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Here s a wee puzzle for you, then:
What do a street singer in Galway, an innkeeper on the Ring of Kerry, and a truck driver in the mountains above Dingle Bay have in common other than their Irish blood? Give up? They all know the name Albuquerque, and they smile broadly when you say it s your home.
A gallery/cafe in Dingle, Ireland, wears its red paint and Gaelic name with pride. (Photo courtesy Tom Harmon)
Oh, it s Albuquerque, then, they say, their eyes twinkling. It s Breakin Bad, is it? And then, with typical Irish kindness, they hasten to add that Al-ba-CAR-key must be a lovely place, really much finer than what you see in that show.
My wife and I visited western Ireland in late September, and were delighted at every turn. We climbed inside circular stone forts that date back to the time of Christ. We walked up the twisting stairs of castles built by the Normans in the 1200s, after they conquered the Gaels. We stood in the ruins of stone abbeys where monks kept Christianity alive during the Dark Ages, copying and illustrating sacred texts. But the best part of our trip was doing it in the company of a dear friend, Helen Delahunty. Helen grew up in Northern Ireland, moved to the United States after college and taught history and humanities in Farmington. When she retired, she moved back home and graciously invited us to come visit. With Helen as our guide, we were able to see the stunning green countryside and its friendly people through the eyes of a native through Irish eyes. Helen also helped us understand some of the difficult, conflict-ridden history of modern Ireland.
But first, she had to teach us how to drive.
Whoa, Sara!
When we planned our trip, we knew it would be a challenge to drive on the lefthand side of the road. But that bit of craziness, it turns out, is only half the difficulty of driving in Ireland. It s the rural roads that push you over the edge quite literally. They re incredibly narrow, and tightly lined by hedges and stone walls. Oncoming traffic seems to be coming right at you, forcing you to move to the left. My adventurous wife agreed to do the driving on our trip. She did beautifully on the big roads that took us from Shannon Airport to Killarney, where we met Helen s train.
Johnny Mullens is one of a dozen talented street singers who brighten up the pedestrian zone in downtown Galway, Ireland. (Photo courtesy Tom Harmon)
But as soon as we left Killarney, we were on country roads. Helen was our navigator, sitting in the backseat with maps and guidebooks. I was basically superfluous, sitting in the passenger seat and just trying to keep my mouth shut.
Whoa, Sara move to the right! Helen called as a big truck came toward us on the right. I can t, my wife said. He ll hit me! Hedge branches were banging against the left side of the car. The mirror slammed back against the passenger door. Our little black Renault was trimming that hedge.
Just stop, Helen said. We needed to breathe for a moment. You ll get it, she reassured my wife. You re doing fine. And we were. After a few more adventures in the hedges, we relaxed enough to look around. Some of Ireland s most beautiful scenery was right outside our windows.
Killarney National Park, just south of the town, took us completely by surprise. With 3,000-foot peaks, glacial lakes and tons of exposed granite, it feels like a tiny Yosemite. We stopped for a cup of tea at the Ladies View observation point. Far below us lay a misty valley. It s no wonder that Queen Victoria s ladies-in-waiting chose this spot for a picnic. From there it was down and down to sea level and the village of Kenmare, where we would spend our first two nights.
Over dinner at O Donnabhain s Pub, we consulted with Helen about our itinerary. We were trying to pack a lot into five days: the Ring of Kerry, which is a spectacular loop road around Iveragh Penninsula; the Dingle Penninsula, just to the north; and then Galway and the famous 650-foot Cliffs of Moher. As always, Helen was the voice of sanity. Don t try to do Ireland in one visit, she said. Just enjoy Ireland.
Closer to God
The 12-foot thick walls of Staigue Fort, constructed between 500 B.C. and 300 A.D., are irresistible to some tourists visiting the Ring of Kerry in Ireland. (Photo courtesy Tom Harmon)
If you like puzzles, Ireland will fascinate you. What was the purpose of the circles of huge stones that can be found across Ireland, dating back to 1,500 B.C.? What was the meaning of the zigzags and arcs and spirals that were carved into the stones at burial mounds?
And why we couldn t help asking ourselves, as we explored the Ring of Kerry had human beings chosen this forbidding seacoast as their home? Some had simply been born here, like the generations of Gaels whose clans dominated Ireland for 1,000 years, beginning about 500 B.C. But as Christianity spread across Europe, far-away Ireland somehow beckoned the faithful. And this rough western coast had special appeal. Why? The most dramatic piece of this puzzle is a 700-foot-tall slab of rock called Skellig Michael. Named for the archangel, it sits seven miles off the western tip of Iveragh Penninsula. Through the fog, it looks like the dorsal fin of a terrifying sea creature.
Amazingly, this skellig (or splinter in Gaelic) was chosen as home by a community of sixth-century monks. They chiseled a 600-foot staircase into the rock, and lived up there in stone beehive huts for 500 years.
Helen, we said, this can t be true. But tis.
There was a belief that the farther west you went, the closer you got to God, Helen told us. The farthest west we got, that day, was a 100-foot cliff above the fishing village of Ballinskelligs. The wind tried to blow us back down into the bogs and sheep pastures that we d crossed to get up there, but the views of rocky green islands and white surf held us in place.
And the closest we got to God, probably, was a big pot of strong tea at the village pub after our hike. We ve hit gold, Helen said quietly. Take a look around. Three men at the bar were chatting in Gaelic. A boy came in with a bucket of fish, and suddenly it was market day. Everyone wanted to have a look at the fish, and take one or two home for dinner. We sat at a table by the fireplace, eating an entire tray of brown bread with strawberry jam. The milk for our tea came straight from the cow, Helen said with approval.
Onto the bus
Dingle is a town that just loves to pose for your camera. It s a postcard, at every turn: brightly painted houses, window boxes filled with red geraniums, white garden gates in old stone walls, pinkish purple fucia blossoming with wild abandon along those walls. And the message on the postcard would be: We found some of our favorite places here best seafood cafe, best music pub, best B&B. And that would be true. They were Chowder s Cafe, Fergus O Flaherty s Pub and the Eileen Collins Kirrary B&B.
Too bad we could only stay one night. But we needed to get to Galway, and the Cliffs of Moher. What a surprise Galway turned out to be. It s smaller than Las Cruces, with 76,000 people, but it feels very urban. Trains and buses rumble into the downtown depot, pedestrians crowd the streets, and 17,000 students from the National University of Ireland add a youthful, international flavor to the Irish stew. We were on our own in Galway, having taken Helen back to her family s farm in Northern Ireland. And needless to say, we missed her. Who was going to lead us down the narrow, medieval streets of the old walled city? Who was going to explain the Spanish Arch, or the canal system or get us a good deal on a fisherman s sweater?
We simply had to plunge in. We got lost in the twisting streets, we stood at the waterfront Arch and imagined Spanish sailing ships unloading cargoes of wine, we took a delightful walk along the River Corrib and the canals that once powered the Galway mills. For our visit to the Cliffs of Moher, we decided to leave the driving to Galway Tours, which operates some of those huge white buses that send shivers down the spines of oncoming Americans in rental cars. Our driver was amazing to watch. He could drive that huge bus and talk on the microphone at the same time, telling us to watch for the thatched-roof cottages on the left and 12th-century church on the right. He was strict about time: 15 minutes for Dunguaire Castle, where more leisurely tourists can eat a medieval banquet; 20 minutes for Poulnabrone Dolmen, a 5,000-year-old stone tomb that locals used to call the Druids Altar.
But he gave us an hour and a half to enjoy the grandeur of the Cliffs of Moher. It was a beautiful afternoon. You could look west toward America, or straight down at the dizzying Atlantic crashing against black rocks. It was all over too soon. Back in Al-ba-CAR-key, we could understand why so much of the Irish music we had bought from singers in the pubs is a sweet yearning for the isle I left behind.