Counties Mayo, Galway and Clare.

So after a week on the farm I left feeling refreshed, challenged and satisfied with the work I'd contributed. I then had three days cycling around Counties Mayo, and Galway (the middle knob of Ireland's west coast), with tail winds all the way. The remarkable thing about this was I traveling in three different directions, west, south and east, and that two of these tail winds (easterly and northerly behind me the first two days) were opposite to the prevailing south-westerly.

The most beautiful part of this area is undoubtedly Connemara National Park, in the southwest corner. It has beautiful mountains along next to the sea which makes for some great coastline, mountain passes with great views of lakes or bays. I had a great night in Clifden, where between the hostel's free food basket and the owner inviting me to clean out the freezer I had a free dinner and breakfast, including chocolate icecream! (for dinner not breakfast). Then while I was washing up one of the guests in town for the local music festival started playing the squeeze box (Irish name for the accordion), I could hardly do the dishes for dancing! After that I walked and hitched my way about four miles to a viewing point to watch the sunset. It's a marvelous spot where one can see along the coast in both directions, including the many little islands off from the national park as well as across Galway bay to the Aran Islands. At the lookout I met a couple of young locals who practically forced me to drink half their bottle of very sweet French red wine, and pointed out the names of various places. I hitched my way back into town and headed for a pub the hostel owner had suggested, apparently the only venue in town with free music as part of the festival. It was my first Irish pub session and I had a great time with some others from the hostel. It was only partially spoilt by some right wing Dubya loving Irishman who kept raving on about free speech - telling him to shut up only mad things worse off course. What made it interesting was that my other companions were two young Americans who claimed to be left leaning and seeing what happened when I started to play loony lefty to counter the raving righty.

The next day I managed to escape the righty before we got bogged down in disagreement and headed for Galway. I had a great day past more mountains and then down to the coast, which became more built up as I approached Galway, one of Ireland’s four biggest cities. I was hoping to stay with a Servas host but kept finding the number engaged. I kept waiting before finally trying to find a youth hostel. By the time I got around to this though (about 7:30pm) I found that all six of them were full! I was most surprised as the tourist season was pretty much over and I hadn’t had any trouble for a couple of weeks. My theory was that being the first week back at uni, there were a lot of students who hadn’t found a place to rent yet and so were staying in hostels, and it was also the weekend. So I was getting really stuck, a few B&Bs I tried were also full and I’d gone to various places to ask for suggestions. At about 9:30pm, well after dark and getting cold, someone suggested another hostel, which wasn’t listed in the tourist guides. On enquiring about a bed I was told that there were plenty of beds but no receptionist. I’d got a bit frantic by this point so hadn’t noticed some of the early signs and was simply relieved to find there was a bed. Then I started to work it out. Everyone else there were residents on a longer term stay, the hostel wasn’t really in operation but just being operated by someone on the side. When I went to look at the rooms I realised how run down the place was. The only shower that actually worked couldn’t be turned off and all the beds had dirty laundry on them. One of the residents, a perhaps slightly unstable busybody, sorted me out though, found me a clean sheet and showed to an empty room. At this point I was just happy to find somewhere I could sleep the night, and book somewhere else in the morning. Then the receptionist returned (he’d been out fishing) and didn’t seem at all interested in my presence. Later he asked if I’d found clean linen and said he hadn’t had any for three weeks! He didn’t ask me for money, and although I saw him collect it off two others, I didn’t feel obliged to offer it given the conditions. Then I went to check out a few pubs. I ducked my head into a few and had a drink at a couple but way ahead of the rest was Tis Coile right in the city centre and with the liveliest music. Would you believe I spent the night chatting with a guy from Newcastle (Australia not England) who’d made friends with a guy from Galway who’d studied in Newcastle, reciprocated the exchange, met a girl and decided he like the city so much, he’d settle there. I can certainly see why, best city in Ireland I reckon.

The following day figured I didn’t have to worry about check out time so slept in, had a bit of walk around the city sights and then went to an internet café. There I sat next to a woman of Irish birth who’d been living I in Sydney but come back to Ireland for a year. She was trying to buy tickets to Sydney as a surprise for her daughter’s 21st birthday. She was having trouble, I gave her some help, we got talking, I told her where I was staying and she invited me to stay the night with her. I went back to the hostel where I’d decided I could cope with another free night and packed in about 15 minutes, faster than I ever have before or since, back to the café and home with her where I had to pretend to be her nephew on the off chance that the mysterious woman who lived in the upstairs room happened to appear (but she didn’t). It turned out a great night’s conversation with Bridget having some interesting perspectives, informed by her Catholic upbringing, time in the Pentecostal church but then being quite progressive around issues of empowerment and opposed to institutions, yet still fervently opposed to both contraception and abortion - I think that’s how she is anyway. She was also a great cook, and gave me the recipe for some fantastic mountain bread.

The next morning was wet and miserable so I didn’t leave until 2pm, heading for Doolin. On the way out of town though I got a flat tyre, changed it in an underground carpark and went back to find a bike shop to buy another tube. Got further out of town wondering how far I could get before dark and then discovered my bike rack had cracked in a second place. The first spot was inconsequential, gravity held it in place, I’d tied it with a piece of string and it had been that way for months. This however was not going to be so easily mended and I didn’t think I could replace very easily without going back to Galway. I managed to get back to town and find a bike shop with an appropriate rack just before closing. Finished fitting it on the street outside and then tried Bridget again before the hostels. It was fine to stay with her except she was going to the Rossport 5 meeting so wouldn’t be around for the evening.

Well, that was just meant to be. The previous day I’d been walking around town and kept seeing signs about this meeting, called by some local activists who were campaigning on behalf of 5 men from Rossport who’d been wrongly imprisoned. I was very curious to find out more but had felt I needed to keep moving rather than stay another night for the meeting. So the bike problems couldn’t have had better timing and Bridget lived in walking distance of the meeting.
It was an interesting meeting and well attended. The men had been imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to obey a court order to let shell put an oil pipe line across their land. The case was significant both because of the global precedent of corporations (as opposed to governments) having power over private land but also because the men had actually been imprisoned for contempt of court for not doing something - apparently also a unique precedent in Ireland. So we heard from a legal expert and members of the family but also a sociologist who gave an excellent summary and analysis of the situation from an activist point of view and various power dynamics involved. Then the chance for public comment, and the usual grandstanders. I suppose from another perspective this might include me getting up an expressing solidarity from the Australian activist community (how pretentious really!) reinforcing the global importance of these battles and sharing the recent events relating to the deportation of American nonviolent peace activist Scott Parkin from Australia. (A group I’m part of called pt’chang was one of the inviting parties so I’d followed it quite closely from abroad). Then there was quite an interesting exchange between various politicians who were in the audience both local and national. The dialogue between them was much more frank, honest and to the point than what I would have expected to hear from there Australian equivalents with representatives from opposing parties not only joking with each other but giving each other credit where it was due. It seems the representational system of democracy might still have something going for it in Ireland. I’ve just checked the latest and it appears the Rossport 5 were released about 3 weeks ago but face a return to prison, and the campaign continues at full steam. More info at http://www.corribsos.com/

On the way out of town the next day I got another flat tyre, but had gone far enough not to be worth going back. I cycled down through the Burren, a series of quite distinct rocky limestone hills that just appeared to be piles of boulders. I climbed one of them, Abbey Hill, and had lunch enjoying the view of Galway Bay from the other side and then rode on down. I stayed the night in Doolin, which is apparently the music capital of Ireland but the fact that it has more hostels than pubs should've been a give away that this is a bit of an exaggeration for the tourists. While the pub was pretty lively with good music for a week night, it was not as good as the time I had in Galway. Mind you there must be something in the claim because coming through one of the nearby towns I saw a group of people who'd started a singalong out the front of a pub at about 6pm, already several drinks down.

From Doolin I rode down to the cliffs of Mohar which everyone raved about and again I was a little disappointed, mainly because they just don't compare to the cliffs of Slieve League. Now admittedly I'd seen those on a sunny day, while Mohar was grey and dismal but these were fairly standard cliffs, vertical and level at the top and not nearly as high as Slieve League. The large construction site for the new visitor centre (which will completely spoil everything and probably start charging for entry) certainly didn't help either. (I'm not sure whether they build these monstrosities so they can start charging an entry fee or feel they should be charging but have to build the monstrosities to justify it?). Having said all that, they are interesting sea cliffs, I guess I've just seen a lot of great scenery in Ireland and so my standards have really been lifted. Anyway, I rode on down to Ennis and caught a train (well three actually) down south to Killarney, but that's for another post.

A wwoofing good holiday

As I mentioned I was getting pretty travel fatigued by this point of the trip and so looking forward to something different. It's not the cycling that's tiring but the constantly being in different places, with different people and needing to constantly plan where to go next and work out what you wanted to see and do. It wasn't so much a holiday that I needed but the old saying that a change is as good as a break. So I'd come to do some hard work on a farm for a holiday. (I hadn't done this sooner was because Australia's international woofing (Working On Organic Farms) book lists farms in Ireland and Spain but not the UK which requires paying a separate fee and I just hadn't got around to checking this out because I was having such a good time travelling.) So I signed up for a week (the usual minimum) on this farm. I would have done longer but was a bit conscious of time because I had to be back in Windermere in the lake district of England for mum's 50th Birthday. However I was also keen to give it a good go because I want to do quite a bit of woofing in Spain in order to maximise my time there so I can have a good crack at learning the language and thought it would be good to do a bit of woofing in an English speaking country first just to get used to how it worked. I was hoping to have time on two different farms, but just ran out of time before mum's birthday and had too much to see.

So anyway I had a week woofing on a farm near Boyle (south of Sligo in NW Ireland). I spent the first few days doing building work, helping Krzysztof put insulation (foam and sheep’s wool) in the floor of a small building he was constructing and then putting the floor boards on. The challenging thing about the insulation was that the building is octagonal and the beams underneath all pointed to the centre, so this left lots of strange angles to fit the insulation into. I don't think he'll be constructing a building like that again. Then he had to get some building materials in before starting on the walls so I spent the next few days working in the garden. They were constructing a labyrinth which will be planted with various vegetables, so we were removing and few weeds and mostly stones from the soil ready for planting. Taria (a Swiss woofer) had been doing this repetitive work for a couple of months so was completely sick of it but I enjoyed getting my hands in the soil. Over all it was great to have a whole week worrying about where to sleep or get food from and just do what I was told and do something constructive with my hands. I also got Taria to borrow Harry Potter No. 4 from the Library and got through that in the week. We had Sunday off to go down to a nearby park with a lake and just chill out which was nice as well.

On top of all of that, Krzysztof was an amazing guy who knew a lot about a lot of things that most people don't even think about. He and his wife Karen are practitioners of natural medicine and run an 'alternative' health centre in the nearby town of Boyle. In the meantime they are trying to establish an intentional farming and spiritual community, partially motivated by Krzysztof's belief that there will be a major energy crisis when we run out of oil in the next year or two and the remaining supplies are kept for military forces. They are hoping to be as self sustainable as possible. So staying on an organic farm run by practitioners of natural medicine, I've never eaten so healthy in my life and learnt a fair bit about the human body and various foods etc though barely scratched the surface I'm sure. Krzysztof also shared his experience of a campaign he'd started to get fluoride taken out of Ireland's water, as it is an industrial waste product, toxic to humans and a cause of either cancer, or kidney or liver failure, can't remember which. Unfortunately his attempts were quashed by the government. There were several things like this where knowledge has been kept form the public which tie in with ideas about the staging of September 11 by a group of powerful people running much of the world, as an excuse to take possession of the oil in Afghanistan. He also shared some of his knowledge of ancient Mayan (Central American), Essene (Middle Eastern) and Indian culture and spirituality about all of which he is very knowledgeable. Apparently both the Meyans and Essene independently predicted that there would be a world wide cataclysmic event in the year we now know as 2012, the Meyan's even put a date on it December 23 - so watch out for that! Apparently these ancient peoples also knew of energy lines that run across the earth and are still marked by things such as the pyramids and Stonehenge. Then there are those mysterious crop signs which Krzysztof claimed to know what was behind but wouldn't tell me as I needed to discover that for myself.

Anyway, it was a bit of a mind job staying with them and at first I really struggled with it and couldn't believe any of it but then as I asked myself why it was that I didn't or rather couldn't believe it, I opened my mind to the possibilities. Now I still don't believe all of it, but the most important thing I learnt that week, was not a particular piece of knowledge but that it is one thing to say you are open minded and another to actually be open minded. A reminder that we as humans don't seem particularly good at dealing with change and that if we encounter something that just doesn't fit with our previous experience, we just ignore it and pretend it never happened. We have to remember that we don't know everything (an never will) and thus always be open to learning from any source. Force ourselves to consider unlikely possibilities in a critical way, not get hung up on them in a paranoid sort of way but not just reject them off hand either, and that can be harder than it sounds.

So what is your mind really open to?

Pugsworth in the Irish Republic - County Donegal

Within about half an hour of leaving Derry I was in the Irish Republic, not that they make a big deal of the border. There must have been a sign but the first I noticed was when the distances were measured in kilometres not miles, boy do they melt away so much faster on the bike. The other thing to adjust was the currency - my first encounter with the Euro. My tour of Northern Ireland began at the opposite end of Ireland from where most visitors begin, and a place most of them don't even get to, County Donegal (pronounced Donygall). It's basically the narrow northern strip of the republic to the west of Northern Ireland, and it is a very beautiful place. Since I was starting in the north, why not do it properly and head to the most northern point of Ireland, Malin Head on the Inishowan Peninsular. The coast line is fairly scenic and has some very steep hills. So much so that what with the sun shining I decided to stop for a swim to cool off at Kinnagoe Bay, located in a narrow valley between two steep hills. The water was beautifully clear and very cold but I stayed in for about 10 minutes. It was my second swim of the summer and my first in Atlantic waters. When I got to the most northerly point the following morning I rode and found the spot, not much to look at of course but a nice view from the top of the cliff. Then I decided to walk around the cliffs a little and to my surprise found some brilliant cliff scenery a bit further on. The cliffs were not straight down but on an angle so that you could see the rock formations below and there were some amazing shapes, caves, crags and all the rest. Narrow channels through the rock and waves constantly beating the cliffs, I just love that stuff. What made it so thrilling was it was of those things I just found. There is no sign, and the walking trail appears to just go over green fields, you wouldn't even know there were cliffs there, and then when you come to the edge you just get this great view below you and if you keep walking around there's just more and more. So if you ever find yourself up that way, go to Malin Head, go out past Malin Head town to the end of the road, where you will find a car park just below an old tower. There's a nice view from there but then take the other path leading across green fields. It's about a 30-40 minute return walk but it's really worth it. Apparently the coast line of Donegal is all really pretty, however while it seems largely undiscovered by foreigners, it is becoming a very popular spot with Irish holiday makers and has recently become very built up. Riding along all the houses look like they've been built in the last five years. Most of them probably have, and the ones that weren't are freshly renovated. This is the result of the Irish boom (or Celtic tiger as they call it), and it's actually a bit of a shame and spoiling the coastline. Ireland is no longer the remote backwater it used to be. So I decided to head inland and check out Glenviegh National Park, one of only six in Ireland. What a fairy tale scene that is. Again it was a beautiful sunny day and being a Sunday, the crowds were out but that didn't take away from its beauty. The park is basically a glacial valley, two of the largest mountains in a small range and the lough (lake) that runs between them where the glacier used to be. On a small outcrop into the lake is an old castle, where I discovered various cultural events taking place, music and food etc plus a large garden with plants from all over the world. Beyond the castle I escaped the crowds and while this meant pushing my fully laden bike up a rocky mountain bike track and crossing a muddy stream it was well worth it for the view. On the way up you have the lake and two very pretty mountains. Then from the top you can look back and see the lake sitting far below between the mountains and the castle on the edge of the lake just poking out from between the trees, it really is a fairy tale scene, would you believe it reminded me of Shrek? The really great find of the day though was the road from the top of the national park down to Doochary. It's a back road that not many people would take and was all down hill but the best thing was that it is untouched by development. It's just a road down though farming country and local communities doing their thing, just what I imagine the old romantic Ireland to be. So it’s still there, if you can find it. The final highlight in Donegal was the cliffs of Slieve League. I wasn't staying close enough for a day ride out to these so I decided to hitch hike instead. I did use the bike to get to a good hitch hiking spot on the road though so still a 25km cycle day - easy. I caught 7 different lifts over about 80-100km but never had to wait more than 20 minutes. I took a back route through the Glen Gesh pass, which is pretty scenic in itself and got a real spectrum of Irish of people including a priest and guy called Paddy driving a wagon - a real paddy wagon! - who took me all the way to the top of cliffs, which is about 10 minutes beyond where he was going. I'd made good time so was able to stop for an hour so and have some lunch to take in these really magnificent cliffs. They are the highest sea cliffs in Europe and absolutely stunning. They are not you're ordinary vertical sea cliffs with a level running cliff tip but slope back at about 70-80 degrees and have various high and low points along the top. They're also sandstone or something similar and have the most brilliant colours, especially as I was again enjoying a beautiful sunny day. The view from the top is also great, you can see right across to the coast of county Mayo in the south. On the way back I saw Paddy giving somebody else a lift up - what a friendly Irishman. By this point of the trip I was getting pretty travel fatigued so I'd arranged a week woofing (Working On Organic Farms) near Boyle. So that was my next stop but it's another story (or post) in itself. I did have a great day's ride getting there though past the mountains north of Sligo and slip streaming behind a tractor for a couple of kilometres! I was going into a head wind all day and going up this hill a tractor over took me, but only just. On the way down, I caught it up but instead of over taking it I just sat behind it and it basically pulled me along. I wasn't going much faster than I normally would so it didn't seem that dangerous, but I was using half the effort! I don't think the driver realised what I was doing but he didn't seem to mind. I still missed the last train though putting my arrival back a day, but that didn't matter, it just made me more pleased to get there.

Pugsworth in Northern Ireland

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I found internet access expensive and difficult to come by in Ireland, struggling just to keep up with emails. I hope to catch up fairly quickly back here in the UK. (Currently in the peak district.)

After six weeks in Scotland I was ready to get to a new region and arrived with a sense of anticipation for exploring Irish culture. Northern Ireland was a mixed blessing in this regard, a mix of Irish and British culture in this still British territory. I guess that’s what ‘the troubles’ are all about a people divided over their identity and I suppose the solution is finding a way of blending the two flavours.

Exploring the history and current status of ‘the troubles’ was also a large part of arriving in Belfast, a city we here about more than many but that doesn’t mean we get a good picture of what it’s like. The effects of ‘the troubles’ were clearly in my face the night I arrived. I’d heard about the armoured police vehicles, but didn’t expect to see them swarming all over the place. We’re talking serious armour here, making these beefed up 4WDs look as close to tanks as they do to the Toorak tractors I’m used to back home. This creates an atmosphere of considerable oppression. Then I heard the sound of marching pipes and drums and discovered that I’d arrived on the night of the last Orange Order march for the season. Thus this was not a normal police presence but extra in case of trouble. I was certainly curious to see the march and the atmosphere in which it was conducted but also had a sense of apprehension as I set off (following my ears) to have a look. I followed along behind for a while keeping my distance and trying not to look too much like a tourist. As I went I discovered that the police presence was really only heavy at the city end of the march (the area contested by the two sides). I wasn’t on the scene quick enough to take in the atmosphere at the beginning of the march but once it got up to Shankill Road, the centre of the local protestant community, the police presence was limited to a hardly noticeable traffic warden role and the march took on the feel of a community parade. Local people lined the street to watch and listen and waved to people they new in the parade. People were smiling and sharing a joke or two rather than looking grim faced and determined to make a political or even military statement as you might expect from media reports. Even with some of the protestant murals, which are not exactly conciliatory, I got the sense of a strong local community simply performing one of it’s rituals. The local community here, while definitely suburban, is still much stronger than the one in my neighbourhood and one could argue thus better off despite it’s difficulties. (This is another piece of anecdotal evidence supporting my theory about human identity being formed/strongest in opposition to something else. We define ourselves by what we aren’t rather than what we are. When there’s nothing to oppose, local community ebbs away.)

The following day I also saw the other sides of Belfast. I rode through the Catholic area and while I didn’t see the community in action the murals there, while being fewer are, on the whole, more conciliatory. I was also interested to see quite a few Palestinian flags demonstrating a sense of solidarity with that cause. In another part of town an Indian festival was well attended by the wider community, great food and lots of fun had by all – it could have been any city. And I ran into some more dragon boaters, just a one-off two boat race event for charity.

After Belfast I took off along the Antrim Coast, the highlight of the which is the Giant’s Causeway, a series of hexagonal columns of rock, caused by the cooling process following volcanic activity. They are really unlike anything I’ve ever scene and while they’re blown out of proportion by the tourist industry the whole coastline is quite scenic. Hills, cliffs, valleys, rocky coastline and sunshine made for a couple of great days riding before a short train ride to Derry.

Derry is Northern Ireland’s second biggest city, right on the border with the Republic. Again it’s history (and to a lesser extent it’s present) is shaped by ‘the troubles’. The most significant thing I encountered there was the work of the Bogside artists, three Catholics who have painted a series of peace murals around Bogside, including one painted jointly with a protestant artist. They are renown enough worldwide to have their studio is listed in the tourist brochure so I decided to stop in for a visit. I found them sitting down to lunch (apparently it’s rare for all three of them to be in the one place at the same time) and I think I caught them at a bad moment as they didn’t seem too keen on having visitors but I had a good chat with them and it was fascinating to get a perspective on the conflict and peace negotiations from someone really within it.

The other thing I learnt in Derry is that it is the origin of the word ‘catwalk’. This goes back to the time when the two communities were much more segregated and the wealthy protestant women who lived on the hill within the town wall used to strut their stuff and their nice gowns etc along the top of the city wall showing off to the poorer Catholics who lived below in the marshy suburb named Bogside.

Despite all that though, Derry is a friendly and pretty town getting on with life in the 21st century. It was also the site of the first flat tyre of my trip and the second one! At least they both happened in a city close to bike shops and not far from my destination. All in all I much enjoyed my three nights in Derry.

more coming soon on the Republic of Ireland