Ireland's last wilderness

Lenny Antonelli takes a ten hour hike through "the very loneliest place in Ireland" 

Outsider magazine, Spring 2013

Unlike most things, it started in a pub on Achill in January.  "How's Galway this weather?" one of the locals asked me.

"Ah fairly quiet," I said. He burst into laughter. If Galway was quiet in the dead of winter, what was Achill?

But the island is still a bustling metropolis compared to some parts of Mayo, he insisted. "Ever been to Carrowteige in north Mayo?" he asked. "It's sort of like an Alaskan outpost."

"Or have you heard of that aul' Bangor Trail? I was camping out there for a few days and had to climb a mountain just to get phone coverage to call my daughter and tell her I was still alive."

His friend piped up: "Sure what you be doing going out into all that aul' wilderness?"

We don't really do wilderness in Ireland. Stand at the top of Carrauntoohil and you're still only a couple miles from the nearest road.

But Mayo's a bit different. The road network seems sparser, and doesn't stretch to every last corner. The county boasts some of Ireland's wildest and remotest spots — like the towering cliffs of Achill's western tip, or the epic crags and isolated beaches hidden by the mountains of Mweelrea.

And then there's the Bangor Trail. An ancient route through the Nephin Beg hills of north west Mayo, the trail was once used to bring livestock across this desolate landscape.

Scour a map of Ireland for a wild, roadless tract of land and you'll be drawn to the Nephin Begs — the only big range of hills we didn't drive a road through.

"Indeed the Nephinbeg range of mountains is I think the very loneliest place in this country, for the hills themselves are encircled by this vast area of trackless bog,"  Irish naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger wrote in his 1937 book The Way That I Went —  his epic account of five years spent exploring the country.

"Where else even in Ireland will you find 200 square miles which is houseless and roadless?" he wrote. "I confess I find such a place not lonely or depressing but inspiriting. You are thrown at the same time back upon yourself and forward against the mystery and majesty of nature and you may feel dimly something of your own littleness and your own greatness."

The trail — not an official national waymarked way — starts in Newport, but the first half is mostly on road. The real Bangor Trail starts from the Brogan Carroll bothy at Letterkeen, a fairly remote mountain shelter. From here, it's 24km of wild terrain before you reach the village of Bangor Erris.

I hit the trail with local mountain guide Barry Murphy of Tourism Pure Walking.

Leaving the bothy, we cross a stream and skirt the edge of a vast conifer plantation. Barry squats down to study something beside the stream. "Otter scat," he says. "Smells like white wine."

After a few miles the plantation recedes into the background, and with it goes the last sign of modern civilisation we'll see for hours.

Ravens circle over Nephin Beg mountain up ahead as we hop streams along the trail. Though the word trail itself is a bit a euphemism: the way varies from rock to dirt to bog, most of it sopping wet.

We hike up to the Scardaun Loughs, two lakes plucked out by the ice in the U-shaped valley between 627m Nephin Beg and 721m Slieve Carr.

Slieve Carr is the highest mountain in the range. Hikers regard it as Ireland's remotest summit —it demands a serious trek just to get to its base.

The mountain was said to be the home of Daithí Bán, an 18th century highwayman who would stalk and attack travellers from the mountain. Another tale tells of a traveler who hid in the rotting corpse of a horse to avoid thieves out here.

Back on the trail, we cross a gully that shelters a lone, wind-twisted oak tree — the only native tree we see all day. Ruins of old farmsteads on the way echo a time when this was a busy trade route.

Skirting the western flank of Slieve Carr, you realise just how isolated you are: to the north there's 15km of tough terrain to Bangor Erris, to the east the mountains loom overhead with vast forestry beyond, and to the west stretches the endless Owenduff bog. Once you start the trail, there's no easy way out.

Scots pine once blanketed this landscape, but Ireland's climate got wetter about 4,000 years ago. Rain washed minerals down through the soil, forming an impermeable layer and water-logging the land. Mosses took over, the forest died and the vast bog formed. Out here, it's still forming.

Barry points to an old trail that stretches west across the bog. He was advised never to take that route "for fear of disappearing into the bog."

The biggest mistake you could make out here would be to take a shortcut across the bog — the trail has been etched out by thousands of feet over the centuries into a perfect route: low enough to avoid unnecessary climbing, but high enough to avoid deep bog.

Even on the trail we frequently plunge shin-deep into bog, but Barry insists he's never seen it this dry before.

We follow the winding course of a nameless river that emerges into the desolate Tarsaghaunmore valley.

The salmon-rich Tarsaghaunmore and Owenduff rivers that drain the vast bog are some of western Europe's last untouched waterways, rising in remote corners of the Nephin Begs and flowing straight across the bog and into the Atlantic, bypassing civilisation.

The light fades as we eat dinner on the water's edge. A farmhouse in the distance is the first sign of modern civilisation we've seen since morning.

The trail meanders over a range of low hills towards Bangor Erris for the last five miles. We put our headlamps on as night falls, but lose the trail and have to fight our way through thick scrub towards the lights in the distance. The last few miles take an eternity.

My right ankle seizes up, and I limp on through the dark. We find the trail again and — finally — stumble onto a boreen just outside the village. We've been hiking for ten hours. Looking back towards the trail, and towards the lonely Nephin Beg hills, all I can see is darkness.

Bangor Trail: Tips

Set aside a good 12 hours to hike the entire trial, and prepare to finish in the dark — bring headlamps or torches.

Tackle it after a spell of dry weather — it's extremely wet at the best of times. Not all streams on the way have bridges, so some could be very dangerous to cross after heavy rainfall.

Prepare for midges in summer — bring insect repellant.

There are shorter looped hikes in the area: the Letterkeen loop, Bothy loop and Lough Avoher loop all start at the Brogan Carroll bothy and range from 6km to 12km (www.irishtrails.ie).

Only experienced hikers who know how to use a map and compass should tackle the trail. If you don't feel experienced enough, hire a guide.

Navigation skills are crucial as the trail can be hard to follow, and marking is scarce. At grid reference F889131, make sure to turn left to follow the stream as directed by the marker, rather than following the track off to the right.

Bring good waterproof boots, rain gear, gaiters, warm clothing, lots of food and water, map and compass.

The section of the trail described, from the Brogan Carroll bothy to Bangor Erris, is covered by Ordnance Survey Ireland Discovery Series map 23. The section from Newport to the bothy is covered by map 31 of the same series.

To get to Brogan Carroll bothy, leave Newport on the N59 towards Achill but turn right after 1km towards L Feeagh/Letterkeen. After about 12km, turn left just after a bridge onto a forestry road. Follow this road for 1km to the bothy.

Ballycroy National Pak

Much of the trail runs through Ballycroy National Park, established in 1998. The park comprises 11,000 acres of blanket bog and mountain terrain.The vast Owenduff bog is one of the last intact active blanket bog systems in western Europe.

Other habitats in the park include alpine heath, upland grassland, wet and dry heath, lakes and river catchments. Animals here include mountain hare, otter, fox, badger, pygmy shrew, and bats as well as birds of prey such as kestrels, sparrowhawks and peregrine falcon. Other important bird species in the park include Greenland and white-fronted geese, and golden plover. Some of the most common bog plants include sphagnum mosses, black bog rush, purple moor grass and bog cotton.

A visitor's centre with tearooms is open during the summer in the village of Ballycroy on the N59 between Mulranny and Bangor Erris. For more information, see www.ballycroynationalpark.ie.

Stay on the Bangor Trail

This summer Mountain Meitheal volunteers constructed an Adirondack-style shelter for campers along the trail, on Coillte lands near Letterkeen wood at grid reference F938 073. The hut contains sleeping room for up to 6 people and is designed to allow people to camp without a tent (though you'll still need to bring a sleeping bag plus all your other camping supplies). It's the first in a planned series of designated camping areas as part of the Wild Nephin project — a joint initiative project between Coillte and the Natonal Parks and Wildlife Service to set aside the area as Ireland's first designated national wilderness. The construction of the hut also celebrates ten years of Mountain Meitheal.

High in the clouds in Co Mayo

Exploring the river banks and mountain passes on the Western Way

Irish Times, 14 March 2013

Mist can play tricks with mountains. Walking on the Western Way on a March morning, cloud had covered the body of Devilsmother mountain but left its summit exposed. Wrapped in cloud, you forget the mountains are there until you see a detached peak far up in the sky, higher than it ever looked before. But more often the opposite occurs: mist rubs out the tops, so you forget where the summits are and imagine you’re walking under the Alps or the Andes. The Western Way winds through Connemara and west Mayo, and I spent two days ambling on it north of Leenane. From Aasleagh waterfall, the trail heads under Devilsmother along the sandy, salmon-rich river Erriff. I met a farmer here with his sheepdog who told me he was sick of wearing wellies and asked me to recommend a brand of walking boots. Wagtails jumped between rocks on the river.

The trail leaves the waterway and enters Tawnyard forest. As I turned one corner here, frogs bounded chaotically in every direction: I had stumbled uninvited into their annual orgy. The common frog spawns in early spring – the male croaks to lure a female, then piggy-backs on her until fertilisation. But only a tiny fraction of the fertilised eggs become adults. Gradually the tadpole’s gills and tail disappear, lungs and legs form and in summer the froglet leaves the water.

I counted 22 frogs in a single puddle, but it was drying out and frogspawn lay desiccating in the mud. But most had wisely chosen deep ditches, where the males were croaking loudly.

The trail emerges to a platform overlooking Lough Tawnyard encircled by mountains, then joins a quiet stretch of twisting road cut into the mountainside. Ravens clucked over the precipices.

Walkers have two options after Sheeffry Bridge: follow the road for 5km to Drummin or head over a high pass in the hills. The latter is only for experienced hillwalkers – there is no path, only sparse waymarkers on the open mountain. The mountain route climbs to a stone wall on the hillside and follows this, then turns off right and ascends to a flat valley.

The sky was blue and bright, and I could hear the guttural and exotic sounds of a farmer commanding his sheepdog in the distance. The trail follows a stream over boggy ground up to the east side of a saddle above ice-scooped Lough Lugacolliwee. Don’t head up here if visibility is poor, and stick with the marked route - there are cliffs on the north side of the saddle, but the trail takes a safe route down to the east of the lake. Care is needed though as this section is steep and wet.

The trail follows the lakeshore and emerges to a road a little west of Drummin.

But I didn’t get that far: I had no transport from Drummin, so on my second morning on this intoxicating stretch of the Western Way, I sat looking over Lough Lugacolliwee to Croagh Patrick, then got up and started the long walk back to Aasleagh.

Map: OSI Discovery Series, 37

and 38. These may show old trail route, latest route at irishtrails.ie.

Start: Aasleagh Falls, just off the N59 northeast of

Leenane.

Finish: For Drummin, turn off the N59 about between Leenane and Westport at Liscarney. Turn at Drummin church for shop/pub.

Suitability: Erriff and Tawnyard forest are easy but remote. Lough Lugacolliwee route is a moderate mountain walk for experienced hillwalkers.

Wildest Dublin

Lenny Antonelli walks the Dublin Mountains Way, one of Ireland's newest long-distance trails

Irish Times, 5 January, 2013

I went to Dublin seeking wild landscapes, not really expecting to find any. Living on the west coast I usually don’t travel far for this sort of thing. Going to Dublin to find mountains felt incongruous. Zig-zagging over the hills from Tallaght to Shankill, the Dublin Mountains Way is two years old. I started from the trailhead at Seán Walsh Park, Tallaght, aiming to make Glencullen by sunset. The trail skirted housing estates, then dropped me into comparative wilderness around the Bohernabreena reservoir, where the river Dodder was damned in the 1880s and wooded hills fall to the lakeshore.

This valley is also home to orchid-rich grassland and petrifying springs, where lime-rich water rises from the ground and deposits calcium carbonate in a white, crunchy coating.

The trail brought me into the hills, looking over to lime and rust-coloured slopes on Seahan and Corrig mountains. Walkers need to be cautious as this section is on narrow, windy roads.

I expected Celtic Tiger mansions up here and there were some. But it was mostly old stone cottages, hay sheds, farm yards and signs warning that dogs worrying sheep would be shot.

This valley – Gleann na Smól, glen of the thrushes – was one of the last places in which the Irish language survived near Dublin.

Heavy mist pressed down on the hills as I climbed. And though I couldn’t see them, I was surrounded by mountains.

The trail entered the Featherbed forest, but the name felt euphemistic as it crossed felled planation. I felt like a lone survivor in the aftermath of some brutal apocalypse, surveying a landscape of decaying tree stumps, black pools, churned peat and a few limbless trees. It reminded me of the writer Tim Robinson’s description of clear-felled forest in Connemara as “frozen at a moment of maximum horror”.

But soon I entered the forest at Cruagh, passing a mossy stone bearing an inscription to the naturalist HC Hart, who in 1886 bet a colleague that he could walk the 111km from Terenure to the summit of Lugnaquilla in Wicklow and back within 24 hours.

He won, returning to Terenure with 10 minutes to spare. The trail followed rows of mature spruce trees, heather, mosses, and flowering gorse.

I went up Tibradden Mountain and towards the summit of Two Rock, the way’s highest point. Writer and nationalist Stephen Gwynn described this area as “bare and lonely, as devoid of any suggestion of a great city’s nearness as even Connemara could show”. This is what I had come looking for, but I could only see a few metres of the trail rising into the clouds ahead of me.

Soon a gust of wind blew off the clouds to reveal Fairy Castle, Two Rock’s summit tomb, and the orange glow of the city below.

The trail brought me towards the huge transmitters at Three Rock. Writing in 1780, the artist Gabriel Beranger reckoned the mountain’s distinctive rock clusters were altars built to offer sacrifices. They are, in fact, natural granite formations.

But I was in trouble: the walk had taken longer than planned and the sky was blackening, so I donned a headlamp and high-vis jacket to descend Ticknock forest in the dark. The final stretch into Glencullen on country roads in the dark was the most treacherous bit of my walk – without a headlamp I’d have been in serious trouble.

The lesson? Walking from Tallaght to Glencullen is probably too much at this time of year – if you want to walk this route in winter, tackle it over multiple days, or just pick a sub-section.

Dublin Mountains Way

Map : Get trail maps from dublinmountains.ie (the DMW route can change). OSI Discovery Series Map 50 covers the area but shows an old DMW route. East West Mapping also publishes Dublin Mountains map.

Start : DMW trailhead in Seán Walsh Park off Kiltipper Road, a short walk from the Tallaght Luas stop. Or start anywhere along the route.

Finish : Johnny Foxes pub, Glencullen.

Time and distance : Tallaght to Glencullen is 20 miles with lots of ascending. Seven to 10 hours.

Route : Walking Tallaght-Glencullen in daylight during winter is a big challenge. Suitability: Bring food, water, rain gear and warm clothes, hiking boots, map, compass, high vis clothing and a torch/head lamp.

Take a walk on the Grand side

LENNY ANTONELLI walks a quiet section of the Grand Canal in Kildare

Irish Times, 15 December 2012

The Grand Canal Way is a rarity in Ireland: a long-distance walk that’s almost entirely off-road, stretching from Adamstown in west Dublin to Shannon Harbour, Co Offaly.

The section between Hazelhatch and Sallins is a perfect microcosm of it – a half day’s walk between two towns serviced by a railway whose own history is entangled in that of the canal.

I set out from Hazelhatch, where houseboats line the channel. This must be Dublin’s most chaotic and inspiriting row of homes: the barges are cream, red and highlighter blue, fat and slim, tall and squat. The towpath is decorated with bicycles, tables, old kayaks, wheelie bins, solar panels and wooden sculptures. Smoke rises from their chimneys, but nobody emerges from below deck, so I walk on.

Work began on the Grand Canal in 1756 in Clondalkin. But progress was slow, and it took more than two decades before the 20km channel to Sallins was open. Further west, the immense Bog of Allen almost sunk the project when clay walls built to support it failed. The Grand Canal finally reached the Shannon in 1803, but the age of fast rail travel was looming.

For those who normally walk the mountains or coast, the canal is an entirely different creature. While hillwalking is adventurous, canal-walking is ponderous – you needn’t worry about navigation or the terrain here, the towpath just carries you endlessly forwards. But our canals play a crucial ecological role, linking up rivers and lakes that would otherwise be isolated. And their landscape makes you pay attention for its subtler rewards, like a moorhen hiding in the sedges, or bubbles breaking on the water’s surface, perhaps released by a tench eating grubs on the floor of the canal.

Like a forgotten thoroughfare it sneaks behind fields and country estates. It’s hidden from Kildare’s modern commuter towns, and has an architecture all of its own. I passed steep stone bridges, derelict lock-keeper’s cottages, and an old canal-side church and school at Ardclough. I walked by the old Lyons demesne, with its immense Georgian manor, and Oughterard, where Arthur Guinness is buried and Daniel O’Connell killed John D’Esterre in a pistol duel in 1815. Bring a map though: often these features are behind high walls or rows of ivy-wrapped trees.

About half way to Sallins, the light started to disintegrate. Colour drained from the landscape, leaving only the black trees and the shadows they cast on the inky water. Walking in the half-light was thrilling, though, and dead silent except when my presence sent terrified birds screaming from the trees.

Soon I passed under the railway bridge just before Sallins. The Grand Canal Company fought the building of the railways, and this bridge proved pivotal: once the Great Southern and Western Railway Company won the right to bridge the canal in the 1840s, the rail network could stretch out to Cork, Limerick and Galway. Just two decades later, the mass transport of people and goods on the canal was finished.

WALK THE GRAND CANAL WAY

Map : OSI, Discovery Series, Sheets 49 and 50. Downloadable maps of the Grand Canal Way at  (see also for train times).

Start : Hazlehatch Bridge, 600m from Hazelhatch and Celbridge rail station.

Finish : Trail ends at Sallins.

Time and distance : 12.6km. Takes four hours if you want to explore slowly.

Suitability : Easy. Bring food, water and warm, waterproof clothes and footwear.

Rail services: On the Dublin-Kildare line, with trains leaving Heuston station frequently.

Dizzying Donegal

LENNY ANTONELLI explores the seascapes of Gleann Cholm Cille

Irish Times, 27 October 2012

DRIVING IN FROM the bog above, Gleann Cholm Cille appears like a Greenlandic outpost, a scatter of low buildings enclosed by sea and mountain. A web of bog tracks takes you into the hills north of the village – a branch from one leads to an early 19th-century lookout tower, on the 220m cliffs at Glen Head.

Local teacher Thomas McGinley found this height too great to comprehend the sea below. “Both vision and hearing fail . . . at this awful altitude,” he wrote.  McGinley walked this coast in the 19th century, documenting its wildlife and history. The Derry Journal published his notes weekly under the pen-name Kinnfaela, and later collected them in a book The Cliff Scenery of South Western Donegal.

I abandon the trail at the tower and follow the coast. Soon the cliffs indent sharply and the ground drops steeply to a small valley – move inland to cross the valley safely and rejoin the cliffs on the other side.

Up ahead the coast cuts out to sea at a right angle – this is the Sturrall, a vertical headland where locals once picked edible rock samphire, McGinley wrote. Some even descended the cliff to gather seaweed on the shore far below.

His book tells the story of a rector’s son who planned to swipe eggs from an eagle’s nest on the Sturrall. Locals warned against it, but this hardened the lad’s ambition, and he raved about the idea in his sleep. One night he sleepwalked up to the cliffs and strode out the Sturrall through wind and rain. The next morning he told his mother he had dreamt of robbing the nest, and she promptly handed him the eggs he’d brought back in the night.

Following the cliffs, the terrain shifts from dry heather to muddy bog to a forest of dead ferns. Two choughs let out laser-like calls above me – these red-billed crows live along our western coasts, but their numbers are declining.

Soon a track leads down to the shore at Port, a ruined settlement that was home to a few shepherds during the 19th century. Nearby in 1870 a storm sunk the Sydney, a cargo ship taking timber from Quebec to Scotland. Four of the 19 dead are buried at Port.

I climb up Port Hill along the cliffs for a view of Tormore, Ireland’s highest sea stack. Local folklorist Seán O’Heochaidh told a story of the stack: Jack Mór climbed it to hunt seabirds during the famine. He met another man on the same mission, and both filled their bags with birds. But Jack Mór weakened on his way down and couldn’t carry on. The other man went for help, but a great storm blew in. Jack Mór was stranded for a fortnight. When his rescuers arrived, there was nothing left of Jack but his bones. It was said these could still be seen on the side of Tormore 70 years later.

Daylight was against me and it was time to head back down to Port, where the bog track offers a different return route to Gleann Cholm Cille. Since setting out, the valleys had grown progressively more remote: first Gleann Cholm Cille itself, then the backwater of Port, and now ahead of me was Glenlough, with ruined cottages that no road reaches.

The American painter, Rockwell Kent, stayed at Glenlough in 1926 while painting this coast. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, spent a summer there too, trying to wean himself off alcohol by walking and writing. But the black nights and isolation got to him, and in letters to a friend he recalled encounters with Count Antigarlic, “a strange Hungarian gentleman . . . coming down the hill in a cloak lined with spiders”. The local poitín may have gone to his head.

Map: Ordnance Survey Ireland, Discovery Series, Sheet 10.

Start finish: We parked in the townland of Beefan, just north of the village, joining the bog track around grid reference G 524 858.

Route: My walk followed sections of various official trails, starting on the Tower Loop. The bog track from Port back to Glencolmcille is part of the long distance Slí Cholmcille, and also joins the local Drum Loop. Seeirishtrails.iefor details.

There is a map board of local loops at the walking centre in the village. Do not attempt a shortcut back to the start point by going off trail across Beefan and Garveross Mountain – its south face is extremely steep.

Suitability: Inexperienced walkers should keep to the marked trails and avoid open mountain and cliff. Utmost care and attention required. Stay inside the intermittent fence. Map, warm clothes, good boots, rain gear, packed lunch, food and water needed. Compass and navigation skills required if heading off trail.

Time: Six to seven hours for my route, or four for both local loops.

Distance: My route was about 19km. Combing both local loops is 13km.

Services: Shop, food and accommodation in Glencolmcille.

The Blasket Islands

Irish Times, 29 September 2012

LENNY ANTONELLI walks Great Blasket and its lesser-known smaller cousins

OF ALL IRISH islands, Inishnabro offers its rare visitor the grandest entrance. We climb from our ferry into a dinghy and search for a landing spot among the steep rock. Suddenly a sea arch appears, and our boatman steers through it to a hidden cove. We hop out onto the wet rock and up a steep gully to the grassy slopes above.

Inishnabro is one of the Blasket Islands, those last half-drowned scraps of Ireland before the open Atlantic. Much has been written about Great Blasket, home to authors Peig Sayers and Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, which was evacuated in 1953. But little is said of neighbouring islands such as Inishnabro and Inishtooskert.

Without animals to graze it, Inishnabro’s flora seems primeval, a kaleidoscope of colour and texture unseen elsewhere. Its upper slopes are thick with purple heather, spongy sea pink and yellow goldenrod. We hike to the 175m summit, on the north face where the land drops into the sea in a kilometre-long stretch of grassy cliffs.

In 1973, private space flight pioneer Gary Hudson proposed building a spacecraft launchpad here, and said the idea was backed by an astronaut “who walked on the moon”. But according to a memo, a Department of Foreign Affairs official feared the idea could be a “gigantic leg pull”.

But we can’t linger here – we must get to the next island before sea conditions get worse. At Inishtooskert we land on the steep, rocky shore. The odd sight of strangers sends sheep, which are grazing above us, scurrying up a precipitous ridge.

In his book The Blaskets: A Kerry Island Library, Muiris Mac Conghail describes how sheep were taken off Inishtooskert. The men would “pull and and jump with the sheep down the cliff edge, almost becoming in the act sheep themselves”, then embark on the “long row home with a heavy boat with up to 15 sheep tied together”.

We hike up to the island’s highest point, a 172m north-facing cliff, then down to an early Christian oratory and beehive hut, on the south slopes, whose past is grizzly. Tomás and Peig O Catháin were living here around 1850 when a storm cut the island off for six weeks. Tomás died and his body putrified, but his wife was too weak to remove the corpse. There was no other shelter on the island, so she dismembered the body and removed the pieces.

When neighbours from Great Blasket could finally visit, the “woman was alone, nearly dead from hunger, and a maniac”, wrote archaeologist George Du Noyer.

Our boat drops us at Great Blasket next, near the sands of An Trá Bán. The island is essentially a long mountain ridge, and green roads let you explore its wild spine.

Great Blasket’s summit lies near its remote western tip, out of sight of any civilisation, modern or extinct.

From here you have a clear view to the sheer pyramid of Tearaght, the most westerly Blasket and Ireland’s most westerly island, with a lighthouse that clings for dear life to the cliff face.

Tearaght “appears as an astonishing distant rock”, wrote Joan and Ray Stagles in The Blasket Islands: Next Parish America. “More fantasy than reality, far out in the Atlantic, a final punctuation mark to Europe.”

Blaskets

Map : Ordnance Survey Discovery Series 70.

Getting there: Various boat operators including blasketislands.ie, dinglebaycharters.ie

Routes: Inishnabro and Inishtooskert are small so finding the highest point is straightforward. To get to the Great Blasket summit follow the green roads from the village west to Slievedonagh and walk the island’s ridge.

Distance and time: About 12km on the three islands: roughly four hours on the islands and six at sea. Suitability: Our boatman insisted he would only land experienced walkers here.

Photo available from Wikimedia Commons and may be reused according to terms of GNU Free Documentation License

Ireland bailout: Young Irish flee 'Celtic Tiger' for a better life

CS Monitor, 21 November 2010 Young Irish, in particular, hope that the economic cycle makes just one more click – and that emigration isn't their only option. But amid news of the Ireland bailout, some aren't waiting around.

By Jason Walsh, with additional reporting by Lenny Antonelli

Dublin, Ireland

While top European officials and Ireland’s beleaguered politicians work out the details of an Ireland bailout package meant to save the country from collapse, the Irish Main Street is reeling, desperate for some sense of stability and a glimmer of hope that some semblance of the roaring “Celtic Tiger” will return.

The boom years that began here in the mid-1990s and made Ireland the envy of Europe for its rapid growth and virtual full employment are over. Today, unemployment, personal debt, and a lack of optimism dominate the country. The Irish have come to terms with accepting a life preserver in the form of European Union and International Monetary Fund aid, which may reach $120 billion. Still, many are bracing themselves for a wave of austerity cuts that have already swept Europe.

public services, including the unemployment benefits and, according to some sources, retirement pensions that many are now relying on.

Young Irish adults in particular are expressing deep concerns about their futures. Andrew Murphy, a recent university graduate, has taken an internship at the European Commission in Brussels and doubts he will find permanent work at home.

“I’d like to come back to Dublin; I’d like to get a job in Ireland. I like living there. I still think it’s a good country. It’s kind of a strange feeling having left Ireland and knowing that even if I wanted to go back perhaps I couldn’t, perhaps I couldn’t find a job,” he says.

Ruth McNally, another recent graduate, is living on unemployment benefits. “My friends thought they definitely weren’t going to get jobs, but I was more positive and I thought, ‘We’ll be fine, we’ll get something.’ But then there didn’t seem to be anything. I couldn’t find anything.”

Ms. McNally says her friends are all “pretty much” in the same position. “Two of my friends are going to teach English in Korea.”

Despair and humiliation

Indeed, there is a sense of despair that has taken hold here and a feeling of humiliation among many as Ireland seeks help from the rest of Europe.

“There is a very real sense of shame at the failures of government and the business class,” says novelist Gerry Feehily, a native of County Donegal who now lives and works in Paris. During good times, Ireland, for the first time in its history, was a destination for migrants seeking to make their fortune. Now, Ireland is again supplying labor to the rest of the world.

According to government statistics, unemployment is now above 13 percent and 27,700 people left the country in the first four months of this year, more than anytime since 1989. An estimated 5,000 Irish people leave every month, an increase of 81 percent on figures from 2009.

Things are so tough that even labor unions are telling members about prospects abroad. “As a result of the downturn we’re finding that a lot of members are finding it hard to get work and many are considering immigrating to the United States, Canada, and Australia,” says Sean Heading, spokesman for TEEU, a union for engineers and technicians.

‘Ghost estates’

The most striking aspect of the bust is the collapse of the housing market. Not only are houses not being sold, the Irish landscape is now littered with so-called “ghost estates,” housing complexes that are sparsely inhabited and often unfinished.

Architect Dominic Stevens says government policy fueled a boom in house building that could never be kept going. “As late as 2008 the average new house price was €375,000; €120,000 of that went straight into the government’s pockets in taxes and levies,” he says.

“These were being built for reasons that had nothing to do with making homes for people. In [rural County] Leitrim you had estates that were populated entirely by people working on building other estates,” he said.

An estimated 280,000 homes are unoccupied in the country, 23,000 of which are new homes that have never been lived in.

For homeowners who bought before the real estate bubble burst, foreclosure is a growing concern. In early November, the government reported that 1 in 10 Irish mortgage holders is failing to keep up with payments.

Michael Culloty, a spokesperson for the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, an Irish charity that provides independent advice to people with financial problems, says that people are seeking advice but that widespread foreclosures have not yet begun.

“We’re currently experiencing an increase in the volume of people we see,” he says. “People are getting into difficulty with consumer debt in particular.”

Mr. Culloty says the banks have not yet begun to force people out of their homes in large numbers: “Most people are hanging in there.”

Not all commentators paint the same picture. Economist Morgan Kelly wrote that mass home repossessions were on the horizon. “If you thought the bank bailout was bad, wait until the mortgage defaults hit home,” he wrote in the Irish Times.