June 26 Once in royal St. David’s city

Of all the places I have visited in my travels so far, nowhere has been more charming, interesting and characteristically Celtic than St. David’s and the countryside and coastline which surrounds it. The centre-piece of Britain’s smallest city (it’s no bigger really than a medium-sized village) is, of course, its small but perfectly formed cathedral, which was unusually, but entirely sensibly, built, not on top of what

A Celtic jewel - St. David's cathedral

would inevitably have been a gale-swept hill, but at the bottom of a little valley. This means that, approaching the city from the surrounding countryside, all you can see of the cathedral is the pinnacles on top of its central tower. Only when you reach the valley itself is the full glory of the beautifully proportioned cathedral church revealed. Next to it are the romantic ruins of the Bishop’s Castle, and the Prince of Wales visited earlier this week, to open the newly restored cloisters. He must have been in his element!

There is something delightfully Celtic about the cathedral. It’s not just that it’s almost hidden away out of sight in its secret valley, but it was also built on a significant slope (upwards from west to east), the pillars in the nave seem to be leaning outwards and massive stone buttressing has had to be put in place to stop the north side collapsing. No Anglo-Saxon could ever have built a church like this!

Despite (or perhaps because of) its remoteness, St. David’s seems to have been something of a hub for Celtic Christianity. St. David was born here, of course. His mother, St. Non, gave birth to him on a hillside to the south of the city, in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. A holy well and a ruined chapel mark the spot.

She then went on to Cornwall to found the church of Altarnun on the edge of Bodmin Moor, which is otherwise distinguished by being the home of the Western Morning News’ estimable farming editor, Peter ‘Bingo’ Hall, before heading off for more missionary work in Brittany.

On the other side of the city, close to the handsome beach of Whitesands Bay, a stone plaque indicates the site of what was once a

St. Non's well - created when a bolt of lightning struck the ground whilst she was giving birth to St. David. Must have been an electrifying experience!

chapel dedicated to St. Patrick, to mark the spot where the Welshman who was to become the patron saint of Ireland, set off from his native land. If you are looking for evidence of the links that joined the Celtic cultures in the centuries before the Conquest, there is no shortage of it in and around St. David’s.

I’ve got to know St. David’s reasonably well over the last few years, in my role as a director of Farms for City Children. Treginnis Isaf, on the very tip of the peninsula, looking across to Ramsey Island, is the second of the three farms that Clare and Michael Morpurgo set up to take residential visits from inner city primary school-children. I visited on Thursday morning and was delighted to learn from Mike Plant, the farm school manager, that the enterprise is going from strength to strength. A party of 40 or so ten year olds from Dartford in Kent were in residence and had just finished the morning mucking out of goats and pigs. A happier, more polite, genuinely interested and talkative bunch of school kids you never met in all your life.

All this, and a golf course too. The City of St. David’s GC celebrated its centenary five years ago and I doubt if it has changed much in all that time. It was ferociously windy, but the views of over Whitesands to St.David’s head on one side of the bay and Ramsey island on the other, were stunning.

Still no surfing. The sea was far too wild, even for the professionals, let alone for ageing wallowers like me. I was planning to head off to the Gower to try my luck there, but the forecast spoke of unrelenting rain, so I decided to cut my losses and take a few days off at home. Next stop is Cornwall, somewhere near Tintagel, on July 6. Catch you then, and in the meantime, I'll add some pics.

Carn Llidi and Whitesands Bay from St. David's Head

June 24 Talyllyn Ho!

On Sunday, after a storm-tossed night, I made a cautious way through the shrieking gale from Aberdaron to Tywyn. Quite why I picked Twyn, which is a rather wind-blown, sand-blasted seaside town with nothing in particular to recommend it (a bit like Seaton, but without the charm), for an overnight stop, I cannot now remember. The choice of “Hendy”, out of the dozen or so certificated locations in the Caravan Club directory, was a matter of pure chance. I did wonder vaguely whether “Mrs. A Lloyd Jones” might possibly be connected with John Lloyd Jones, whom I have known and respected for many years as one of the most intelligent and forward-thinking leaders of Welsh farming, but given that there must be thousands of Lloyd Jones in the Principality, I swiftly discounted it.

Carmen at Hendy

But it was that Lloyd Jones, sure enough. I arrived shortly after Sunday lunchtime and was immediately sat down and invited to share a bottle of good red wine with my hosts. We talked of mutual NFU friends, exchanged gossip and discovered a shared frustration with what is happening to the various schemes that have been developed to enable farmers to produce countryside as well as food. John has been Chairman for many years of CCW, the Welsh conservation agency which produced Tyr Gofal, hailed by the former Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, as “the most successful agri-environment scheme in the Europe”. Tyr Gofal has been taken over and ruined by the Welsh Assembly Government, in much the same way as the equally successful ESA scheme is being butchered by Defra to make way for its half-baked “Environmental Stewardship” in England.

In both cases, 20 years of painstaking progress, involving millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, is likely to be chucked away because the conservation bureaucrats who presently call the tune in Defra cannot see beyond the end of their noses. You need pragmatism to find the right balance between food production and conservation. Natural England doesn’t appear to know the meaning of the word.

As with many another Welsh farm, tourism is very much the mainstay of Hendy’s income. It involves some handsome self-catering cottages and farmhouse b and b as well as the campsite, and appeared to be very much Ann Lloyd Jones’ creation and responsibility; a business which she combines with being a sturdily independent member of Gwynedd county council.

Ann apart, Hendy’s greatest asset is the Talylln railway, which runs so close to the farm that it even as its own halt. It has the distinction of being the first line in Britain to be taken over and run by volunteers; it was the inspiration for W.S.Awdry’s Thomas the Tank Engine; and its appeal is universal. I shared a carriage on the Monday morning with an American family (who were also staying at Hendy) who had travelled all the way from Chicago for the thrill of a trip on the Talyllyn. The little trains chug and clank their way up the valley through some of the most magnificent scenery you’ll see anywhere (the Dolgoch Falls are a particular delight) and you can go up and down the line all day, getting off and on wherever you fancy, and all for just £12.

Dolgoth gorge

In the afternoon, I drove to Borth, another undistinguished seaside town, strung out along Cardigan Bay a few miles north of Aberystwyth and, like Tywyn, beset on either side by mobile homes. Borth has one saving grace, and that is its golf course: an old-fashioned out and back links which I have hugely enjoyed playing ever since I first visited, some 16 years ago. I found a decent campsite nearby and by this stage it had become the most beautiful sunny afternoon. I didn’t play very well, but the setting more than made up for that. As I hooked and three-putted my way back along the shore, the whole of Cardigan Bay was laid out before me, from the Lleyn in the North, to Cardigan Island in the south.

The only thing missing was some decent surf. That has been the one big disappointment of the trip so far. When I was in Scotland and for most of the time in Ireland, the wind was from the east. Then, when it did switch to the South West, it was so violent, it blew out any swell. I’m now at Whitesands Bay, a mile of so from St. David’s, and I’ve got high surfing hopes for tomorrow.

June 21 Land of my great-grandfathers.

I am two miles south-west of Aberdaron, at Tỷ Newydd on the very tip of the beautiful Lleyn peninsula. If it wasn’t for the driving rain and thick fog, I would be able to see Bardsey Island out of Carmen’s back window. The famously nationalistic and unremittingly gloomy Welsh poet, R.S Thomas, was parish priest here for 20 years. Almost everyone speaks Welsh. I am, in fact, so deep into Wales that I’ve almost come out the other side.

Typical Welsh weather

My son George likes to refer to this expedition, a touch sarcastically, as my “voyage of self-discovery”, and in one respect at least, that is exactly what it has proved to be. I wrote not long ago that “there isn’t a single drop of farming blood coursing through my veins”. It appears that I was wrong. Yesterday, after catching the early ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, I stopped off at Llandudno, to visit the only relations on my mother’s side of the family – the Welsh side – with whom we have any contact: my second cousin Mary Machin, and her husband Stephen. Mary’s mother Lyn was the daughter of my grandfather Daniel’s eldest brother, William, and before she died she made a start on piecing together a family tree.

From this, I discovered that the great-grandfather that Mary and I have in common – William Thomas – came from Ty’n y Clwt Farm, in Anglesey. Yes, farm! I don’t know any more than that about him, but on the face of it, he would appear either to have been a farmer, or at the very least to have been a farmer’s son. So far from there being not a single drop of farming blood in my veins, there could be as much as a whole pint! I shall view myself in a completely different light in future. Gibbo – descended from a long line of fiercely Welsh farmers. It probably explains a lot!

On Wednesday afternoon, I caught the bus from the campsite at Camac Valley into Dublin. I’m not a great fan of cities, but it has to be admitted that this is a handsome one. I followed the established tourist trail, through Temple Bar, and up O’Connell Street past the Spike to the Post Office, which featured so prominently in the Easter Rising of 1916. I even tracked down the bronze sculpture of Molly Malone in Grafton Street – “The Tart with the Cart”, as it is known, and with good reason. She’s showing more bosom than you could shake a stick at!

The tart with the cart!

I was just wandering back toward the bus stop, reflecting sadly on the deep irony that a city so famous for its pubs should be so lacking in decent beer, when I spotted “The Porterhouse Brewery”, in Parliament Street. I ventured in, and you’ll never guess what I spied on the bar? Yes, a handpump, dispensing 100% genuine real Irish bitter, called Sticklebracht, and brewed on the premises. It was excellent, and it is a lovely pub as well. If you’re ever in Dublin, don’t miss it.

The 200 mile drive from Caheersiveen to Dublin had been surprisingly uneventful, given the inherent dangers associated with Irish major roads, and their crazy run-off areas or whatever it is they’re called. You never know what you’re going to encounter in them – a brace of female power walkers perhaps (power-walking is big in Ireland), or maybe a pony and trap, a gaggle of cyclists, or even a family having a picnic. Yet none of this stops the heavy lorries from pulling onto these hard shoulders at high speed to allow following traffic to overtake. Whenever you cross a county boundary on a main road in Ireland, you’re confronted with a large sign warning of how many motorists have been killed on the roads there in the last year. I’m not in the least bit surprised. At one point, the lorry in front had to veer out of the hard shoulder to avoid a tractor and muck-spreader parked on it just over the brow of a hill. It could have been very nasty.

I’m also intrigued by the way the Irish write their warning signs on the road itself. If you read from the top down (which I guess most of us in England do), the wording appears as:

TAKING
OVER
NO
When I first saw it, I thought it was something to do with the Referendum campaign.

I also liked the one on the jetty at Doolin, where the ferries leave for Arran:

OF
PIER
END

Mind you, one of the most striking examples of Irishness I have encountered was here in Wales last evening. There isn’t even the ghost of a mobile signal here on the campsite (which is why this won’t be posted until Sunday). The only spot for miles around where there is some reception is about a mile down the road – right alongside the BT telephone box!

Bardsey Island, through the storm

June 18 Mannix depression

Storm brewing

Weather systems are well-named. ‘Highs’ and ‘Lows’ describe precisely the emotions inspired by their respective arrivals, whilst ‘Deep Depression’ speaks for itself. The one that enveloped Carmen and me at Mannix Point, at the bottom end of the Iveragh peninsula, had a peculiarly Celtic intensity, both in its nature, and its effect.

It left me particularly downcast, because it meant that no boats were sailing, and so denied me my one chance, on this trip, of visiting one of the most spectacular of all Celtic sites, the Skelligs, twin pinnacles of rock which jut out of the Atlantic, 12 miles or so out to sea from Waterville. I have a photograph of them on my bedroom wall at home, taken with a long lens when Claire and I visited Kerry in 2004. On the larger of the two – Skellig Michael – one of the most remarkable monasteries in the world was somehow constructed in the 7th century. It was abandoned some 500 years later but is still, apparently, substantially complete. Perhaps next time.

The weather was so filthy that I didn’t venture out of the van until tea-time. Valentia island (another stalwart of ‘weather reports from coastal stations’) was completely obscured by rain and low cloud, even though it’s just across the bay. I resisted the temptation (just) of drinking myself into a state of Celtic oblivion, and busied myself with the computer, which eventually condescended to accept two photographs for this blog, although whether they turn out to be the only two, we shall discover shortly.

Anyway, when the downpour finally eased, I did my laundry (8 euros, would you believe!) and then headed off into town to buy a newspaper and something for my supper. By great good fortune, I spotted a fish shop, where the owner was filleting some small plaice - “fresh off the boat sorr”. I bought some and fried them in butter for my supper and they were quite the best thing I’ve eaten in the entire journey.

Spirits revived, I headed off on the bike to the little ferry that crosses from Rennard’s Point to Valentia. By this time, it was a simply glorious evening, the rain having washed the air clean, and the fuchsia hedges which are such a feature of the west of Ireland fairly blazed with colour as I pedalled along.

The campsite and its owner – who rejoices in the name of Mortimer Moriarty – have won numerous awards, and despite the extortionate cost of using a washing machine and tumble drier, one can see why. The situation is perfect – on the edge of Valentia Sound, looking directly across to the island – and the facilities manage to be both homespun (like a peat fire in the communal reading room) and comprehensive. Assuming that I do return for another crack at Skellig Michael, this is where I shall stay.

Tomorrow, it’s the long drive to Dublin, for a ferry to Holyhead early on Friday.
What a wonderful place Ireland would be, if it wasn’t for the weather!

Mannix point with the mountains of Kerry beyond

Over the edge: The Atlantic, from Dun Aengus, on Inishmore.

June 16. On the edge

The Firbolg were an ancient Celtic race – possibly related to the Belgae - who colonised Ireland sometime around 1000 BC. According to one version of events (and ancient Irish history always owes as much to legend as to record), they were driven from the main island by invading Picts from Scotland, and made their last stand on the Aran Islands, in Galway Bay. There they left behind them a series of “Duns” – circular or semi-circular forts consisting of massive limestone ramparts – the most famous of which is Dun Aengus on the largest of the Aran islands, Inishmore.

Claire and I visited it on a gloriously sunny day on Saturday, and it is indeed a remarkable feat of primitive construction. But also, it struck me, a pretty pointless one. The site of the fort commands no harbour, or river crossing, or settlement. It has been built on the very edge of a 300 foot cliff. There is no water supply and the ground is solid rock. It is the sort of place you might build for your last stand, because, once invested by a besieging enemy, there would be no way out except that sheer drop into the Atlantic. No-one knows if that was indeed the eventual fate of the Firbolg, but they do seem to have disappeared rather abruptly – over the edge of history?

I am glad to say that despite the tens of thousands of people who visit the site each year, there is no safety fence on the fort’s seaward edge. The thing to do is to lie flat on your tummy and wriggle yourself up to the edge, so that you can hang your head over the edge of the limestone platform, and look down into the churning waters 300 feet below. It is a stomach-fluttering experience.

Much as Dun Aengus was the last bastion of the Firbolg, so the Aran Islands have long been regarded as the last bastion of true ‘Irishness’. The writer J.M. Synge (of “Playboy of the Western World” fame) spent many months there, attempting to learn Gaelic, around the turn of the 20th century, and has left a delightful account of his experiences, which I am reading.

It is, in truth, a wild and barren spot. The landscape of all three islands mostly consists of great sheets of limestone: a geologist’s delight, a farmer’s despair. On the highest point of Inishmore, next to the lighthouse, an old cottage has been furnished as it would have been in the old days, complete with earth floor, a peat roof and a bed of filthy rags. It looked all too horribly genuine.

Today, we’ve been to the Cliffs of Moher, where the Burren limestone pavement sheers off, as it meets the Atlantic. This is another place to be avoided by the vertiginous. Around the visitor centre (which has been dug into the hillside, like an enormous Hobbit’s house), there is a paved walkway, protected from the cliff edge by a barrier of limestone slabs. But after about 300 metres, that comes to an end, and from then on westwards, the way is along a narrow, rutted path, which must be hellishly slippery when it’s wet, with nothing between you and the Atlantic, 600 feet below. There is a sign, which rather plaintively implores visitors ‘please do not go past this point’, but it must be one of the most ignored signs in Ireland, and that’s saying something.

The cliffs are truly awe-inspiring. Even at 11 o’clock of a Monday morning, there were thousands of people there, most of them from America, by the sound of it, although there were also lots of Germans, French and even Russians. What is it about Ireland that attracts international tourists in such numbers, one wonders? After all, our beauty spots are just as spectacular (think the Scillies, St. Michael’s Mount, the Valley of the Rocks, Cheddar Gorge etc), and the weather’s better. So why don’t the Americans come? At least some of them must have had ancestors from the South-West, and especially from Cornwall.

Our food and drink is better as well. Continuing my search for a decent drop of beer, I’d tracked down a bar in Lahinch that was supposed to offer beers from the Biddy Early brewery. After a fruitless search, we discovered that it had changed its name, and when I asked the waitress if they had any local beers, she said no, “only the usuals”. How any country can claim to have a local food culture when the drinks it offers are either mass-produced (Guinness, Murphy’s, Smithwick’s etc), ersatz (Magners, Bulmers) or imported (the wine, most of it from Chile) is beyond me.

The truth of the matter is that, despite all of the hype, Ireland doesn’t have a local food culture. It has an international food culture, promulgated by celebrity chefs and tourism marketeers, which has been grafted on to the local cuisine, without changing in any way the underlying Irish taste for chips, stodge and fizzy beer. You should only come here for the food if you’ve got a very fat wallet, and even then don’t expect much that is genuinely local.

Having said all of that, Claire and I did eat very well, and reasonably, at the Riverside restaurant here in Doolin, last night. So it’s not all bad.

The three of us: Gibbo, Claire and Carmen at Nagle's Doolin campsite.

June 13 In St.Patrick’s footsteps

On Thursday, I climbed one of Ireland’s most famous mountains: Croagh Patrick, near Westport in County Mayo, known familiarly as “The Reek”. On its summit, Ireland’s patron saint spent 40 days fasting, praying and throwing the country’s entire population of snakes to their deaths, back in the year 441. It is a proper mountain, with a peak shaped like a rocket’s nose-cone, but at only 2,500 feet, I wasn’t expecting it to be too much of a challenge.

The Reek -an exhausting climb.......

How wrong can you be? It turned out to be by far the most exhausting climb I’ve ever made – far more difficult than Mount Brandon, Ireland’s second highest mountain, down in Dingle. The way up consists of a broad, deeply rutted, boulder-strewn avenue of scree, which becomes almost vertical on the final ascent to the summit. It was hard to say which was the more painful: the going up or the coming down. I’ve got two dodgy knees, and by the time I reached the bottom – with, Oh, such a heartfelt sigh of relief – I didn’t know which leg to limp on.

Yet this is a mountain climbed by hundreds of people every day, and by over 20,000 in a single day when Mass is celebrated on the summit, on the last Sunday in July. It must be the cause of more voluntarily embraced suffering than any other place in the British Isles. And for why? Because most of those who climb it aren’t merely tourists, they are pilgrims. This is a holy mountain, which attracts devout Catholics not just from all over Ireland, but from all over the world. I met one lady who was doing it barefoot, in honour of the Saint. She had painted the soles of her feet with tar, but even so, it must have been excruciating.

There is an Oratory on the summit. I reached it just as the clouds rolled in, blotting out what I’m sure would have been a spectacular view of Clew Bay and the mountains beyond. I’m afraid I didn’t walk around the chapel three times, saying my Hail Marys. My grandfather, a fiercely anti-Papist Baptist Minister, would never have forgiven me. But I did take myself off to a respectful distance before opening the can of Inch’s cider that I’d thoughtfully brought with me to celebrate the moment.

....with its due reward!

Then it was off through the mountains and lakes of Connemara to the Renvyle Peninsula. The landscape was strongly reminiscent of Scotland, but it somehow lacks the majesty - the grandeur - of the lochs and bens. The west of Ireland is rough, ragged, hairy-arsed country – a bit like the people who inhabit it. The village of Tully, where I stayed last night, has the most beautiful setting that could be imagined. It also has two of the most downright unpleasant “pubs” it has ever been my misfortune to visit. Both were populated by drunken, swearing locals. I don’t much like the F word in any circumstances, but it sounds particularly nasty and brutish, when delivered frequently and indiscriminately, almost as a punctuation mark, in a thick Irish accent.

That said, if there is one campsite that I would recommend to any reader planning a camping holiday in the West of Ireland, it is Renvyle Camping. The site leads directly onto a beautiful beach and offers the most wonderful panorama of mountains, from Slievemore, on Achill, through the Nephin Begg range in Mayo, past my old friend The Reek, to the Twelve Bens of Connemara, which were so forbidding that even St. Patrick gave them his blessing and passed on his way.


Now I have reached Doolin in County Clare, with the remarkable limestone pavement of The Burren behind me and the Cliffs of Moher in front. Clare is undoubtedly the place to be, with my wife Claire due to arrive from Shannon airport any minute. “Keep Clare Clean”, demanded a billboard as I crossed the county boundary. I shall do my best!

In the meantime, and reverting to the religious theme, I will leave you with a house in Doolin, which I guess must be owned by an ex-Catholic, who has seen the non- conformist light. It is called “Dunroman”!

PS – see previous comments on likely outcome and significance of referendums

June 11. A view to Achill – if only!

Only the bottom quarter of the Isle of Achill’s beetling cliffs and rugged mountains is visible as I write. The weather is what the Irish call “soft”. In other words, it’s tipping down. Not that I should complain. This is only the third wet day in nearly three weeks.

Assuming the weather does eventually relent, I shall renew my acquaintance (I played there yesterday) with one of the most natural golf courses I have ever played. Achill Golf Club is laid out on linksland, behind a pebble ridge, surrounded on three sides by cliffs and mountains, and on the fourth by the Atlantic. The lie of the land is flat, but knobbly, - a bit like a supermodel on her back - providing all sorts of unexpected kicks and interesting lies – ditto, one presumes.

The scraggy sheep that roam the course appear to do most of the green-keeping. There is no watering and the equipment is distinctly Heath Robinson. I was fascinated by one tractor-drawn contraption which consisted of a heavy net, weighed down with four large tyres, which was being dragged across the fairways. It’s purpose appeared to be to break up and spread the sheep-shit: not so much a tine-harrow as a turd harrow!

But for all that, this is proper golf. The course measures 3,000 yards for the nine holes and the greens – un-watered though they may be – are some of the biggest I’ve every encountered; on a similar scale to Machrihanish. I paced the largest of them out at 44 yards by 22 – almost 1,000 square yards. It goes without saying that I three-putted it.

Gibbo in full swing at Achill GC - it was actually not a bad shot.

Yesterday morning, I got as close as I could to Yeats’ Lake Isle of Innisfree, which is a vantage point on the banks of Lough Gill, about 200 yards away. I tried hard to be impressed by its romantic beauty, but in all honesty it is a remarkably small and insignificant island to have inspired such memorable poetry. Quite where William Butler would have planted his nine rows of beans, or sited his hive of honey-bees, I am not quite sure, as the island appeared to be entirely covered in trees. But I have at least put a place to the words. Only one question remains: is it pronounced Innisfree, or Innishfree?

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I also stopped at the Irish Museum of Country Life. Unlike its English equivalent, which is buried in suburban Reading, this is set in glorious countryside near the town of Castlebar in County Mayo. No expense has been spared in bringing to life the harsh realities of rural existence (and it can’t have been much more than that) in Ireland as it used to be, and to some extent still is. One of the sections was on peat-cutting, showing the remarkable tool that the peat-cutters use to gouge the peat from the bogs. It is part knife, part spade and part scoop, and it is as much in use today as it ever was. On every moor I’ve driven through, the peat-diggers have been at work, piling up the sods for next winter’s fuel.

Deeply traditional and characteristic as it is, I’m still slightly surprised that the climate-change-PC brigade – which is every bit as strong here in Ireland as it is in the UK – aren’t trying to get peat cutting banned, given the huge amounts of CO2 that must be released (a) in digging it and (b) in burning it.

Tomorrow is the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. My money’s on a No vote – as a protest against fuel prices. That, in a nutshell, is why referendums are no way to run a country.

June 9. Cast a warm eye

I am at Rosses Point. To the north is Ben Bulben; to the south, Medb’s Cairn, to the east, Sligo. This is Yeats country.

Ben Bulben from Rosses Point

This is a gentler part of Ireland than the wild and woolly west of Donegal. Yesterday, I set out to drive the 100 miles or so from Clonmany to Glencolmcille, pausing on route by way of what appeared on the map to be a minor detour, at St. Columba’s birthplace, on the shores of Lough Garten. I set off at 9.30 and expected to reach my destination – the Tramore Beach campsite, near Glencolmcille – by lunchtime.

I made steady progress, despite the detour taking at least twice as long as I’d imagined. The roads became progressively more difficult, the further west I penetrated, but the thought of being at St. Columba’s village, on his Saint’s Day of June 9, having visited his birthplace, kept me and Carmen going cheerfully enough.

And, sure enough, I eventually made it to Glencolmcille (pronounced glencomkill) shortly before two. There was no sign of a campsite. I asked a local. “Tramore beach, is it”, he replied. “There’s no Tramore beach around here”. I showed him the telephone number. “Ah, that’s an Ardara number”. And where exactly is Ardara, I enquired. “You see that mountain? It’s the other side of that.”

As the crow flies, it was only 15 miles or so distant. But what a 15 miles! The roads in western Donegal are diabolical. The entire landscape is covered in a blanket of peat, which subsides unevenly. This gives the roads the texture of a pebble ridge, coated in tarmac. At anything over 30 mph, poor old Carmen was in danger of trampolining herself into the nearest bog. The worst of it was the final descent to Ardara (which is actually a charming little town). For those of you who know the Somerset Levels, it was like the road across Shapwick Heath, set at an angle of 45 degrees and twisted like a corkscrew!

But our persistence was rewarded when we finally arrived at the campsite, more than an hour after leaving Glencolmcille. The sun had come out with a vengeance, and spread out before me was the most magnificent bay, backed by enormous sandhills, framed by grey-blue mountains, the sun glittering on the waves as they rushed in across the soft white sands. (Yes, honestly; I’ve got the pictures to prove it).

Tramore beach in all its glory

So it had all been worth it in the end. I had visited St. Columba’s birthplace, which is marked by the most gigantic Celtic cross, and I’d laid myself down on his “Flagstone of Loneliness”, where he used to recover from the exhaustion of prayer.
It is supposed to drive away sorrows, and in the time of the Irish diaspora, the émigrés used to come here before they left, in the hope that it would cure them of homesickness. I’m not sure it has entirely worked on me.

Anyway, I reckon I’ve done my bit for the father of Celtic Christianity. I’ve been to his birthplace, his village, his abbey; I’ve been very near to the last place he set foot on in Ireland (near Malin Head); I’ve trodden in the footsteps that he left when he arrived in Scotland; and I woke up at the nearest campsite to the village which bears his name, on this, his Saint’s Day. Perhaps next time, I’ll make it to Iona.

The Flagstone of Loneliness

Today has been warm but with a gusty wind. I stopped on the way down at Ballyshannon, in the hope of sampling that rarest of rare birds, a ‘real’ Irish ale (as opposed to the horrid mass-produced keg Guinness and Smithwicks). I managed to find the right pub – which rejoices in the name of Dicey Reilly’s – and they did actually have Arainn Mhor, as it’s called, in stock. “Course, it’s not actually brewed on Arann yet”, confided the barman. “They’re still testing the market. This was brewed in Belgium”. That’s Irish authenticity for you!

Shortly, I shall cycle into Sligo. And tomorrow morning, I will wake up and be able to say, quite truthfully, for the first and probably the only time in my life: “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree”. Now that really is living the dream.

June 7. The taste of Ireland

Carmen and I have reached Clonmany, on the north coast of Donegal, just a few miles south of Malin Head, the most northerly point in Ireland. The mountains are to my left; the sand dunes and the beach to my right. It has been a sunny day. I spent this morning exploring the area on my bicycle, and most of the afternoon on the beach, even going in for a brief swim in the clear but chilly waters. However, my enjoyment was more than somewhat impaired by a plague of flying beetles, at which I lashed out in all directions, mostly in vain – an experience with which I am not entirely unfamiliar!

There is a lot of building work going on in this part of Donegal, much of it connected with the replacement of traditional, long, low, thatched farm houses with modern bungalows, built alongside. It grieves me to have to write this, but when it comes to vernacular buildings, the Irish have no taste at all. The old farmhouses may have been primitive, but they were constructed entirely from local materials and they are ‘of the place’ every bit as much as a granite farmhouse would be in Cornwall, or cob and thatch in Devon. Their replacements, by contrast, owe absolutely nothing to the area. You could plonk them down in any badly-designed new housing development, anywhere in the British Isles, and they would look less out of place than they do here.

The worst of it is that they are all equipped, not only with UPVC double-glazing, but with my pet hate of all pet hates, UPVC front doors! And all, to my untutored eye, identical. The unworthy thought occurred to me that perhaps someone from Donegal County Council had done a deal on the side with a double-glazing company. But it is extraordinary that in the midst of so much magnificent natural beauty, the modern Irish should build such cheap and nasty rubbish. If I was being charitable, I would put it down to the fact that the Celts are more interested in spirit and soul than in the arrangement of bricks and mortar.

There was a travel feature in today’s Irish Independent on Cornwall. The writer waxed enthusiastic on how the county had benefited from “good planning”. That will give you some idea of just how bad it is over here!

Yesterday, en route from Portrush, I visited a selection of early Christian Celtic sites, mostly around the town of Corndonagh. In unremarkable fields, up narrow lanes, one would suddenly come across a ten foot high cross, carved from a single rock, dating back to the 6th or 7th century. The crosses I saw yesterday all had narrow cross-pieces, suggesting to me that they were only half a step removed from the menhirs that featured so prominently in pre-Christian Celtic religion. But consider this: here you have evidence, not just of 1500 years of Christianity, but of a religious tradition stretching back into the mists of time.

Oh yes, and I also found a link with Scotland. The stone circle that I visited at Bocan was supposedly aligned quite deliberately to fit the east-west axis that joins the highest mountain in these parts, Slieve Snagth, with our old friends, the Paps of Jura in the Hebrides (those Paps, they get in up everywhere!).

The pub culture may be being killed off in England by a combination of the supermarkets and a myopic Chancellor, but it is alive and well here in Ireland. Clonmany is only a village, with a population probably of less than a thousand, yet it has eight pubs, all apparently thriving. And that’s not counting the “Rusty Nail”, down here by the beach, where I dined tonight, most satisfactorily, on lamb chops and Guinness.

All the talk in the pubs is of the Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. No country in the EU has done better out of its membership than Ireland. Very few countries’ politicians and diplomats are regarded as being “better Europeans” than the Irish. Yet the latest opinion poll suggests a No vote, albeit by a narrow margin. In this respect, I can see distinct parallels with Cornwall. There too, they are only too happy to take Europe’s money, and there too they would be only too ready to vote no in a Referendum, given half a chance. Put it down to Celtic contrariness.

Having said all of that, the Irish are lovely people: cheerful, gregarious and never too busy to stop for a chat, even with a complete stranger on a bicycle. Whatever the weather, and despite the hideous new farmhouses, it’s hard to keep a smile off one’s face for very long.

The pub with no beer at Inverie

June 5. Irish impressions

So here we are in Norniron. Those of you who care for my well-being will be relieved to learn, however, that I do not intend to try out my “Rovverund Eeyane Peeaysleh” accent on the locals.

The Giant's Causeway from above...

I crossed from Troon on the fast but dull (because you can’t go out on deck) P and O hydrofoil, on a grey and gloomy day. The rain pursued me westwards as I drove along the coast road from Larne. I stopped at Ballycastle to buy some ‘dulse’, the seaweed that is the local speciality. It is purple, rather than green, and I sautéed a bagful in butter to accompany my sausages and beans for supper. If that sounds like a bizarre combination, it actually worked out quite well. The dulse was very salty, very chewy and tasted very much of the sea. Apparently, you can eat it raw, as a snack to accompany a drink. I don’t think the manufacturers of pork scratchings have too much to worry about.

I had to stop at the Giant’s Causeway. It’s in the same category as Lundy, or Cape Wrath, for that matter: the sort of place that everyone ought to visit once in their lives, but to which, I suspect, very few ever return. The pentagonal and hexagonal basalt columns are indeed a geological marvel, but it’s still surprising that it attracts quite so many people – over half a million a year – and from all over the world. There were as many Americans and Australians there as English and Irish. I wonder if it lived up to their expectations, or whether quite a few of them went away muttering, as William Thackeray did in 1842, “I’ve travelled 150 miles to see that”. I put it down to the blarney. Whoever hit upon the idea of calling it "The Giant's Causeway" was a true marketing genius.

I wasn’t disappointed, because I wasn’t expecting to be knocked out by what my daughter Becky would doubtless have described in her younger days as “a load of boring old rocks”. Anyway, I’ve been there, and that’s what counts.

My campsite is just outside Portrush. The proprietor is a talkative chap. I asked him what was the best route to cycle to Coleraine, all of six miles distant. Ten minutes later he was still expatiating on the apparently limitless number of alternatives and I was still scratching my head. He didn’t quite say: “Sorr, if I was travelling there, I wouldn’t be starting from here”, but I’m sure he would have done if I hadn’t made my excuses and gone off to consult a map. In the event, and bearing in mind that it was tipping down with rain, I took the van.

Today was the first day of the Royal Cornwall Show. If anything has made me feel nostalgic for the West Country and my former role in life, it is that. I hope and trust it was a huge success.

.......and from below

June 4 Haste me back

It is my last night in Scotland, and I shall be sorry to leave. Apart from one wet day on Skye, the sun has shone throughout and I have received nothing but kindness from all the people I have met.

And never more so than this morning, when I turned up unannounced at Britain’s only 12 hole golf course, at Siskine on Arran, to enquire whether there was any possibility of a game. Seeing that I was on my own, James and his wife Greta, invited me to play with them, and as they have been members there for 41 years, there was plenty of local knowledge for me to draw upon! The course was laid out in 1896 and is deeply old-fashioned, with lots of blind holes, but the fairways were burnished, the greens keen and the views breathtaking

The 4th greeen Siskine

Arran is an island of two halves – wild and mountainous to the North, gentler and more fertile to the South. It is a beautiful place, with an appeal all of its own. I camped at Lochranza in the north, having come across from Kintyre on the little ferry. I can’t say I detected many Celtic echoes – for much of its history the island was controlled by the Norwegians – but I’m glad I visited.

There was a nasty moment this morning, when the otherwise impeccably reliable Carmen refused to start. I turned the key and nothing happened. Not once, but several times. Eventually, and for no apparent reason, she changed her mind and decided to go. I set off with a sigh of relief, although a seed of doubt had been sown, and I suppose it was inevitable that I should find myself first onto the ferry to the mainland, parked right up against the bow door, so that if Carmen failed to start when we got to the other side, no-one could leave the ship! My heart was in my mouth as I turned the key, and I was the most relieved man in Ardrossan when she burst into life.

This evening, I’m staying at a ‘holiday park’ at Prestwick. This has the undoubted attraction of being on the edge of Prestwick golf links, where the first Open Championship was played in 1860; and the distinct handicap of being directly under the flight-path of airliners using Prestwick airport. But it’s handy for the ferryport at Troon, where I shall be catching the hydrofoil to Larne in Northern Ireland tomorrow morning.

Did I play golf at the historic Prestwick links? No I did not. The green fee for 18 holes is £115! That’s the same as the annual subscription at Durness. Assuming I went round in about 90, it would work out at £1.27 a shot!

Beer is expensive here as well. A pint of gassy McKewans set me back £2.95 when I cycled into town this evening. At the Lochranza Hotel last night, a pint of Deuchars IPA (which was good) left me £3.20 the poorer. What with prices like those and the smoking ban, it’s hardly surprising that many of the pubs I’ve visited seemed to be struggling. You wouldn’t come to Scotland for the pubs. They tend to be functional rather than characterful. With Celts, the drinking and the company matter far more than the surroundings. Which is something I shall have to bear in mind in Ireland, where a decent pint is even harder to find than in Scotland, especially if, like me, you’re not mad keen on Guinness or Murphy’s.

So farewell Scotland. You have been good to me. When the sun is shining as it has been these last two weeks, there can be nowhere more beautiful on the whole of God’s earth. Ireland has a lot to live up to.

View from campsite, Lochranza, Arran

Machrihanish GC, looking across the 18th green

June 2 Deafened by larks

There are hundreds and hundreds of them here at Macrihanish, all singing as if their little lives depended on it, and never so loudly, so it seemed to me, as when I’d just missed a putt on the sublime golf links which is their home. This set me thinking. I play golf in the West Country at two not dissimilar links courses, at Saunton in North Devon and at Burnham and Berrow on the coast of Bridgwater Bay. Saunton still has a handful of larks; Burnham none at all.

So why the difference? I will offer you two possible explanations: magpies and badgers. I haven’t seen a single, squawking, ill-omened, black and white nest robber since I’ve been in Scotland. As for badgers, which are equally responsible for destroying the ground-nesting bird population, a Google search for “badgers in Kintyre” drew a blank. If I were running Natural England, the first thing I would do is put a bounty of £10 on badgers, grey squirrels, magpies and American signal crayfish. It would give the disaffected youf something to shoot instead of each other, and it would do more for the balance of nature than all of their current policies (sorry, “strategies”), put together.

I am at the bottom end of the Kintyre peninsula, barely 15 miles from Northern Ireland. The weather is glorious and so is the view. I am looking out from Carmen’s inner recesses across a herd of cows, to the golf course, beyond which is the beach and the sea, across which I can just make out the Paps of Jura. All it needs is a pub, and it would be the perfect visual metaphor for the life and tastes of Gibbo.

These are by no means the only dairy cows in the vicinity. In fact, there are probably even more cows in these parts than there are larks. There are thousands of them, mostly Friesian, but some still Ayrshires, all producing milk for the local cheese creamery at Campbeltown, which specialises in something called “Kintyre Cheddar”. Only in Britain would this be allowed. Cheddar is 500 miles away, for Heaven’s sake!

But however ersatz the Cheddar may be, there is evidently nothing wrong with the profits. As I drove down towards the Mull itself this morning, the silage-making teams were out in force, and all with spanking new tractors and the very latest in mowing and foraging equipment. Dairy farming is evidently a glorious exception to the otherwise rundown state of the local economy.

St. Columba would not approve. The Celtic specialists will already have spotted that my ‘Odyssey’ has missed out what is probably the most important Celtic site in Scotland: the island of Iona, where Columba effectively established Celtic Christianity. I apologise for that. Put it down to my ignorance. I will return to Iona.
In the meantime, I shall be making amends, first by being in St. Columba’s hometown – Colmcille (which is the Gaelic form of Columba), in Donegal, for his Saint’s Day in a week’s time; and secondly by following in his footprints, which have been carved into a rock not ten miles from where I’m sitting.

If I can ever get this blog to load up pictures or video clips, you will hear more of St. Columba. Suffice it to say that in about 550 AD, a mixture of guilt and evangelicalism drove him to exile himself to Scotland where he eventually (in 563) arrived at Iona, to found the monastery that was to become such a force for Christian good. But the place where he came ashore in Scotland was at the bottom end of the Kintyre peninsula, just west of the village of Southend, and it is there that his footprints, his well and his chapel have been preserved. I saw them all, in this morning’s glorious sunshine.

So why wouldn’t he have approved of the cows? Because he expelled them from Iona, on the grounds that “where there’s a cow, there’s a woman, and where there’s a woman, there’s mischief”. Not exactly PC, was our St. Columba. He and I have at least that much in common!

The rather daunting prospect from the 1st tee at Machrihanish. I am happy to report that my drive safely carried the beach and finished in the middle of the fairway - but it was a calm and sunny day!


PS – Macrihanish is the most wonderful golf course. I have been looking forward to playing it for 30 years, and it didn’t let me down. The greens in particular are magnificent. They are huge and rolling, like an Atlantic swell. If only my brother Chippy had still been alive to play it with me, my happiness would have been complete. In fact, we would probably have completed three circuits. But I felt that he was with me in spirit.