Monday 8th June
It was really nice to have a day off. We had a very lazy morning, the highlight of
the morning? Changing the bed!
After lunch we went to explore Sneem - it didn't take
long!
Unlike most single-centre Irish
villages, Sneem features a unique double layout. The North Square and South
Square are independent focal points, divided by the bridge over the River
Sneem, and each lined with traditional pubs, small grocery shops, and cafes.
We had a wander and an ice cream. The lady offered Rio some whipped cream in a cone which he devoured and then promptly regurgitated it all over the road!
The town's Irish name is An tSnaidhm which translates to The
Knot.
The primary meaning behind the
name is geographic. Right below the stone bridge in the centre of the village,
the freshwater Sneem River flows down from the mountains and collides directly
with the heavy, rising saltwater tides pushing inland from the Kenmare River
estuary.
This meeting of opposing
currents creates a distinct, turbulent swirling effect in the water. To the
early Gaelic settlers who named the area, these twisting, intersecting currents
looked exactly like a tightly tangled knot.
Sneem has three famous people associated with it.
Immediately after resigning as President of France in May
1969, General Charles de Gaulle sought total seclusion from the world's media.
He chose Sneem as his sanctuary, staying at the nearby Parknasilla Hotel and
walking the quiet roads of the village to find "a haven of peace and tranquillity."
His historic visit is commemorated by a bronze monument in the North
Square.
The fifth President of Ireland was a passionate patron of
the Irish language and arts who chose to live out his retirement just outside
Sneem. Following his sudden death in 1978, the village hosted a massive State
Funeral, and he is buried locally in the cemetery.
William Melville was born just outside the village at
Direenaclaurig Cross, he emigrated in the late 19th century and eventually rose
to become a legendary detective and the first chief of the British Secret
Service (MI5), operating under the famous code name "M."
Today, instead of a legend, I am going to tell you about
leprechauns.
The modern image of a leprechaun—a jolly, pint-sized man in
a bright green suit sitting on a toadstool—is actually quite far from the
gritty, clever creature found in authentic Irish folklore.
Real Irish leprechaun lore is much cleverer,
a bit cynical, and deeply tied to the ancient landscape.
The very first record of what we now call a leprechaun comes
from an 8th-century medieval Irish saga called The Adventure of Fergus mac
Léti.
In the story, the King of Ulster
falls asleep on a beach and wakes up being dragged into the sea by three tiny
water spirits called lúchorpáin (meaning "small bodies"). The king
grabs them, and they grant him three wishes in exchange for their freedom. Over
centuries of oral storytelling, these water spirits moved inland, merged with
tales of the Tuatha Dé Danann (Ireland's ancient fallen gods), and became the
land-dwelling clever tricksters we know today.
If you travelled back to 19th-century Ireland, the locals
would tell you that leprechauns actually wore bright red.
The famous folklorist W.B. Yeats noted that
solitary fairies wore red jackets, while the social "trooping"
fairies wore green. Regional descriptions varied wildly across the island
The Kerry Leprechaun is described as a jolly, round-faced
fellow in a cutaway red jacket with exactly seven rows of seven buttons. The Ulster Leprechaun wore a pointed bicorne hat, and when
he was feeling especially malicious, he would balance on a wall upside down on
the point of his hat with his heels in the air. The Western Coast Leprechaun wore a heavy, rough wool frieze
overcoat over his red suit to protect himself from the relentless Atlantic rain
and wind.
Leprechauns aren't just rich for no reason; they have a
distinct trade. They are the solitary shoemakers of the fairy world.
According to legend, the trooping fairies
love to dance the night away at their fairy forts, completely ruining their
footwear. The leprechaun is paid handsomely in gold coins to mend them. If you
are walking through the quiet Irish countryside and hear a faint tap-tap-tap,
lore says it isn't a bird—it’s a leprechaun hammering a tiny heel onto a
brogue.
Catching a leprechaun for his wealth is a staple of Irish
folklore, but the stories are almost always cautionary tales about human greed.
The rules of dealing with one are strict.
If you catch one, you must keep your eyes locked on him. The absolute
second you look away—even for a literal blink—he vanishes.
The Tale of the Red Scarf - a young farmer successfully
captured a leprechaun and forced him to reveal which specific yellow gorse bush
in a massive field his pot of gold was buried under. Lacking a shovel, the
farmer tied a bright red scarf around the bush, made the leprechaun promise not
to untie it, and ran home to get his tool. When he returned five minutes later,
the leprechaun had kept his word—the red scarf was untouched. However, the
leprechaun had also tied an identical red scarf around every single one of the
thousands of bushes in the field, making it impossible to find the
treasure.
It's worth noting that in Irish mythology, fairies do not
age or die of natural causes like humans. A leprechaun who was cast out of a
fairy mound three thousand years ago during the Iron Age is still sitting under
the same hawthorn root today, mending the exact same shoes. Because they never
die of old age, the fairy ecosystem has very little need for reproduction or
population growth.
Tuesday 9th June
A lovely sunny day.
Not wall to wall sunshine but sooo much better than we have had.
From Sneem we drove up to Kenmare and then down onto the
Beara Peninsula.
We met a large lorry on a bend with low walls either side of
us. He had no intention of reversing so Richard had to.
It was about 100 metres. We have been away
for four weeks on the narrow Irish roads and that was the first time we have
had to reverse.
Our first stop was Kilmakilloge for coffee. From the car
park we could see Bunaw Pier which is the heartbeat of the harbour. It’s where
the local fishermen land their catch.
Kilmakilloge is famous for its aquaculture, which thrives
due to the clean, nutrient-rich waters brought in by the North Atlantic Drift
(Gulf Stream).
I thought I would have a
look at how mussel farming is done and found it very interesting.
Unlike bottom-grown mussels (which are dredged from the
seabed), Kilmakilloge mussels never touch the mud. They grow suspended in the
water column, which keeps them entirely free of grit and sand. The process
follows a fascinating, natural two-year cycle.
Every summer, wild mussels spawn in the bay, releasing millions of
microscopic larvae into the water. Local farmers hang thousands of specialized,
textured "collector ropes" into the sea. The larvae look for
something solid to cling to and naturally bind themselves to these ropes.
Once the tiny "seed" mussels grow to about the size of a fingernail,
they become too crowded. Farmers pull the ropes up, clear off the seed, and use
specialized machinery to pack them loosely into long, tubular, biodegradable
cotton or recyclable mesh sleeves (called "socks"). These are hung
back down into the water from horizontal longlines.
The cotton mesh naturally rots away within
days, but by then, the mussels have used their natural byssus threads (beards)
to anchor themselves firmly directly to the heavy inner ropes. They hang there
for up to two years, safely out of reach of bottom-dwelling predators like
starfish and crabs.
The drive down to Ballydonegan Bay, where I had found a
sandy beach, was stunning.
The Beara
Peninsula is visibly and structurally the rockiest of the southwestern
peninsulas, dominated by bare, exposed stone that has been twisted, scraped,
and deeply carved over hundreds of millions of years.
Every moment was almost a wow moment!
Ballydonegan Beach is only one of a few sandy beaches on the
peninsula. The sand was coarse and difficult to walk on which is because it
isn't natural beach sand at all. It is crushed quartz rock, a direct byproduct
of the 19th-century Allihies copper mining boom. Up the valley, massive steam-powered
crushing mills ground down the mineral-rich quartz veins to extract the copper
ore. The leftover pulverized white
quartz waste ("tailings") was washed down the local river directly
into the bay. Over decades, the powerful Atlantic waves washed this sand back
up onto the shoreline, inadvertently creating a massive, smooth, white beach
where there used to be just bare rocks and shingle. And we thought it was just another beach!!
We stopped at the Dooneen Discovery Point, then the Gour
Point. Dooneen is there to commemorate the copper boom. Gour, for me, was a wow view 😃
Originally, we were going to go to the point at Dursey and
on the cable car (we love a cable car), but it was no dogs, so we dropped down
onto the south coast and along to Castletown Bere - our destination for the
night.
The local council have made 8 motorhome places in one of
their car parks. No services just dedicated spaces - but no one has told the
locals as the last space had a car parked in it. Fortunately, the owners came
back so we popped in as they drove out.
We walked into the town, well along the Main Street, and
into the harbour which is the World’s second-largest natural harbour and
protected by Bere Island. It holds the title of Ireland’s largest whitefish
port. Up to 70 Irish vessels and dozens of European boats land their
catches here weekly. The deep Atlantic waters nearby yield incredible
quantities of monkfish, hake, megrim, lobster, crab, tuna, mackerel, and
whiting.
Opposite our park up was a Chinese restaurant, so we had a
takeaway that was huge!
The What3words for Tuesday were
https://w3w.co/upswept.bump.tasty
Wednesday 10th June
It poured with rain just before we left Castletown Bere and
then it turned into a lovely day.
Our first stop was a viewpoint over Whiddy Island but the
lay-by was in the middle of some roadworks, so that was out. The next one was
at Glengarrif Harbour only Mrs Google had other ideas and we missed it
completely!
Fortunately, Mrs Google got our next stop right - it was at
Supervalu in Bantry. I just love these shops, or at least the two I have been
in. Both have been big shops, but there are lots of small ones. The fresh food
is wonderful and I just wished we had a bigger freezer onboard!
Round the other side of Bantry Harbour is a park up with
services. To get in we needed to take a ticket to go through a barrier. No
problem. Richard emptied the elsan while
I did battle with the recycling bin. It wanted 2 x €2 to open. Of course we
didn’t have any €2 coins. I got chatting to a fellow motorhomer who changed my
€1 coins for me, so I was able to get rid of the recycling. I’m sure you are
expecting an exciting end to this story!
Well, I had managed to put the parking ticket in the recycling which was
now in the money grabbing bin!! A phone
call to the office and then an intercom conversation with a man who very kindly
opened the barrier and let us out!
My friend Jem had told me about a wonderful sandy beach just
before Mizen Head, our destination for the night, called Barley Cove, so we
headed there. Hm, it now has a height barrier. I told Jem and he did
apologise! We drove on to Galley Cove
where we are able to park. As usual Rio
went berserk, charging around. We had taken the ball and we almost managed to
knacker him out!
There is an artwork at the entrance to Galley Cove to
commemorate Marconi as he made his first transatlantic call via cable from Brow
Head which overlooks the cove.
We drove to Mizen Head and parked up. There were about 10 motorhomes/campervans and
some cars. We took a stroll down to the
visitor centre but felt it was too late to walk out to the signal tower. We will do it tomorrow. Kiwi was leaning over
to one side quite a bit, so when everyone had gone and they were just three
vans left we moved to the top of the car park where it was more level.
We could see the Fastnet Rock from Kiwi. Apparently, it is
about 9 miles southeast of Mizen Head.
Because the Fastnet Lighthouse tower stands an impressive 177 feet high
on top of the rock, it is clearly visible on the southern horizon from the
Mizen Head.
I hope you enjoy this “short” history on Mizen Head. I’ve
found it fascinating. There is also a
bit about Marconi and Brow Head after the Mizen Head spiel. Today’s legend is at the end.
Unlike many coastal outposts, Mizen Head didn’t start as a
traditional lighthouse station. Its story is deeply intertwined with legendary
shipwrecks, pioneering engineering, and the birth of modern radio
communication.
By the late 19th century, the waters off West Cork were some
of the busiest—and most treacherous—shipping lanes in the world, serving as the
primary gateway between Europe and North America. It was decided to build a fog signal station
and construction was underway when, in December 1908, the SS Irada—one of the
largest cargo ships of its era at over 500 feet long—blindly ran aground on the
northern cliffs of Mizen Head during a heavy southwest gale and thick fog. In a
heroic effort, the construction foreman, Thomas Lord, and his team of workmen
rushed to the cliff edge and successfully hauled 63 crew members up the sheer
rock face to safety. The subsequent inquiry firmly blamed the disaster on the
lack of a fog signal, accelerating the completion of the station. The
station officially opened on May 3rd 1909. Because fog can blanket the headland
for days, the station relied on a manual, explosive fog signal. When
visibility dropped, the keepers had to wind up a mechanism and manually
detonate a charge of gun-cotton/dynamite every few minutes (later standardized
to two shots every five minutes). To make the buildings visible during the day,
the keepers' semi-detached dwellings were heavily whitewashed in 1914, serving
as a stark "daymark" against the dark Devonian sandstone
cliffs. To get the keepers, coal, and heavy explosive supplies from the
mainland to the isolated cliff-edge station, engineers had to span a
terrifying, 150-foot-deep sea gorge where the waves crashed violently below.
They constructed a spectacular reinforced concrete through-arch bridge.
Spanning 172 feet, it was an absolute triumph of early 20th century Irish civil
engineering and one of the first and largest pre-cast concrete structures of
its kind in the world. The aggregate used was actually crushed from the local
hard rock right on the mountainside. (Note: After nearly a century of taking
the brunt of Atlantic gales, the original bridge was replaced in 2010 with a
wider, beautifully executed replica that matches the historic design).
Mizen Head and the surrounding peninsula played a massive
role in the history of telecommunications. Nearby Crookhaven was where
Guglielmo Marconi set up his early telegraphic experiments to communicate with
passing liners and the Fastnet. Building on this heritage, Mizen Head became home to the
very first wireless Radio Beacon in Ireland, which went live on January 1st
1931. This allowed ships equipped with direction-finders to navigate safely
through the fog without relying solely on listening for the acoustic boom of
the explosives.
Mizen Head finally received its own official light on
October 1st 1959—not as a towering stone cylinder, but as a compact, powerful
beacon. The explosive charges had already been phased out in 1969, and on April
1st 1993, the station was fully automated.
Brow Head was the actual powerhouse for Guglielmo Marconi’s
early commercial wireless telegraphy empire.
Long before radio waves existed, Brow Head was the premier
vantage point for tracking Atlantic shipping. At the highest point of the
headland, the British built a square stone signal tower (one of 81 along the
Irish coast) to watch for a potential French invasion. They used an
"optical telegraph" system—a massive wooden mast with a combination
of canvas flags, pendants, and black balls raised and lowered to pass messages
down the coast. By the late 19th century, major news and insurance
entities like Reuters and Lloyd's of London took over the headland. Crookhaven
was the first port of call for liners arriving from America. Agents perched on
Brow Head would use telescopes to spot incoming ships, decipher their flag
signals, and then rush the news of transatlantic cargo, passenger lists, and
world events down to the village telegraph office to wire it to London and
Europe. Marconi realized that if he
could intercept these ships via wireless waves before they were close enough to
see flag signals, he would revolutionize global commerce. In 1901,
Marconi established a wireless station on Brow Head. In its very first months
of operation—with Marconi himself present on the headland—the station
successfully received Morse code signals sent from Poldhu in Cornwall, over 225
miles away. This completely validated his theories on how radio waves travelled
over open water.
Initially, Marconi set up a massive wireless mast down in
Crookhaven village, but he struggled to get a reliable transatlantic signal
through to America from sea level.
In 1904, his company secured a brilliant contract with the
Commissioners of Irish Lights to install wireless equipment directly on the
isolated Fastnet Rock Lighthouse. Passing transatlantic liners would send
wireless messages to the Fastnet keepers. The Fastnet would immediately
relay those messages across the water to the Marconi Station at Brow
Head. From the Brow Head cliffs, the operators would pass the messages
into the main landline telegraph network to reach shipowners, banks, and
families across Europe.
At its peak, the Brow Head station was a bustling, 24-hour
operation staffed by six radio operators working in gruelling shifts. They went
from tracking one ship at a time to handling up to six massive liners
simultaneously. The station's physical history came to a violent end
during the Irish War of Independence. On August 21, 1920, the Marconi station
at Brow Head was targeted and destroyed by fire (and reportedly explosives),
ending its era as an active wireless hub.
Today’s legend.
Just north of Mizen Head is Dunlough Castle which was home
to one of West Cork's most enduring and chilling ghost stories - The White
Lady. Local folklore dictates that the
O'Mahony clan met a tragic, violent end within the castle walls, dropping down
into the dark lake. Ever since, a spectral woman in white is said to wander the
shore of the lake and the crumbling battlements of the three towers. Unlike a
typical haunting, the White Lady of the Mizen is feared as a banshee-like omen
of death. According to local belief, she never speaks, but if a visitor catches
a direct glimpse of her reflection in the dark lake water or spots her walking
the cliffs, it foretells a fatal misfortune or an imminent death in that
person's immediate family. Because of this, locals traditionally treated the
beautiful, atmospheric ruins with a great deal of superstitious respect.
The What3words for Wednesday were
https://w3w.co/longed.rolled.dances
