Travel: Emerald magic

For years I resisted going to Ireland because of the plastic shamrock problem.

Simply put, this is the tendency of any Canadian who visits Ireland to return with a plastic shamrock. It may be on a key chain or a paperweight or a beer mug, but, based upon the evidence I’ve seen, somewhere in the luggage of every returning traveler lurks the obligatory neon-green, polyurethane, kiss-me-I’m-Irish shamrock.

I am most emphatically not a plastic shamrock person. So when I accepted an invitation to go walking on the islands off the western coast of Ireland, I vowed that I would be on my guard. No plastic shamrock would infiltrate my suitcase.

After landing in Ireland, I drove to Cleggan, a tiny port on Ireland’s west coast, about 90 km west of Galway. I boarded a tiny mail boat and 50 minutes later disembarked at a concrete pier on an island with the wonderfully strange name of Inishturk. The mail boat’s captain clapped me on my shoulder and told me to meet up with my hiking group at the “first house by the left as you come up from the pier.”

As I climbed up the steps of the pier, my first impression wasn’t encouraging. Inishturk looked as if it had spent years grooming itself to be a strong contender in a competition for the community that could most resemble a Newfoundland outport. A dozen or so homes and sheds staggered uphill from a concrete pier. Behind them, a green hillside climbed high in the sky, carved into fields by rough walls built out of rocks. Four men were hard at work in front of one of the homes, installing a garden wall, but apart from the sound of their shovels and the quiet lap of the water against the pier, the silence was absolute.

Finding the first house on the left wasn’t difficult—so far as I could tell a neatly painted bungalow was not only the first inhabited house on the left, it was the only one.

I knocked at the door. It opened and a slim, gray-haired woman greeted me. I explained that I was to meet up with a hiking group. “Oh, yes,” she said, “they’ll be here for lunch, but you’re a bit early. You’re welcome to come in if you’d like or you can wander about the village if you’d prefer.”

My heart jumped. Perhaps there was more to this island than the few scattered homes I had seen. “Oh, there’s a village?” I said.

A smile flickered at the corners of the women’s lip. “Oh, there is,” she said. “And you’re standing in it. Right in the downtown core, you are.”

Ah, yes. “Of course,” I said. To hide my embarrassment, I declared that I would absolutely love to look around the village.

And so I did. The village consisted of a couple of homes, a one-room library, a shed built out of rough stone, a nurse’s clinic and a small church. It was as bare-bones as I had feared. But then I stepped behind the church and everything changed.

Below my feet the ground dropped away to crashing ocean and black crags. When I raised my eyes, I could see for miles across a wrinkled plain of silver sea, to the mainland, where mauve mountains stood shoulder to shoulder in golden mist.

Yes, it sounds trite and tourist brochure Irish. But it was also magic. I could have stood there all afternoon, listening to the waves and watching seabirds turn circles in the air. I was sorry when, a half hour or so later, I heard the tramp of hiking boots on the gravel path. It was thewalking group I was supposed to join. Gerry MacCluskey, the group’s guide, introduced himself and my soon-to-be walking companions. We lunched on salad, chicken and gingerbread, then Gerry and five of us set out on a climb to the island’s highest point.

Gerry, an archeologist by training, was a charming, knowledgeable host. As we climbed up the green slopes, past grazing sheep and bony knuckles of schist and shale, we came to a pond. By the water’s edge, Gerry showed us the remains of a prehistoric cooking pit and explained how the island’s early inhabitants had cooked their food in these stone-lined chambers. He then pointed down the hillside, to theblurred outlines of ancient terraces that had once been used for growing crops. Inishturk has been populated for thousands of years, but today only about 60 people still live there and the future of the community is in doubt as young people leave to go to the mainland.

My companions on the walk were a high school principal, a computer specialist, and a banker, all from other parts of Ireland, as well as a young woman from New Zealand. They were a talkative, friendly bunch. Together, we made our way to the top of the island, crowned by the remains of a watchtower built in Napoleonic times. We caught our breath and enjoyed the view. Below us, the sculpted green flanks of the island ran away, ending in plunging cliffs that gave way to an immense ocean.

The memory of that beauty stayed with me as we wandered down the slopes, to a small pub on a hillside, where my new friends sighed at my slipshod way with a pint. When they stopped laughing, they taught me the proper way to drink Guinness. (Slowly, as it turns out. Who would have thought?) It was the perfect way to end a perfect day in Ireland—and not a plastic shamrock in sight. m