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Our stay in Timoleague was completely accidental. We had begun searching for accommodation in Kinsale at 4 p.m. and had continued for another two hours and sixteen haphazard miles before finding a guest house with vacancies. We half expected this problem as we were travelling on the Sunday of a scorching Bank Holiday weekend. But then, such minor difficulties are part of the fun of spontaneous travel, and the unexpected is always what one remembers fondly.

Kinsale is a jewel of a place, a fishing town, stretching around the wooded twists of the Bandon river estuary. It is justly famous, for historical and aesthetic reasons, but like all such attractions, has become somewhat tainted by the garish vulgarity of tourism. It is good that there are such jewels, however, as they concentrate the holidaymaker and day-tripper and leave the lesser-known treasures to be discovered by the more discerning traveller.

With its wonderful restaurants and an internationally-renowned Deep-Sea fishing competition, the whole of the coastline of South-west Cork is a jagged progression of rocky peninsulas, separated by narrow inlets of clear water, some of them cutting, fjord-like, for several miles into the land. At the head of each inlet lies a small village with its own highly individual variation on the theme of the picturesque. Timoleague is one such. A tiny two-pub town of narrow streets and small shop fronts, it makes no concession whatsoever to the tourist. The beaches on either side of the town were stony but clean and almost deserted. The water was a genuine green colour, and Gulf Stream warm for the irresistible swim. It attracted several flocks of plovers, oystercatchers and an occasional heron.

In the distance, a solitary water skier sped past Courtmacsherry, while in the field behind us a family of small rabbits hopped in and out of the hedgerow undisturbed.

The following morning we debated the possibility of a short boat trip to Sherkin Island and back to the nineteenth century. Our arrival at Baltimore changed what would on any other day have been a good idea. Any resemblance between this village and its more illustrious American namesake would have been difficult to find. Though very beautiful, it was tiny and congested and took us the best part of half an hour to enter, and an equal time to turn the car and leave. Its population of two hundred was swelled many times by visitors to its annual regatta. The pier was crowded with people awaiting the ferry to the island. Remembering our difficulty of the previous evening we left to seek accommodation in a quieter place.

Schull (pronounced ‘skull’) turned out to be a perfect choice. The brightly coloured houses, scattered about the rocky headlands of the harbour and up the slopes of Mount Gabriel, gave the town a Norwegian appearance. The islands that dotted the sea beyond the coast added to the illusion. Dozens of small sailing boats bobbed peacefully on the water, while a steamer waited patiently by the pier for its daily quota of passengers to Cape Clear Island.

The first guesthouse we tried had no vacancies, but such was the landlady network that we were soon fixed up with a place to stay. Again, as with Timoleague, Schull could not be described as a typical tourist town although the street was lined with parked cars, whose owners seemed to have vanished without trace.

We strolled around one side of the harbour, past small pebbly beaches separated by rocky promontories, none occupied by more than two or three people and many of them deserted. One could pick one’s own private beach. We did so, and swam, ate and sunbathed until the sun moved behind the bushes that crowned the top of the low cliffs. Then we crossed to a similar beach on the other side of the bay, and swam round a shrub-covered islet rising out of clear water that was almost as warm as a swimming pool.

In the early evening we went for a meal. The restaurant was as small and unpretentious as everything else in Schull. While two girls served the customers, the owner himself sat on a chair outside, contentedly watching the world drift by, with only an occasional glance inside to check if the clientele were satisfied. And the world did seem to be turning, for from our window seats we heard most of the languages of Europe mingling in the street.

At eight o’clock I fulfilled an ambition I had harboured since childhood by visiting the Schull Planetarium. This, the only planetarium in the Irish Republic, had been set up on the inspiration of a German astronomer, Herr Josef Menke, who had bought a home nearby, because Ireland has the least polluted skies in Europe, and Schull the clearest in Ireland. The director and his wife were Belgian, and like Herr Menke, fugitives from European pollution.

As dusk fell we returned to the village. Most of the shops were still open, and unhurriedly serving their customers. In one of the bars we talked with a local resident while ten French visitors carried on five noisy, gesticulated conversations in the next corner. The young people were moving away, he told us, and most of the property around was being bought by Germans. He was pleased that his own son was making a success out of fishing and seemed settled. He pointed to a friend sitting at the bar, who had emigrated to London twenty years earlier and was so successful there that he had recently abandoned a hundred-acre inheritance at home.

When we left the pub, close to midnight, small groups of people still strolled around the street, or stood quietly drinking. There was no trace of rowdiness, just a gentle cosmopolitan chatter which would linger in the warm air until the early hours.

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