Irish wanderings

(This post’s for you, BM!)

In the week since I’ve come back from Ireland, I’ve started a new job and been on a Benedictine Oblate weekend at Turvey Abbey. Quite an unaccustomed whirl for me lately!  Now I’ve had time to collect my thoughts and a few photographs of the Irish trip, here’s what I loved.

The journey

The train journey, speeding through England, the moment when the trackside road signs became bilingual and I knew I was in Wales. Cutting through North Wales towards the coast, beautiful ruined castles clinging to mountainsides contrasting with tawdry caravan parks.

Boarding the ferry. I was so excited about going across the Irish Sea for the first time to the land of my ancestors (well some of them at least, I’m a bit of a mongrel).  I found the open deck at the top of the ship and shivered there for the last hour of the journey. That moment of excitement when the clouds on the horizon resolved themselves unmistakeably into land (the photograph above). The feeling that we were standing still and the land was moving towards us.

Dublin

Greeting Kayce (Lucy) at Dublin airport and eating a totally delicious brunch together at the Elephant and Castle in Dublin’s Temple Bar, just down the road from our hotel. Catching up as if we were sitting casually in a neighbourhood cafe together rather than having travelled across continents to meet again.

A day of culture (the Chester Beatty Library) and cheesy tourist stuff (an open-top bus tour, where we briefly befriended a fellow-traveller, from Fairbanks, Alaska). Our first pint of Guinness.

Back to Dublin airport the next day for a replay of the opening scenes to Love Actually, greeting Christine as she flew in from Vienna. She and I had never actually met, although we’ve corresponded and read each other’s blogs for ages. Within minutes that didn’t matter at all.

Driving off into the wild in our hired silver Jeep Sport Wrangler, Kayce at the wheel.

A man from Sligo once told me that when he was young, people went out rambling. “The route they took depended on which way the wind was blowing, tidbits of stories of who was visiting from outside the area, the way your feet met the path you were on. Going left or right depended on which foot your weight was on when you came to the crossroad.”

Patricia Monaghan
The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog

Kilkenny

The sheer friendliness of the people we met, including the car park attendant in the medieval city of Kilkenny, who took ages showing us round and recommending somewhere to stay (that’s after he’d finished laughing at the size of the Jeep – I suppose it was big!).

It was through his good offices that we found the gorgeous Butler Court Guesthouse, run by Yvonne with help from her husband John and the dog Bob. A converted carriage house and stables, the rooms are comfortable and airy. You can see a photograph of the courtyard gardens above, a great place to sit and eat breakfast on a sunny day. I would recommend it to anyone.

We stayed in Kilkenny long enough to enjoy the castle (left), local arts and crafts and gardens, and to eat a delicious, inexpensive meal in Bollard’s Bar, where the waitress was incredibly attentive.

(I for one spent a lot of time comparing the rudeness and meanness of the English notion of service very unfavourably with what we found in Ireland.)

Wicklow

The next day, having been seen off by our car park attendant friend, who was still amused by us, we drove up through Hollywood (no, not that one) and into the Wicklow mountains.

Now here was the country I’d dreamed of.

The sheer grandeur and incredible antiquity of the land made me think of something else from Red Haired Girl from the Bog, which was my reading material during our trip:

Ireland is still what novelist Edna O’Brien calls a “pagan place.” But that paganism does not conflict with a devout Catholicism that embraces and absorbs it, in a way that can seem mysterious, even heretical, elsewhere. In Ireland, Christianity arrived without lions and gladiators, survived without autos-da-fé and Inquisitions. The old ways were seamlessly bonded to the new, so that ancient rituals continued, ancient divinities became saints, ancient holy sites were maintained just as they had been for generations and generations.

Patricia Monaghan

Going home

Our last night was spent in Wicklow town itself, and then it was time for us all to go our different ways, me back to England, Kayce and Christine on to their pilgrimage to Glendalough.

We parted in Dublin, where we’d met, and I was sad to hug my friends goodbye.

On the ferry back, I had a moment of clarity which I’ll always treasure. The ship was far more crowded than on the way out. The sea was choppy and I was feeling a little sick. There were screaming children running around, people drinking, a few of them behaving boorishly. And then, sitting on a tacky red vinyl bench among the detritus of unpleasant cheap food and plastic rubbish, I was somehow given to realise that everyone on that ship shared a common humanity. That despite everything, we also all shared a spark of divinity.

It’s difficult to describe such moments without sounding trite, isn’t it, but I carried that realisation about the human family with me all the rest of the way home.

May the hearth be gladdened
by the laughter of children
by the kinship of clan
by the wisdom of elders
by the memory of souls passing
by the joy of souls yet to be born
No word or thought to darken the day
No remembrance or sorrow to trammel the night
But sun, moon and stars to brighten the gathering,
Songs, smiles and stories to share their delight.

Caitlin Matthews
A Celtic Devotional

I didn’t have nearly long enough there, I have to go back.

Photographs mine, click on the image to see it larger