At the Edge of Ireland (8 page)

But come during the peak late spring to early autumn season and you'll need to brace yourself for a traumatic transformation when the charmingly upmarket and architecturally flamboyant Victorian town of Killarney itself, with its plethora of palace-like hotels and resorts, suddenly becomes Ireland's most popular tourist nexus after Dublin. The relatively narrow roads that encircle the Ring of Kerry attract dawn-to-dusk processions of bumper-to-bumper coach traffic, all visiting the same “top spots” (the National Park, Muckross House and Abbey, the Ladies' View panorama, Ross Castle et al.).

For those whose images of Ireland conjure up shamrock-garnished horse and carriage rides, leprechaun-filled souvenir shops, pseudo-
céilí
concerts in “traditional pubs,”
KISS ME QUICK I'M IRISH
souvenirs in every imaginable guise, and an exuberance of blarney that even make Japanese tourists wary of overkill hype—then this will be seen as some kind of paddywackery paradise.

For those, however, who are willing to work a little harder to discover a more authentic Ireland—may we gently continue to entice you to travel a score or so miles from the crush of Killarney and venture south to the next peninsula, which offers a far more authentic experience altogether.

Here on Beara the scenery is as rugged as a rhino's carapace and formed largely of sandstone, with slate and igneous intrusions, all bent, buckled, and fissured by the Armorican tumult of over three hundred million years ago. The land is creased, incised, and gashed by constant conflicts with the oh-so-Irish elements of rain, frost, and that miasma of “mizzle” (mist and drizzle) that cocoons the high ancient places.

But we don't mind at all. We're out of the Killarney chaos and into the wild country now, switchbacking up the steep narrow road to Moll's Gap and a quick pause for a gourmet snack (one of the thickest, creamiest, and richest quiches ever) at the famous Avoca Café perched on the scoured treeless peak here.

And then it's all downhill, looping and laughing together as we see signs for Kenmare and the Ring of Beara. Anne reads a short outspoken commentary from one of our guidebooks:

The Beara peninsula is as beautiful as the Dingle, far to the north, but it is perhaps the least known of the western peninsulas. It is more rugged and till now lonelier than the others. Its fate is being argued. One faction, led and supported by conservationists, tourists, and many German, Dutch and English “blow-in” settlers, is for keeping things much as they are. The other, including a number of influential locals, want the god Development: roads, houses, hotels and industry to match Ireland's economic surge of the 1980s and 1990s. Having fouled up your own countries, these Irish seem to be saying, you want to stop us fouling up ours, and that is for us to decide.

“I assume this ‘fouling' business doesn't refer to our peninsula,” I said.

“Oh—so it's ‘our peninsula' now, is it? Getting a little possessive aren't we, especially as you haven't even see the place yet!” Anne said, laughing.

“Well—it says ‘least known,' so I guess we've picked the right one…and I've heard nothing about any ‘fouling.'”

And Kenmare certainly appears foul free. In fact, after all the hype and hullabaloo of Killarney this is a model town of decorum and grace. Hidden back behind the cozy little cluster of downtown stores are two of Europe's most prestigious hotel-resorts. First is “High Victorian” Park Kenmare tucked away at the top end of main street, laden with antiques and tingling with olde world country house charm. Then comes Sheen Falls Lodge, definitely one of those “if you have to ask the price here you can't afford it” places set on a three-hundred-acre estate with tree-shaded walks down to the long, ocean-lapped bay known somewhat misleadingly as the Kenmare River.

From even a superficial glance at this coy little town you sense a distinctly non-Irish heritage here. And so it was. In fact the notorious diarist Macaulay, ever prone to vast exaggerations in his writings, described predevelopment conditions here in the seventeenth century when Sir William Petty arrived to “make profitable sense of the country. For having been awarded a large grant of land for services to the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, he had to face half-naked savages, who could not speak a word of English and who made themselves burrows in the mud and lived on roots and sour milk…scarcely any place…was more completely out of the pale of civilizations as Nedeen” [Kenmare's original name].

So—as happened all across Ireland when the “let's get things organized here” Britishers moved in—Sir William set about creating ironworks, lead mines, fisheries, and other industries and, in 1670, founded a very English-like village in a tree-laced hollow. He even tried to entice scores of “doughty maidens” from England to come and “civilize our local natives” and set up a flourishing Protestant society. Things didn't quite work out in so utopian a manner, but the place began to truly flourish under the Marquis of Lansdowne, who created a new town plan in 1775. Almost a century later, in response to the dire unemployment and starvation conditions of the Great Famine, Kenmare became renowned for the superlative quality of its local handmade lace sponsored by the Sisters of the Poor Clare Convent. It's still being sold today in the town's Dickensian-flavored stores and exhibited in Kenmare's Heritage Center and occasionally in the town's remarkably eclectic array of fine restaurants.

 

J
UST OUTSIDE TOWN AND
across the bridge over the Kenmare River is an alluring sign pointing westward to the Ring of Beara.

“What d'you think?” asked Anne (already knowing the answer). “Go south to Glengarriff and then into Beara. Looks like a pretty wild drive over Caha Pass and through some rock tunnels. Or turn here?”

It was a larky-spirited no-brainer. To the south were ogreous tumblings of dark clouds over a hulking muscular mountainscape. The sun seemed hostaged in a tomblike fug. To the west, however, a narrow road meandered past tree-lined meadows into a misty haze of pearlescent light. Smoke-serpents curled languorously from the chimneys of small cottages…

So—west it was. And we congratulated ourselves on our choice as the light brightened and the wind-rippled surface of the bay shimmered in gold-platinum undulations.

The first few miles were mellowed by woods and copses, but slowly the trees thinned out and the shattered fangs and stumps of a far more ancient and broken terrain rose up through the winter-bleached swirls of moorland grasses. We passed a solitary standing stone locked in place by rugged drystone walls. Sunlight bathed its sturdy flanks in lacquered luminosity.

“That was a fast change of landscape!” said Anne.

“And just look ahead…,” I said, pointing toward an abrupt clustering of ominous bare-rock bastions rising precipitously out of the narrow, ocean-lapped plain.

“That's our route…over those things!?”

“You've got the map. Do we have an option?”

“Well, there's a road that seems to twist all along the coast, but it's shown as one lane and not recommended for large vehicles…”

“We're not that large…”

“You feel like playing around backing up on one-lane Irish roads with Irish drivers honking away at us…?”

“Not particularly,” I admitted.

“So—I guess it's the mountains then!”

At least it was scenic—according to Anne. I wouldn't know. My eyes were fixed firmly on each of the fifty or so switchbacking twists and bends that Irish drivers seemed to treat with glorious devil-may-care abandon. It didn't make the slightest bit of difference that the road had two distinct (admittedly very narrow) lanes divided clearly by a solid yellow line. Most drivers seemed utterly oblivious to our presence as they wheelied around the bends way over on the wrong side, with tires screeching in Steve McQueen madness.

Standing Stone

All this came as something of a shock, as I'd read the famous author John B. Keane's eloquent description of Kerry and your typical Kerryman and expected a little more decorum and decency on the highways here:

The County of Kerry is distinguished by a gossamer-like lunacy which is addictive but not damaging. It contains a thousand vistas of unbelievable beauty…The Kerry attitude is spiced with humor and we tend to digress. To a Kerryman life without digression is like a thoroughfare without side streets…He loves his pub and he loves his pint and he will tell you that the visitor, no matter where he hails from, is always at home in the Kingdom of Kerry…Being in Kerry, in my opinion, is the greatest gift that God can bestow on any man…In belonging to Kerry you belong to the spheres spinning in their heavens.

You just can't beat that Irish blarnied eloquence. And after such praise, I can only assume that the mad drivers were all from County Cork.

Lauragh came as a great relief. Not that there's much to see here except the enticing subtropical exuberance of Derreen Garden. Like Kenmare, this was the outcome of another Cromwellian gift to a loyal British henchman, this time the conqueror's trusted physician. And also, as with Kenmare, it came under the Lansdowne family's control in 1866, which proceeded to create this masterpiece of a rhododendron and Australian and New Zealand tree fern estate in a moist, mossy microclimate on the south side of the Kenmare River. A perfect enclave in which to recover from the manic antics of those drivers.

We agreed to keep on driving westward down the peninsula toward Allihies and Dursey Island but were fully aware of a most tempting alternative. Right by the turnoff at Lauragh to Derreen Garden, a sign pointed toward the great granite wall of shattered Caha peaks and jagged purple shadows rising abruptly from wild swathes of boggy moorland. The sign read
HEALY PASS
and was cluttered about with warnings for narrow roads, dangerous bends, sudden climatic shifts, avalanche tendencies, and man-eating sheep. Sorry—slight exaggeration here. It was actually a warning that the sheep up on the high fells tend to regard the road as part of their pasturage and, particularly on warm days, enjoy sunbathing on the heated tarmac and are often reluctant to move, despite their possible imminent and messy demise. A more promising sign indicated great photo ops of Glanmore Lake, the barren bastion of Knockowen, the dramatic profile of the Iveragh ranges, and the majestic Macgillycuddy's Reeks way to the north on the Ring of Kerry.

After Lauragh the low road scenery became distinctly less dramatic to the point where we both wondered if we should have chosen the Healy Pass route. Of course—as the seasons rolled on—we drove that wildly exhilarating sequence of serpentine switchbacks many times, deep into the high heart of Beara. We found it one of the most beautiful and dramatic drives in the whole of the southwest—a wild, empty landscape full of ghostly presences. But if we'd done that on this first day of our Beara experience, we'd have missed little Eyeries.

Old Gas Pump near Healy Pass

And little Eyeries should definitely not be missed, from its handful of traditional pubs and small stores (some great homemade sandwiches here) to the superb contemporary stained glass in the bright lemon-painted Catholic church. Of course, in a village renowned for winning national awards for “prettiest,” “tidiest,” and “most colorful” community, one expects to find not only a vibrantly hued church but also a whole village gone Fauvist color-crazy. Which of course it had.

“Gorgeous!” gushed Anne.

I must admit, I didn't altogether share her unrestrained enthusiasm.

Quite honestly I'm not too sure about all these fairground regalias of colors found nowadays in most villages across the depth and breadth of Ireland. At first I thought—now here's a quaint tradition reflecting the Irish love of jollity and gaiety. “Perky as a parrot's plumage,” I scribbled in my notebook. But my initial impression was quickly corrected by an elderly gentleman near Skibbereen on the fringe of the Mizen Head Peninsula (southernmost of the five southwest peninsulas), who, with a wide smile and all the dancing-eyed charm of a bar-hugging raconteur, stated that “the whole damned place's gone crackers with colors you'd only see on a baboon's ass. Y'see,” he continued, “not so long ago it was all nice and simple—whites, beiges, grays, and maybe just once in a while a touch of canary yellow. More like cream, really. Double Devon, y'might say…”