour lasted a little longer than expected was that three people used almost a roll of film to get themselves photographed standing on top of and inside a stone circle.

Galway is the fastest growing city in Europe and about the fourth or fifth-largest city in Ireland; its shopping district is relatively large and healthy while slightly upscale and yuppified. Val and I bought some incredible sweaters there for prices we didn’t expect. After driving by several highly-priced duplex developments, we found a bed and breakfast in the village of Spiddal on Galway Bay, about eight miles outside city Galway. We not only enjoyed the best B&B of our trip that night, but the dog of the owner of the B&B, Cossa, led us down the path to the beach and all but herded us back as night fell. We noticed that dogs are treated and socialized quite differently in Ireland than in the U.S.; many restaurants, businesses and B&Bs allow dogs to come in and out as they please and interact with the patrons and owners. They also reflect their owners’ personalities and jobs, including the dog for McGann’s, Sober.

There is no way I could recount everything we did or describe everything we enjoyed, but the key to it all was the freedom of movement we had. Of course, as the saying goes, your own mileage may vary.

Kevin Hosey is managing editor of Bee Newspapers and a longtime WNY music critic and enthusiast.

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