Birds, music and archeology drew us here. Wildflowers and geology were unexpected pleasures. Poetry--who knew we were even looking for poetry? These were all grand and we have explored them all. But even better--this is a slow-food paradise. Superb restaurants everywhere we turn and great local food to buy and cook at home.
Everyday a delight to the eye and mind and every meal a delight to the palate.
Living here for seven weeks has been more fun than we even expected. We like to settle down in one place for awhile and we chose Doolin, County Clare for our long-stay in Ireland. The rest of our trip will be a few days or a week in several places but this has been home for awhile. We struck it lucky in our choice.
We have a 3-bedroom condo in what might pass as the center of Doolin. Doolin, and many Irish towns, are scattered about rather than compact. So we are central to the music pubs and can walk to hear music but few other services are anywhere close. We also have a car--a necessity in this country; few locals or tourists do anything else and we now understand why. For us, it has been great to have so much space so visitors could come: my sister, Kitty was with us for a few weeks and our neighbor, Mary was here too for a bit. Both are fun explorers and easy house guests; it helps us feel grounded to have our friends and family around.
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| Our car and house with Nancy. |
Getting around
Well, but learning to drive here--Yikes! Left side of the road-ok. Manual transmission--ok. Narrow roads, bordering on tiny, all with bikes, walkers and tractors around random bends. It has been a trifecta of anxiety. It is just as bad being the passenger--we are so close to the edge of the road that the passenger is cringing and gasping as much as the driver is white-knuckled.
I am relieved to report that we have not harmed anyone and we are much more relaxed now. We have not reached the point where we actually go as fast as the speed limit. 100 Km/hr seems laughable to us.
Taking care of business in the local market town
Early May, arriving in Doolin. Rain. Wind. Where do we find groceries? Really, the gas station? Or Enistymon, 50 k away. OK! Doolin does music and birds; Enistymon takes care of basics..
Turns out the Doolin gas station really sells a pretty good range of stuff with excellent local bread, eggs, meat. The fish wholesaler behind the station sells fresh catch for pennies. We realized we would not starve. They also sell turf briquettes and fire-starter so we could have cozy turf fires of an evening.
Enistymon ended up being one of our fun go-to towns and we went often. Supervalu--a grand little grocery store with lots of regular stuff. A good wine selection, fresh local berries every time we went. A parking lot under the store so no parking anxiety.
But there is much more to enjoy in the town. Local cheese vendor and veggie truck on the main square; next to them the guru tea shop which makes actual french press coffee and sells Buddhist prayer flags. An ordinary town, not a tourist destination. We had medical check-ups there and I got my teeth cleaned. For us, just like living somewhere.
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| Enistymon on market day. |
The cascades of the Inagh River with a stone-arched bridge are in the middle of town with a grand old hotel on the bank. The Dylan Thomas Bar in the Falls hotel has free wi-fi, good beer, coffee and desert, carved roasts for daily lunch and windows over-looking the falls and rook-nests right outside the window. And, and, and... I guess I should mention the salmon swimming up to the fish ladder and the river otter chasing them. A dipper was nesting near the fish ladder. We stopped in often.
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| Inagh falls with Enistymon in back. |
We spent most of our stay in this western area of County Clare with a few pleasant forays into Galway for city life. Our observation so far is that Ireland is still suffering from the economic downturn with lots of empty storefronts, lightly-booked tourist facilities, projects that were started and not completed. We did meet young professionals who had migrated to Australia several years ago who are beginning to come back as work is now here for them. Ireland has put effort into the tourist infrastructure in our area, Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher particularly, and this has actually paid off according to some of those who live there. Galway is a high tech area with many server farms among other teckie businesses and a large university center for technology. So, it is beginning to work out here. All of Ireland is internet friendly with free wifi at every turn. Any pub we stopped in had free wifi so evenings we could listen to traditional music and pay our bills or post to facebook at the same time.
Our overall impression was of a very well kept area. No run down houses, no junk cars or other outward signs of economic stress. Empty storefronts were painted up and had window displays. Ennis, the capitol of County Clare, was recently a Tidy Town gold medal winner and they are in the running for a European award. In France they had "flower villages;" in Ireland it is Tidy Towns. We were impressed with both actually but I am thinking about Ireland right now. Really no trash. It was notable to find a bit of paper blowing on the road even in remote areas. While there is an economic emphasis on tourism in the area, it is not at all crowded or slick. Most business are family owned and operated with the staff providing service with a pleasant personal touch.
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| Nancy and Jessie holding Mary Mullan's book, Zephyr. |
The icing on the Enistymon cake. The Salmon Poetry is the Motown of Poetry says our poet friend, Mary Mullen. Our first stumble into Enistymon to find food and a cash machine was rewarded by a further stumble into Salmon Bookstore, part of Salmon Poetry, for a poetry reading. Jessie Lendennie and other poets were having an event for World Poetry Day. (Did you know there is such a thing? Me neither.) I really liked it--well crafted, tight little topics, a sweet time in the garden of a crammed full bookstore. Being here is re-opening my eyes to poetry. (Follow the above link to buy Mary's or Jessie's or other poetry--free shipping.)
Galway is also a center of poetry. Part of the city's street are building-sized paintings with an associated poem. These things pop up in any odd place such as a city parking lot. Fun to stumble on after a walk along the river.
What's for fun?
Besides taking care of life's business, what did we do every day?
There is everything to do here, an adventure every day.
Walking and biking
I had expected to do more walking and bicycling but many of the designated walking/biking paths are along quite busy roads and everything is steep. When weather permitted, we drove to where the paths were off road and hiked from there. Nancy preferred to use her time drawing and painting so was willing to drop us off and pick us up elsewhere. Best hike: from the top of the Cliffs of Moher down into Doolin. I can't even begin to describe the views out over the Aran Islands, the nesting birds, wildflowers. It was about as strenuous as I could manage with some steep descents and about 8-9 km. But well worth the effort. Another hike: along a back road over a ridge from Burren National Park where we found a farmhouse offering tea and scones halfway along. A final hike was along a ridge above Fanore and the Atlantic coast looked out over Galway bay and the Connemara Mountains to the north. We saw/heard skylarks displaying and later cuckoos. Best bike ride: Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands.Birds
The stunning Cliffs of Moher here provide nesting sites for thousands of seabirds including puffins, razorbills, guillemots, fulmars, choughs and more. A visitor center with viewing platform allows good views of puffins flying in and out of their nests. One day, I felt like I was in a nature video watching a peregrine hunting a cliff-face of fulmars. As the
peregrine approached, dozens of fulmars swarmed out and chased it away. After several tries, the peregrine went hungry as far as I could see. Scenic boat cruises tour along the cliff face where you are feet away from nesting kittiwakes and guillemots. The ferry to the Aran islands passed colonies of nesting Arctic terns and little terns. Gannets, shearwaters and other seabirds appeared as we got out further. Inland, skylarks, cuckoos, pipits, stone chats--many more. When we were first here, the dawn chorus of songbirds swelled out. By now, mid-June, most are on the nest and quiet. Eurasian Marsh Harriers are rare and endangered throughout UK and Ireland but we watched one hunt over a field of neolithic cahers for about 20 minutes. Below--seabird nesting sites.
Drawing and Painting
While I was watching birds or riding bikes, Nancy spent her time drawing and painting with some great results. It has been a bit difficult making the transition from glass sculpture to watercolor and drawing but in my opinion, she has been successful. Nancy would argue--"not so" --but I am writing this section so my word goes.
The painting heading this post is one of the view from our livingroom done in watercolor. Here is a drawing done while we were watching music at McGann's pub. Brown ink on cream-colored paper.
Archeology of prehistory
The whole area was heavily populated in the neolithic--between about 6,000 and 4,000 years ago. Again during the late iron age and early Christian era, later middle ages and into the modern era under the Normans and then British rule, the population surged and fell. Inhabitants from every era left stone buildings or monuments and they are there for us to find. Some say this area of Ireland has more prehistoric sites than any other area of Ireland. Most are not fully explored but a few have been well excavated and dates can be extrapolated.
Nancy is working on a blog about "What they left Behind" so I will not explain much here. But we had great fun travelling around to find different sites. I say find but often we just stumbled upon things. This area is so empty of inhabitants or tourists that we would often be tooling along and come right to a 6,000-year-old wedge tomb and neolithic habitation site with no one around and just a rusty sign post. We have become connoisseurs of stone walls and sometimes could identify medieval field systems or neolithic enclosures. There is so much here that it is common to find a dolmen in the middle of a cow field with no information. We have the pleasure of trying to solve the puzzle. A great book: Hugh Carthy, Burren Archeology, a Tour Guide, helped us map out our exploration and understand some of what we were seeing.
We have what we have come to think of as "our standing stone" which we see out our back door, up a small hill. It is in someone's pasture and we could not walk up to it but found it on Google earth in the center of a ring with another stone fallen down.
Remains of early Christianity
Early Christianity flourished here and ancient, roofless churches are scattered about in odd corners too. More than we can count. The earliest remains are from about 800 as churches built earlier were timber and left no remains. They are mainly deserted and roofless from the Cromwell repressions but have remained hallowed ground so the burials have continued to now. We have visited many and find them evocative, beautiful. Bits of carving remain on some; other are almost overgrown with honeysuckle and roses. There is much to say about these churches--maybe they can become their own post.
Lunch
Everyday, some wonderful lunch. Everywhere we went, we came across superb restaurants. I do not know if this will be true all over Ireland--I will report back. But in this area, the "Slow-food movement" is flourishing. Thank-you Italy. May was the "Slow-food Festival" so all over the area local cheese makers, meat producers, fishers, and restaurants were strutting their stuff and we found great places to eat in the unlikeliest places.
A few of our favorites:
Tea and Garden room in the former Coast Guard Station, Ballyvaughn, pictured above.
Cassidy's Pub in Carran out there alone among the neolithic sites, geological wonders and wildflower meadows. We went back often.
Vasco's near the Fanore beach--local cheese plate to die for, excellent wine selection, a cozy respite from rain and wind on some days.
Kilshanny House, on the way to Ennistymon on the main highway. We found it because we were so tense from learning to drive in the area we needed to pull off to catch our breath--and there was this great pub and restaurant. A harpist was playing, the fire was warming, scones were just out of the oven, shepherds pie was perfection. We went back often.
Russell Gallery in New Quay is an excellent art gallery which turns out to have an Italian wine and espresso bar. Good food too. Their family winery in Tuscany provided wine, olive oil and other must-haves for the house too. Nearby we went to a local concert with the community singers hosting a similar group from Bologna, Italy.
Linnane's Lobster Bar, also in New Quay, gets their fish and shell fish right there on the quay. There is a cozy inside for the rainy days and picnic tables for the sunny day. We enjoyed them all.
Stonecutter's Kitchen near the Cliffs of Moher--great stop for lunch or snacks.
Doolin Cafe our frequent afternoon coffee and cake place.
Pubs are all over and pretty much all good or good enough. We have not acquired a taste for Guinness but another Irish beer--Smithwicks (Smiddiks) has become our drink of choice. Pub food runs to burgers, curry and lasagna. We did not try the lasagna that often so cannot really compare with our Italian lasagna challenge but the burgers were reliably good.
Evenings we usually cook at home with great local ingredients. I learned to make leek and potato soup after enjoying it so much in restaurants. This is beef and dairy country so we have great cheeses and beef. Our butcher in Enistymon raises their own beef and lamb and will cut to order. Aran Islandmen fish and bring their catch in to the Doolin pier so we re able to get good fish and shellfish at the gas station (where else?). Local produce in season now-potatos, leeks, beets and other root crops. Berries are coming in from Wexford.
Music
Evenings = Irish traditional music. We are here because Doolin is famed for the number and quality of their traditional musicians. Three pubs here have been centers for musicians for many years and music happens there every night. It is light until about 10 PM which is when they begin to play but it is hard for us to get up and out so late. Thus, we did not go to music every night even though it was there. Other areas around the county also have fine musicians playing usually on weekends.
The musicians we did see were excellent. Rarely did anyone give their names so mainly we do not know who they are. One set of folks--Dermot (concertina) and Flo (harp) with a banjo player were good enough that we tried to follow them around and found a CD. Here is a Youtube video of them in a different venue but I think you can catch the sweetness of the harp here quite well.
Another highlight was a group of older local players that we tracked down a few times. It was fun when they were playing as all their local older friends came out too and some teens were sitting in to learn how to play. Such quality and ease with each other. No CD's or Youtube for these guys--just neighbors.
The Doolin Folk Music festival was last weekend, right next door to us. We particularly enjoyed a set by Sharon Shannon that got us all up and dancing. The town was hopping with all hostels and many B&B's crammed. People were sleeping in tents and their cars. Every age of people in the audience listened and danced to a range of music from ballad singers to traditional Irish to wider folk music which seems to be based on "trad" but with other musical twists in the mix. A central courtyard with turf fires and plenty of Guinness kept the crowd amiable.
Elsewhere, we found jazz offerings and an early music cello concert. The local chorus singing with their Italian guests was a different range of traditional local musicians. All around, a musical garden of delights.
Leaving
We have been here the best part of seven weeks and off we go. Tomorrow in Galway, a musical evening of W.B. Yeats poems including "The Swans of Coole" written when he stayed at Coole here in the Burren. Ballina for a really significant neolithic archeological site. Donegal for scenery. Derry for a touch of city. Antrim and the Giant's Causeway. Belfast, New Grange and Dublin. We are excited about the next things and sad to leave our beautiful "home."
Text by Julianne
Photos by Nancy and Julianne.
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