Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Brandon Creek Epiphany – and a Rant!

‘Brandon Creek, West of Dingle’ by Liam O’Neill/Morgan O’Driscoll.

The title of this blog is ‘Reviews, Rants and Rambles’ and since 2015, there have been many reviews and rambles but very few rants – so here’s one:  We are living through the craziest of times.  Like Macbeth after his confrontation with the witches, ‘ Nothing is but what is not, ’ and global leaders have taken their chainsaws to the truth.  Irony is everywhere: billionaires and huge multinational corporations try with all their ingenuity to destroy all borders so that their profits are maximised, while at the same time their political buddies stoke nationalistic fervour and division and demonise immigrants and those who cross borders to a better life.  Globalism is the buzzword, but global efforts to combat impending Doomsday scenarios and pandemics have been seen to be pathetic attempts at cooperation. Rant over.

The summer of 2024 was yet another Climate Change paradox in Ireland.   The Jetstream seemed to be stuck in some Groundhog Day cycle during June, July and most of August. There were no two days the same; no long sunny spells, rain was never far away, although rainfall amounts were below normal levels.  Towards the end of August, a temporary high moved in over Ireland and Kate and I decided to take full advantage. On Friday, August 30th, Don’s birthday, we decamped to Dingle.

On Saturday morning, we decided to head out west towards Baile na nGall, and on the way, we stopped off at Brandon Creek to explore this unheralded and largely forgotten gem on the Wild Atlantic Way. On that morning, it was indeed sensational, and a revelation and my words are inadequate to describe the beauty and tranquillity of the place. We parked our car in an unofficial grassy layby near the top of the narrow roadway leading to the Creek and the neglected pier. The narrow single-lane path descended to a very rustic bridge over the creek. The solitude was magical and eerie. I couldn’t help but think that in another era, this narrow roadway would have been used to collect guns and other contraband smuggled into this isolated cove in the dead of night.

Maybe this scenario from bygone days was prompted by the many rebel songs and ballads and stirring sea shanties we had listened to the night before from the marvellous local group, Tintéan, in Murphy’s pub in Dingle. They had entertained a very diverse and varied audience with a two-and-a-half-hour session of rousing rebel songs, some of which even the Wolf Tones wouldn’t include on their concert playlist for fear of offending someone! The Irish diaspora was there in force from Ohio, Connecticut, and Washington; I even had trouble distinguishing between the Canadian and South Florida accents! Then there were couples from Spain, Germany, and Sweden and holidaymakers from Derry, Tipperary, Limerick and Kerry.

As we walked down the steep incline to the pier, there was much evidence of neglect and some evidence that, at one time, the now rusty winch had been used to haul the local currachs with their catches up onto the pier. I walked to the end of the pier and could hear the quiet, rhythmic gurgling of seawater in the hollow caverns at its base. I imagined what it would be like in the throes of an Atlantic storm. It was hard to believe that it was from this very location around 600 AD that Saint Brendan the Navigator was reputed to have set out and discovered America.

There is much talk today, especially across the water, about the problems caused by small boats precariously being used to bring immigrants to Britain’s shores. St. Brendan and his hardy crew of monks not only made it to Iceland and probably Newfoundland and Labrador, but they also made it home again! There is some anecdotal evidence and much more scientific evidence that the people living today in those far-off regions carry West Kerry genes, so the monastic concept of celibacy must have been an optional requirement in those early days!

I also remembered that in the 1970s, the explorer, writer and filmmaker, Tim Severin, tried to recreate St. Brendan’s voyage in an effort to prove that the 6th-century Irish saint could have reached the Americas 900 years before Columbus.

On May 17th, 1976, Severin and his three fellow crewmen rowed out of this same Brandon Creek to begin what would prove to be a 7,200km epic journey. I remember avidly following their progress as Severin and his crew first sailed to the Aran Islands and from there to Iona, the Hebrides, and the Faroe Islands, before sailing on to Iceland and Greenland and from Greenland to Newfoundland.

On June 26th, 1977, some 13 months after leaving Brandon Creek, Severin and his crew sailed into Musgrave Harbour on Peckford Island, Newfoundland and were welcomed as heroes by the locals who fully appreciated the navigational feat.  Amazingly, there is nothing on the pier in Brandon Creek today to remember those heroic feats of yesteryear.

Kate and I made our return journey up the steep, narrow incline with visions of the stormy gunrunning scene from Ryan’s Daughter playing in my head. As we reached our car after the slow climb, I noticed what seemed like a half-hidden art installation surrounded by low walls of local stonework. At first, I took it to be yet another of the numerous shrines and grottos that lie scattered all over this Gaeltacht region, but this was different. While I was exploring this very unobtrusive, unflagged surprise, Kate had struck up a conversation with a woman whose car was also parked nearby. I continued on my way and came upon a copper-green sculpture depicting a lone sailor navigating between two standing stones, which, I presume, were meant to represent the perils encountered on an ocean voyage. The sailor seemed to be sailing blind as his view forward was blocked by the fragile sail on his lowly currach. I presume the sculpture was meant to depict the voyage of St. Brendan in his frail craft all those centuries ago. There was an inscription in Irish on a red sandstone flag nearby, which read ‘Ná ligamís ár maidí le sruth’.  I wanted to remember this, so I took a note of it on my phone.

I returned to the car where Kate was waiting, and she told me of her conversation with the woman she had met. The woman had set out that morning at 6 a.m. on her own and had climbed the nearby Mount Brandon. It had taken her three hours to climb to the summit and three hours to make her descent. Because she was muddy and splattered from the climb, she had decided to go for a swim down in Brandon Creek before heading home.  Needless to say, we were both in awe of this woman’s achievements. This hardy soul epitomised for us the strength and resilience of the locals in this almost-forgotten outpost of our country. I then told Kate what I had got up to and the marvellous discovery I had come across, something not mentioned in any of the Bord Fáilte brochures in nearby cosmopolitan Dingle. I told her about the inscription I had come across and translated the hopeful message as best I could.

Sometimes when we begin to doubt our ability to solve personal or global issues like climate change, the inscription from that beautiful, wild and neglected place has, for me, the feel of a powerful call to arms:

‘Ná ligamís ár maidí le sruth’

‘We must never rest on our oars’

 

Posted on by Vincent Hanley

Irish Weather

Wet and windy Status Yellow weather with wintry showers on the way!

I have grown accustomed to the slow, relaxed rhythm of the seasons changing in Knockaderry. I look out from my front door at a verdant tree-filled valley with its rim of hills on the horizon, stretching from Barna to Broadford and Freemount and beyond. The people in these border regions of Limerick, Cork and Kerry are prone to exaggeration, so the hills are known locally as The Mullaghareirk Mountains. This is from the old Irish, which translates as ‘the hills with the view’. The area is also known as Sliabh Luachra, which translates as ‘the hills of the rushes’, famous for its poets, polkas and slides, its sets, and half sets. The valley that I look out on is also an ancient valley with an equally ancient name, Mágh Ghréine, ‘the valley of the sun’.

Any discussion of Irish weather risks the odd cloudburst of cliche, often fuelled by naive American tourists who believe everything they read in their Aer Lingus in-flight magazine. However, we have to admit that in Ireland we have weather, while every other place on the face of the planet has a climate. Proof of this is the recent European Commission’s decision to stop talking about Global Warming and focus instead on the term Climate Change – albeit only when they realised that Global Warming didn’t apply to Ireland. Here in Ireland, it’s either Baltic or the sun is splitting the stones, usually on the same day.

The main problem here is that most of us don’t welcome rain like the people in sub-Saharan Africa would a deluge. Our inner weathervane says things like, ‘It looks like rain’, or ‘It’s trying to rain’, or ‘It’s boiling for rain’, or ‘It’s a soft day’, or even better, ‘It’s a grand soft day’ if you’re an American tourist in Adare. We say, ‘It’s lashing rain’, ‘The heavens opened’, ‘Twas bucketing rain’, ‘Twas pissing rain’, and when it rains when you’re just going to bale the hay, we say, ‘Twas only a sun shower’, just perfect rainbow weather!

I have looked out from my porch on many an April evening and admired the sheets of rain being blown towards Ahalin across Stack’s big field. I’m also reminded of Austin Clarke, my favourite Irish weather poet, who talks of ‘the mist becoming rain’. In my opinion, our biggest problem in Ireland is when we get a settled period of very fine Summer weather, the farmers invariably start praying for rain on day three, and everyone knows the strength of their lobbying power with the Man Above!

For years, my weather watching was linked to my job, just like farmers and fishermen and such. You’d hear people talking about ‘Exam Weather’ each June, and ‘Back-to-School Weather’, which always consisted of a mini heatwave in September. Invariably, the farmers were also using this long-awaited window of opportunity to literally make hay while the sun shone.

Each year for thirty-odd years in June and July, I undertook a mini-Purgatory for my sins by correcting Leaving Cert exam papers. The six or seven-week period was usually filled with sunshine and heatwaves and Munster Finals in Thurles and holidays in Ballybunion for some, while I feverishly tried to meet completely unrealistic deadlines set by mandarins in far-off Athlone. That left August to eke out a wet week in Schull, with the prospect of torrential floods from burnt-out hurricanes in the Caribbean scorching in from the Atlantic while we diligently painted smooth stones which we had earlier retrieved from the beaches in Glandore or Ballydehob, while it lashed rain from leaden skies. Since those days, I always, for some morbid reason, expect news reports in August to announce the annual destruction and flooding caused by the monsoon season in India and Bangladesh.

May has always been my favourite month. It’s probably because of my love of gardening, but May puts on a great show in the garden before the harsh wind and rain wreak havoc with those delicate leaves, shoots and grasses. I’m always reminded of Thomas Hardy’s lines in his poem, ‘Afterwards’:

And the May month flaps it’s glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk …….

 I have a May Garden, and by late April or early May, the climbing Dublin Bay red roses are abloom by the south-facing front door, and the bluebells and the Aubretia are cascading as they do. I marvel at the delicate new leaves on the beech trees that I got as a present from a dear cousin back in the 80s. My two oak trees, which we bought in Van Veen’s Nursery, are late as usual, and the sycamore that grew from a tiny seedling dominates the plot. Even though we continually moan about our Irish Weather, we also rely on it to supply us with a variety of joyful vitamins and feel-good hormones. Because of our unique weather, we have endless green fields, flowers, forests, lakes and pastures. And I love that special time when the thunder and lightning strike after one of those rare Azores Highs, when you can breathe in the calm smell of rain! Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us, and snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather in Ireland, only an endless variety of different kinds of good weather.

Showers most days next week, says Carlow Weather!