The End of the Iveragh by Rob Penn
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Ireland’s glory is her land, which is fine if you are able to see it. Driving along the N70, better known as the Ring of Kerry, you often can’t. Wedged between continental coaches in the pouring rain, as I was in August, the experience is closer to commuting than the ‘craic’. So, it was with some relief that I lurched my hire car off the N70, at a minor road sign that read “Skellig Ring – Cars only’.
The ‘Skellig Ring’ is a looping route that links Cahersiveen and Waterville via lanes and unmarked crossroads, west of the N70. It encircles a small area of weather-eroded land, at the very western tip of the Iveragh peninsula, which attracts scant mention in Kerry’s tourism brochures - reason enough to visit in itself. This corner of Ireland’s most dramatic county is no shamrock-ed pastiche of fiddle-di-di Ireland created for American tourists. There are no craft centres and no pitch and putt courses. It has an authentic, rural feel – scruffy villages, hedgerows full of wild flowers and old men tipping their hats as they stride along the potholed roads.
It is a place suited to walking and bicycling, not traffic jams. So, I parked my car in Ballinskelligs village and set off on foot across the sloping bowl of land, towards the rim of coastal hills that surround the area. The rain that had battered my windscreen and my humour for two days had stopped. The lanes, lined with Montbretia and fuchsia, seemed to be gently exhaling and sharing in my relief. A barman on the River Shannon had told me earlier in the week of an old Irish saying: “Nobody ever went to Bolus Head without getting something”. In need of that ‘something’, that is where I headed for.
Though I did not know this as I pointed my boots towards one of Europe’s westernmost extremities, this area has always been a place of refuge and pilgrimage. A quick glance at my map revealed as much: there are more standing stones, oratories, burial grounds and crosses than you might wish to shake your staff of faith at. However, the most significant Christian relic – and the areas real drawing card – is way out in the Atlantic Ocean.
As I cut up through a steep field of gorse to reach the 410m top of Bolus, the sun dropped beneath the low cloud and filled the cleft between sea and sky with golden light. From here, I caught my first sight of the Skelligs – three wild and rocky islets protruding from the shining sea, kissed by an orange glow – a few miles off the coast across St Finan’s Bay. According to my guidebook, these fretted pinnacles (‘scelig’ means ‘splinter of stone’) are among the 10 highlights of Ireland.
Great Skellig (also known as Skellig Michael after Michael, the saint of high places) was, between the 6th and the 12th centuries, home to an eremitical, anchorite community of monks. It must be one of the most remote and magnificent monastic sites in Europe. As the gloaming softened and the Skelligs disappeared, I realised that I had to find a boat to get out there the next day.
At the bar in the Ballinskelligs Inn, waiting for a pint of the ‘dark stuff’ to settle, I felt as if everyone was conspiring to resurrect my stay in the emerald isle. First off, I bumped into the chef on the pub’s threshold. Food has stopped an hour ago: “Go on, I’ll throw something on the table for ya,” she said retying her pinafore. Then I asked the barman about boats to the Skelligs and the ruddy man on the stool next to me looked up from his paper: “I have a boat, I do. You’ll come out with me in the morning.”
The following day was magnificent – the sort of day that only a handful of places can deliver – with a cloudless sky and brilliant clarity of light. The views, north towards Dingle and the Blasket Islands, and south over Beara peninsula and the rest of the mountainous digits that stretch out into the ocean from this corner of Ireland, had me marching over the hill to the port.
“You’ll find there’s still something in the sea,” Joe Roddy said counting the passengers aboard his fishing boat. As we chugged passed Horse Island and out in to the inky blue Atlantic, Joe explained that the storm in the previous few days had left a powerful swell. Beneath the towering sea crags of Bolus Head, we could feel it and a Spanish couple next to me looked set to waste their breakfasts.
Ten thousand visitors set foot on Skellig Michael each year, but such is the peril of these seas that the fishing boats are only able to ferry passengers between May and September. “The maximum number allowed on the island in a day is 200,” Joe continued, “And I’d say there’ll be plenty of people about with not a sailing these last two days.” When we rounded the corner of Little Skellig, there was an armada of boats bobbing on the ocean.
Little Skellig is the most populous bird sanctuary in Ireland. The immensity of terns, Manx shearwaters, guillemots, razorbills and plunging gannets was staggering. Sadly, the puffins – who migrate away at the beginning of August – had gone. For half an hour, we rolled on the swell, watching the frenetic activity and reeling from the pungent smell.
At the precarious landing area on Skellig Michael, there was a queue of boats, but the wait is worth it. The monastery is, inevitably I suppose, at the top of the 715 foot twin-peaked rock, and I followed the trail of neon kagools up the 1,000 year old staircase. The views, of Little Skellig and the coast are alone worth the trip out, but it is the sense of wonder at how the monks survived in this environment – rowing to the mainland in ox-hide currachs – that makes a lasting impression. George Bernard Shaw described it as “the magic that takes you out, far out, of this time and this world.”
Archaeologists working on the monastic buildings gave us a short, guided tour of the huddled settlement of beehive dwellings and oratories – all in excellent repair - before we descended to Christ’s saddle for a picnic in the sunshine, beneath a flock of wheeling gulls.
Back on the mainland, still swaying a little, I hired a bicycle and took to the lanes. Rural Ireland is ideally suited to dithering about on two wheels and I drifted through the afternoon, stopping at Portmagee for a pint before wheezing up and over Coonanaspig pass, from where I could see the whole Skellig Ring. At Keel beach, I swam in the crystal clear sea then I turned inland through fields latticed with light grey stonewalls, listening to lapwings, and rode back to Cahersiveen under a pink sky.
“You’ll be ready for your dinner, then?” Eamon asked when I returned the bike. At QCs restaurant, I ate a dinner of crab soup and turbot, celebrating a perfect day. The following morning, I was behind the wheel again, waiting to turn back on to the N70. A coach thundered past with a wave of spray in its wake. It would be a long commute back to London, I thought, which was fine.