Today the fly got lost, most fortuitously as it turned out. Clifden was the destination, and having got to Westport, fly inadvertently misunderstood the directions of The Voice (or was it the Irish signposts, which sometimes do not point in the right direction). After a series of “recalculating …recalculating….”, The Voice lapsed into perplexed silence and left me to my own devices. Clifden was eventually reach, but not until 4pm, (it is light until 9pm, so that did not matter). On the way – the most spectacular countryside of Connemara, along a sometimes hazardous road (?) extravagantly called the R335. There are no words to describe this country, sometimes so beautiful sometimes so terrible as to bring one to tears. So no more words. There are lots of pictures; including two of monuments erected in memory of those who died in the Famine (1845-1849), when the potato blight caused crop failure and thousands of tenant farmers were evicted and died of starvation. At one of the moments someone had left a container of fruit. At another, it appeared that passers-by had developed the habit of placing a stone on a now-quite-high cairn at the foot of the monument. I did likewise.
Paused at a place with no name at the head of the Lough for some lunch. Mine host at the pub – all the pubs do tea/coffee/food all day – and I had a good chat about the state of affairs in Ireland. I commented that he lived in the most wondrous place in the world. He offered to sell me a house – he has one for sale at a give away price. Not upset at my refusal, he demonstrated playing the bogrhain (?) the hand held drum (with goat-skin) used in traditional Irish music. On the wall were a violin, banjo and guitar, which are taken down each evening for entertainment. All the pubs have the traditional music most evenings.
Later in the day, still before Clifden was finally located (it turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax after the journey thereto) the Micra and the fly paused at Kylemore Abbey, just near Connemara National Park. A baronial hall, built by a rich man in the 1850s, set spectacularly on the shores of Kylemore Lough. Now an Abbey of the Irish Benedictines, who are still there, teaching music, making chocolates and running a thriving tourist enterprise, the site also boasts a miniature Gothic Cathedral and mausoleum which the rich man built for his wife when she died tragically of dysentry while they were on holiday in Egypt. Not before she had nine children however. The nuns now have concerts in the Gothic Church, and sing vespers there each day – visitors welcome.
A wonderful bonus was the 6-acre “Secret Victorian walled garden”. Located more than a mile from the Hall, it provided much of the produce used in the Hall kitchens (including tropical fruits etc coaxed to grow in twenty-one glasshouses with an under-floor system of heating pipes driven by a lime-kiln); and also a spectacular series of flower gardens and herb gardens, these being discretely walled off by a wild fuscia hedge from the mundane kitchen gardens, so that the gentry did not have to witness gardeners actually at work. The gardens boast three huge cordylines australis – they are actually pretty ugly, but so old and venerable that they retain their places. How rich man got them in the 1850s was not explained.
There were several gift shops and tea houses across the estate – the nuns make the best tomato soup!
(Right now, as I write, there is a persistent chicken at my door, demanding access. The pigs have gone to market. Vale pigs.)
No comments:
Post a Comment