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 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.
1 comment:
Anthony – the words speak volumes but two photographs without precipitation; you are indeed on a charmed journey of Celtic experiences.
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