(or Not…)
WARNING: THIS IS NOT A PROJECT to be undertaken lightly. Oh sure, it looks easy enough on a small map—a simple dotted line wriggling up and around the Beara’s mountainous spine and encompassing its two islands, Dursey and Bere, and ending up among a very pleasant cluster of restaurants in elegant Kenmare.
Even the official guidebook is disarmingly encouraging in its summary description: “Using tracks, old roads and mountain paths, it takes in some of the most breathtaking scenery in Ireland…One could walk sections by following the easily recognized marking posts or a map. It provides a delightful and easy way to discover and explore the peninsula.”
The actual length is a little disheartening, though—125 miles is a lot longer than it looks on the map—but having once in my more ambitiously exploratory days conquered England’s Coast to Coast Walk (75 miles) and the mighty Pennine Way (at 270 miles, the longest of all the nation’s “long-distance” footpaths), I convinced myself that the Beara Way must be something of a dilettantish dawdle. Particularly as almost half of it is along narrow paved boreens and not across (so I was assured) thigh-deep bogs and snap-your-ankle rock deserts, as it was on the wild and soggy moors of England.
I thought I might do it in sections, and indeed my preparatory strolls on the two islands were both enticing experiences. At the tip western end of the peninsula is the enchanting, almost abandoned isle of Dursey. Barely four miles by one and a half miles, it is described by Penelope Durell in her richly informative book, Discover Dursey, as a “long leviathan at rest, gazing out at the boundless ocean—up-tilted nose, smooth domed head, back formed by the curvaceous contours of five hills.”
The island may appear at first somewhat docile and even dull. But closer inspection reveals dramatic tide races in the narrow channel separating it from the mainland, rugged beachless cliffs rejecting easy access, and the stump of a lighthouse built in 1866 on Calf Rock and battered to pieces by a hurricane in 1881. This is indeed not a friendly place, as its history of hardship and horror would indicate, most notably in a massacre of all its three hundred inhabitants—supposedly members of the O’Sullivan clan—following the destruction of Dunboy Castle at Castletownbere in 1602.
The description of this event is spine-chilling in its ferocity:
Many of the people on Dursey Island at the time were refugees from the mainland, and they had fled in terror on the arrival of the forces. These were English forces under the command of Sir George Carew who was sent over to challenge local chiefs and even the forces of King Philip III of Spain who had sent supplies and men to aid the struggle for sovereignty against Queen Elizabeth I in 1601. Following a disastrous rout for the Irish, Dunboy Castle became an important but fragile garrison against the imminent attack. When disaster seemed apparent, many of the occupants fled to Dursey Island. Some had entered the small fort there, others ran away to hide or placed their hope in the sanctuary of the church. It was all to no avail, for after dismantling the fort, the soldiers set fire to all the houses as well as the church. They rounded up the people and shot down, hacked with swords or ran through with spears the now disarmed garrison and others—old men, women and children—whom they had driven into one heap. Some ran their swords up to the hilt through the babes and the mothers, who were carrying them on their breasts, others paraded before their comrades little children writhing and convulsing on their spears, and finally binding all the survivors, they threw them off the cliffs into the sea over jagged and sharp rocks showering on them shots and stones. In this way perished about 300 Catholics.
It’s hard to juxtapose such hideously cruel events with the mellow moods presented to visitors today who take the time to explore Dursey. The Beara Way here on the island is a ten-mile loop on paths and boreens and is particularly pleasant in early fall when the gorse is in radiant golden flower across the bare treeless dome of the island. The climax experience, though, is not so much the walk itself, but access to the island by a creaking, rickety old cable car that crosses the tide-race abyss at the eastern extremity of the peninsula. The tiny metal cabin with a capacity of “six persons or a cow” seems alarmingly fragile and subject to a nauseating swinging and swaying as winds buffet it eighty feet or so above the roiling waves below. Occasionally dolphins doing flips and leaps in the turbulent channel can distract from the traumatic experience, but if windy heights are a worry, just stare straight ahead and promise yourself a tipple of the hard stuff when you finally arrive on the other side.
So why come? Well, certainly for the peace and silence, as only a handful of hardy residents call this place home. Also the evocative remnants of a monastery, fort, signal tower, and villages in addition to fine vistas of Bull Rock, Ireland’s second largest gannetry, plus a breeding ground of storm petrels, fulmars, razorbills, guillemots, choughs, and even occasional peregrine falcons. But for those relishing the rich mysteries of Beara, Dursey’s tales of strange boats, mystical lights, sea and animal apparitions, ghosts, and fairies are a far more tempting lure.
Anne and I visited Penny Durell to learn more about some of these oddities.
“So—how long have y’got?” was Penny’s laughing response after we told her of our mission to learn from her more of Dursey’s strange folkloric heritage.
“Well—we have your book, so we’ve got a bit of a head start,” said Anne.
Penny smiled. Or rather, she glowed. She was one of those intriguing individuals who seemed to float about buoyed on their own auras of happiness and contentment. Despite a recent and obviously still painful injury to her right hand, her smile exuded radiance and humor.
“Oh, well—if you’ve already forked out for the book, you’re very welcome indeed. Cup o’tea? Homemade biscuits?” (This had obviously now become one of our “Beara rituals.” A substantial part of our diet seemed to consist of cups of tea and homemade confectionaries in other people’s homes.)
“Yes to both,” I said. “We need restoration. It took quite a while to find your place. You’re way out in the middle of nowhere…”
Penny giggled. “Well, I don’t know about nowhere. It’s certainly a bit isolated but…”
“And almost lost in your own massive windbreak trees and bushes.”
“Yes, and that. But, be honest now, isn’t it worth it just for the view!”
She was right, of course. The all-embracing vista of the whole of Dursey Island, the foaming tidal rips of the narrow sound and the faint hazy outlines of the two now familiar Skelligs twelve or so miles out there in the Atlantic, was magnificent.
“I’d never get tired of that view,” Anne said, sighing.
Penny laughed, “No, you’re right. It’s very beautiful…when you can see it! But you know how our weather is here. We can go days—even weeks in winter—when you can barely see the trees at the end of our garden.”
“Yeah—we’ve had quite a few experiences with those local mists—more like the old London pea-soupers. But I was looking at your garden. Lots of stuff you’re growing out there…”
“Well, I guess David, my loyal mate, and I are still maintaining some of the old counterculture spirit—y’know, self-sufficiency and all that. We grow a mass of tomatoes and other veggies, gorgeous apples and soft fruits and herbs galore. But when we first moved here some people thought we were a bit suspicious with all our herby stuff. Thought it might be something a little more…y’know, radical—but we invited them in to help themselves, and they eventually accepted us as harmless old ex-hippies still living the simple ‘good life.’”
Penny’s “tea” was one of her own herbal brews and full of fruit flavors. Her homemade cookies were the kind that you find your fingers reaching out for despite edicts issued by the responsible part of your brain insisting that your quota has already been outrageously exceeded.
And Penny’s stories were wonderful. We could fill chapters galore with her tales, but as her book Discover Dursey already does that, why be redundant. Suffice to say, we delighted in her historic vignettes and descriptions of pre-Christian superstitions or piseogs. Apparently the old feast of Bealtaine on the first day of May celebrating the coming of summer was the climactic event of the year here and spawned a wealth of customs, many revolving around cows, milk, and butter making. The animals were blessed by marking the sign of the cross over the byre doors, which would then also be tightly locked up in the morning to prevent mischievous fairies (as opposed to the “good little people”) from stealing precious milk and butter. May Day itself was particularly rigid—no butter could be churned on that day, no milk could be given away, as such a gift would drain “the luck of the farm.” And woe betide any cow giving birth to a calf, as they were both certain to die and bring doom upon the household.
And then, as summer moved on, there came the lighting of great bonfires on St. John’s Eve to ward off disease and entice blessings, and the furious flurries of semi-erotic singing and dancing for the Lughnasa pagan harvest festival. But then things became a little more onerous with the strange antics of Halloween and All Souls’ Day, the Celtic festival of Samhain when, in Penny’s words, “only a thin veil separates the physical world from the realm of the spirits.”
She went on to tell us that, because of that terrible massacre on Dursey in 1602, residents would be “very wary of greeting any stranger encountered on the road at night because the ghosts of those tragic victims still wandered about, lost and hopeless, under cover of darkness.”
The local fishermen also had their own rigorous codes of superstitious conduct. Conversations on their boats out at sea were bound by strict taboos forbidding any discussion of pigs, foxes, or priests, which, they claimed, could jeopardize a decent catch. And if a fisherman should encounter a red-haired girl on his way down to his boat, he would be well advised to return home promptly and abandon fishing for that day.
“Oh,” added Penny, “and if he’d forgotten to put some coal in his trouser pocket before he left home, he’d also better go back and get some. And then he’d need to drag his wife or one of his kids down to the jetty to throw an old shoe after the boat—supposedly a very auspicious good luck gesture, although it must have cost them a small fortune in shoes. But if all these precautionary customs failed and there was a death at sea—a drowning—then there were more strict rules to be followed. For example, a close family member had to wear the victim’s clothes at Mass for the three Sundays following the funeral service—and any woman pregnant with child could only attend the service, as she was barred from the actual burial. However, if she heard a bell-like ringing in her ear, she should pray for the deceased immediately. Oh—and if she wasn’t married, she should watch out for houses where sparks from the peat fire flew out of the chimney, because money would be coming in for the fortunate occupants. And if one of them happened to be an eligible bachelor who picks up a hairpin in the road and then immediately meets a woman, she should be ready for a serious proposal of marriage. Of course, if there’s a ginger cat crossing her path ’round about the same time, she should refuse the offer, as she would be constantly plagued by bad luck for the rest of her life.”
“So complex!” Anne laughed. “Surrounded by so many fears and fantasies…”
“Oh, that’s just the start,” said Penny. “In the old days, little old Dursey was a hotbed of hauntings, fairy ships, fairies themselves, ghosts, huge fantasy galleons, strange lights, sea apparitions, hidden treasures, disembodied voices, and many other manifestations of overactive imaginations.”
“So, you’re a believer in all these things?” I asked. “Have you experienced any apparitions yourself yet or found any hidden treasure?”
“Well—we certainly found treasure. This house for starters! But no, I can’t really claim firsthand experiences, although when you talk to some of the old folk around here, they can make you almost believe…almost anything! But how about you, David—you’ve walked around the island. What were your feelings?”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve a hunch that, if I’d read your book and talked to you earlier, I’d have come away with a rather different take on Dursey. I mean—I certainly sensed a loneliness there…I think I only saw one other person…Who knows, maybe even that was an apparition…It was definitely an odd figure by the southern cliffs there, near where they threw the bodies over in tied-up bundles during that ghastly massacre. He or she was all hunched over and very dark in silhouette—even though the sun was way over by the Skelligs, behind me…I waved and the person turned but seemed to completely ignore me. So I carried on a short way toward the old village of Ballynacallagh and then I turned around and looked back…but he or she or it was gone. Whatever it was. And for the rest of the walk it was just me and the birds—hundreds of ’em, and…utter peace.”
“Ah, yes, the dulcet spirit of Dursey,” said Penny. “And for a tiny place, it has so much history—Viking invasions, the Normans, pirates, famines and evictions, emigrations, shipwrecks, collapsing lighthouses and storms like you can’t imagine, and of course, all those—what did Anne call them—superstitious fears and fantasies. Well, it’s amazing it can still offer the kind of peace and calm that can stay inside you and with you for days…weeks.”
“Yes, it can…it did. It still does!” I said.
Penny giggled again. “Ah, c’mon. You’ve got a bad case of the Dursey Dreamtime!”
“Is it very infectious?”
“Oh—totally!” Penny laughed.
“You’re right,” said Anne. “I haven’t even been there and I’m utterly enticed…I’m just not sure I want to go across in that cable car contraption.”
“Never a single accident,” insisted Penny.
“Oh, good,” said Anne.
“Yet,” said Penny.
A SECOND LITTLE SIX-MILE loop appendage of the Beara Way is on Bere Island itself, an appealing fifteen-minute ferry ride from Castletownbere. Renowned for its fine harbor, the island was the site of a major British naval base until 1938.
With a small population of around two hundred, a couple of pubs, and some basic accommodations, the place seems far removed from the quayside hullabaloo of Castletownbere, packed with huge trawlers and all its now-familiar bars and restaurants increasingly redolent with Polish and East European accents.
The island doesn’t look very different from the mainland with its neatly walled fields, scattered farms, and beautiful patchwork quilt of greens and ochres featured in so many photographs of this part of Ireland. But it certainly reveals its own strong character in the remnants of fortifications, gun batteries, a Martello tower, and fine views of Dunboy Castle, where the O’Sullivan clan was massacred by the English general Carew after a siege of eleven days in 1602.
There are other island delights that make a hike here worthwhile—the late summer explosions of golden gorse flowers, the scarlet profusion of fuchsia hedgerows, a Bronze (2000–500 BC) Age standing stone on a high point marking the exact center of the island, and the wonderful, wind-buffeted wildness of the moor itself with panoramic vistas in all directions.
MEMORIES OF THESE TWO walks are true keepers: mists writhing like semitransparent serpents around the wrinkled strata of the hills; the swirl and scurry of hungry seagulls hoping for tail-end scraps from my sandwich lunches; burpy recollections of large breakfasts to bank up the energy supplies prior to my explorations. Anne’s fine repasts would honor royal palates—thick pinhead porridge with cream and treacle, gorgeous slices of pan-roasted gammon ham liberally scorched with caramelized brown sugar, a couple of oh-so-golden eggs fresh from the farm down the road and tasting like eggs did pre–World War II (or so I’m told!), and finally, whiskey-flavored orange marmalade thick with pungent zest slathered on hot buttered soda-bread toast. And of course—tea. Good old stand-a-spoon-in-it Yorkshire tea.
Such abundances make you feel ready—indeed, obligated—to sally forth like a squire inspecting his estates. And in doing so you forget your sedentary tendencies and launch into that delicious stupor of “earned exhaustion” and frisson flashes that occur in those high barren places where the wind whips away all the crud of civilized torpor and reveals your true “creature of nature” beneath. This is the one that hunted with stone ax and rough-hewn spear, the one that sensed the power of the Creator in every daily moment and act and understood the sheer glorious surge of nature in all her moods and terrible cruelties. That’s the fellow you don’t get to meet too often in the comfortable confines of domesticity. That’s a transcendency that transcends all mundanity and moroseness and lingers in the spirit for days—even weeks. Until the next time and the next revelation on these high wild places.
AND SO IT WAS that I was finally ready to begin my own odyssey of self-rediscovery on the Beara Way itself. And where better to put myself in an appropriate mood than by making my start at the four white stones at Allihies, otherwise known to the cognoscenti of Irish folklore as the Children of Lir.
An alternative starting point, and a place to which Anne and I return regularly like dogs exploring the scents on their favorite tree, could have been the remarkable remnant of a neolithic stone circle on the back road just to the west of Castletownbere. Among the tumultuous tumble here on Beara of standing stones, circles, cairns, souterrains, megalithic tombs, dolmen, and ring forts, this strong and ancient entity of Derreenataggart is one of our favorite and most dramatic places on the peninsula. We came here with good old Carey Conrad, our early mentor and guide, during our initial explorations, and it has remained one of our key touchstones of ancient authenticity here.
However, I chose the Children of Lir as my starting point. Anne drove me down on a windy morning from our Allihies cottage, patted my rucksack to ensure I had my sandwiches and water, and gave me an unusually clinging hug, as if she sensed some uncertainty about the likelihood of an imminent return.
We stood together, looking at the four famous stones. As stones go, these hardly seemed icons of mega-significance. In fact, they were barely more than large rounded beach rocks a couple of feet or so across and set closely together in rough-cut grass just above our beautiful Ballydonegan Beach.
“They hardly seem to reflect the importance of that great Lir legend,” said Anne. “I mean, isn’t it celebrated all over Ireland as one of the keystones of all their vast Celtic culture? Four little white stones doesn’t really seem to do it…”
And yet it was rather moving in its own modest and sad way. The tale has many versions, with subtle variations and nuances that only true folklorists could relish. We prefer the short, relatively untangled one that goes something like this:
The wise and revered ocean god-king Lir of Sidh Fionnachaidh, intent on bringing peace to the tribal feudings of ancient history, married Eve (Aobh), daughter of King Bodhbh Dearg the Red, a powerful member of Tuatha Dé Danann. They were the people descended from the mother-goddess Anu, who, according to Irish legend, arrived here from Greece around 350 BC. Much later on, following a series of lost battles with the Celtic Milesians from Galicia in northwestern Spain, these people became the “fairy people”—sole possessors of the underworld.
But prior to all that, Lir was blissfully married to Eve, who conceived two sets of twins. Unfortunately Eve died in the second childbirth, so to maintain the peace, Lir married her sister Eva (Aoife). However, Eva was not so nice a character as Eve and became extremely jealous of Lir’s love for his four children. So one night she secretly carried them off to Lough Darravagh and transformed them into swans.
Unfortunately, while immediately recognizing her impetuous sin, she regrettably lost the spell to release them (or so she claimed). But it was too late anyway, because King Bodhbh Dearg discovered her terrible deed and turned her into a demon condemned to float alone in the air forever. So according to the legend, the four children of Lir remained swans for nine hundred years until the coming of Christianity in the fifth century. After the first three hundred years or so, they moved from Lough Darravagh, and many other lakes across Ireland are claimed as their second home. But eventually they settled on the Atlantic Ocean for the last three hundred years. Then finally, attracted by church bells rung by a monk, St. Mochaomhog, at the Christian church in our little community here of Allihies, they finally came ashore. Immediately the spell was broken and they regained their human form, but alas, in doing so, they also became ancient, shriveled-up nine-hundred-year-old beings and died almost instantaneously—but not before the saint had rushed down to the shore from the church and baptized them.
And thus it was that they came to be buried beneath these four white stones, which are still revered by the locals and whence I began my Beara Way odyssey.
AND SO FINALLY I was alone and striding eastward, thinking what a glorious day’s adventure on the high fells lay ahead. I was looking forward to disappearing into the deep solitude of the moors—that shimmering, humming stillness that I sensed on shorter walks around Allihies and Ballydonegan beach. Then, next thing I knew, I was stopping and wondering where the hell the fells had gone. I’m sure they’d been there when I set off a short while ago. In fact, I know they were. But now they weren’t. A cloud out of nowhere had snuck in when I was studying the map or daydreaming about Anne’s fabulous breakfast or wondering where to camp the night after a long hike. Except I wondered if my hike might be interrupted. There was a strong suggestion of imminent rain not yet fallen.
And then, of course, the rains fell. Also out of nowhere. In fact, I could still see sunlight like jagged golden rips in the ever-accumulating black cloud mass. And of course it was your typical southwestern Ireland deluge—unforecast, unforgiving, and unforgettable. I don’t believe—except maybe in the height of the Indian monsoon season—that I’ve ever known a rain that can so quickly turn a mood of bucolic bonhomie into a pure bloody mayhem of mud-slimed, buckled knees, clobber-soaked, heart-pounding, ankle-cracking chaos. And of course I’d left all possibilities of shelter behind me. Around me was nothing now but moor dotted with flesh-ripping huddles of ogreous, spike-laden gorse. Not to mention an unusually odiferous collection of cow pies rapidly dissolving into the mud of the path, which in turn was rapidly dissolving into the adjoining tangles of tussocks and marsh grass, and—of course—also disappearing into my now-sodden boots.
There was no choice but to slosh and plodge on, hoping that somewhere in the murk ahead I’d find respite from the helter-skelter furor. Childishly optimistic, of course, but that’s the way you feel at the beginning of a hike. And my mind, searching for softer consolations, conjured up an image of an early morning a few days back as I’d sat by the sliding glass door of our cottage overlooking Ballydonegan Beach and watched a robin pecking crumbs from around our wooden picnic table. Such a tranquil scene—the little creature proudly thrusting its ochre-colored breast outward as it surveyed the scene to locate its next morsel and occasionally cocking its head in my direction as if to say: “C’mon, mate, time for a bit more bread, if y’ please—this crumb-peckin’ is f’ the feekin’ birds. Other birds, that is—not this one.” And I’m sitting, smiling, and nodding and doing nothing because I know as soon as I get up to fetch more crusts and scraps, he’ll lose faith in my benign tranquility and fly off. And what was so enticing was—
“Ah! Halloo. A nize day, I zink! Ha-ha!”
I must have been so very deeply reveried, almost fetally curled, in that captivating bubble of memory that I had completely failed to notice two figures looming out of the teeming murk. They were obviously fellow hikers but serious ones with far larger rucksacks than mine.
“Ah…oh…sorry. Didn’t see y’ there…”
The taller one with a dark dripping beard smiled patronizingly: “Ziss iss not zerprizink, I zink. Ze rain, she iss very wetz.”
The other man, smaller and with a rather more feminine face despite a thick brown mustache, nodded seriously. “Ya. I zink zo too,” he said.
I couldn’t help an hospitable chuckle. The rain was so bloody obviously wet that to even mention it seemed ridiculous as we all stood together, drenched from tip to toe and with our boots squishing and our noses and other appendages dripping like chronically leaky faucets.
Making idle and convivial conversation in such conditions seemed a bit odd, but there again, we had nowhere to go for shelter and were so soaked already as to be beyond restoration anyway. So we removed our rucksacks, sat on them by the side of the path—which actually was now a thick mud stream—and chatted together like old buddies. I passed around a bar of chocolate. They—far more sensibly—passed around an unlabeled liter bottle of what I thought (hoped?) might be Irish poteen moonshine, but they insisted it was German schnapps—“from ver ve are comings…Stuttgart…You know Stuttgart?”
I apologized profusely for a very significant lack of familiarity with Germany while insisting that Anne and I intended to make amends in the spring with a planned visit to Eastern Europe via Berlin.
“Ah yez—Berlin. Very fine place. Ve like ver much. Goods foods. Goods beers. And ver goods ladies…”
“Ah,” I said, “in that case, maybe I should come alone.”
They both stared at me curiously. Humor, I then remembered from prior conversations with fellow German travelers, is not always such an easy form of comradely communication.
“You know—what you said about the good ladies…”
Still no recognizable response.
Last try. “What I mean is—maybe I should not come with my wife if the Berlin ladies are—”
At last. “Ah! Aye…yez, yez—yez. I zee vat you zay. Ya! Ver funny. Ver good idea! Ha-ha!”
“Ya. I zink zo too,” added the one with the mustache.
God, this is going to be hard work, my inner voice whispered. Yes, I whispered back, but the schnapps is just too good to up and leave. So somehow we chatted on inanely and the schnapps eased the edges of our conversational confusions. And when we finally parted, I encouragingly confirmed that they were almost at the end of the Beara Way and they, not so encouragingly, told me that I was indeed just at the beginning and it would very quickly get worse as I headed up into the high hills to the east.
I tried to think of some lighthearted aphorism to end our chat, but for some inane reason, all I could come up with was: “Well—may I just say that as you slide down the banister of life, I hope the splinters never point the wrong way!”
Not surprisingly I received only blank, uncomprehending stares until the smaller one with the thick mustache reiterated his “Ah, ya, I zink zo too.”
I’d like to boast that I then pulled on my rucksack, straightened my back, set my mental and physical sights at the high ground, and marched onward and upward like a true “bog-trotter,” determined to conquer all the climatic chaos, all those little incisors of insecurity, and other demons of the Beara Way.
I’d like to, but in all honesty, I can’t. Because that’s not what I did. I was deluged not only by the rain but by memories of my own early ineptitudes. On previous hikes, particularly as a young Boy Scout, I gained the inauspicious reputation of “the lost one,” as a result of my uncanny ability to confuse marked trails with meandering cow tracks that invariably ended in pernicious, cow-pie-filled bogs. So—determined not to repeat such a fiasco—I continued on up the path until it finally merged a few miles later on with a narrow boreen. Here I checked my map for the location of our cottage and hitchhiked home from the Beara Way with visions of a hot bath, a large Irish whiskey, a loving welcoming wife, and a huge dinner of roasted chicken and cabbage and colcannon. The visions dangled like gorgeous fat carrots on the end of an extremely wet stick.
And it all came to pass just as I had envisioned! In fact, come to think of it, Anne’s splendid chicken dinner was just a little too extravagant and well prepared—almost as if she was expecting me back home as soon as the storm hit. And as usual, she was correct in her somewhat demeaning expectations.
Anyway—blaming the notorious fickleness of the southwest Ireland climate—I decided to walk the Beara Way thereafter in shorter segments within relatively easy reach of boreens and pubs. It’s a fine experience if you can put up with constant fogginess, snatching clumsy fistfuls of knife-edged marsh grass, and occasional break-a-leg confrontations with rocky outcrops. And of course, if you’re a true marathon-masochist and the 125 miles of the Beara Way seems far too modest a challenge, there’s always Jim O’Sullivan’s 600-mile O’Sullivan Beara Breifne Greenway. Commemorating the notoriously decimating march of the O’Sullivans following the devastation of their Dunboy Castle in 1602 by the English Elizabethans, the route roams northward deep into County Mayo and ultimately to the city of Leitrim. And if you attempt to complete the whole course, then my hat’s off to you and I’ll toast your progress while watching our almost-tame robin seeking his bread crumbs around our table and sipping my Jameson by our warm fireside at the cottage, or out in the cow-cropped pasture in gorgeously drenching sunshine.
Onward!