A Quiet Corner of Ireland

County Cavan, a lowland county, projects North West into more hilly territory, a strip that runs along the border with Northern Ireland. Much of the border along this stretch runs through a pair of loughs, Upper and Lower Lough MacNean. Almost all of the lower lough is in the North, but the Upper Lough is evenly divided, and it contains some islands on its eight mile stretch. The isthmus between the two lakes contains a few drumlins, and these glacial features characterize the landscape in the region.  

The road that runs south of the Upper  Lough heads for Sligo twenty six miles away, and the theological college where I studied for a while [now closed and used for a succession of different purposes] stood by a broad headland projecting into the Upper Lough.Though in Cavan, we were but a hundred metres from County Leitrim, and my walking took me often into that county. 

Having come from a theological college in London, under the flight path for Heathrow Airport and near the Great West Road I had been starved of silence by the incessant rumblings of planes and traffic throughout the day and night. In North West Ireland I got silence in abundance. I would stroll down to the lough, sit by its gently wavy waters and think, with my eyes scanning over the islands to the low, green and soft  hills of County Fermanagh. 

The view south of the college was delightful. The bulk of Cuilcagh, through whose misty, peat-covered summit the border with Northern Ireland ran along an ill-defined route, stood powerfully. There were few dwellings on that mountain, and at night only occasional specks of light freckled its darkened slopes. There was also the Glenfarne Plateau, named from the village at its foot, lower than Cuilcagh and not technically a mountain, being but fourteen hundred feet, it was wild land on which few trod for any but necessity: a truly lonely place with few paths to its peaty summit. 

But besides panorama, the small sights matter. As Autumn fell on the land the hedges were spangled with spiders' webs. Webs of the veil web spider, they are constructed around plant stems and form a pyramid that sometimes appears diamond shaped. The hedges were full of them, and the dew glistened in myriad  crystal droplets along their skeins. Thinking of Scripture, one reflects "Not even Solomon in his glory was arrayed as one of these." In September the hedges held blackthorn berries: they look nice, but they dry your mouth to the point that you feel you have been chewing sandpaper. 

The day was glistening bright and the sun was warm. It must have been April or May, as there was no rain, and in the year when I dwelt in Ireland it rained every day in March, either a shower or a full day's downpour. But that's Ireland, and we love it. 

The route is straight and uneventful, but that's part of the joy. I walked down with Cuilcagh on my left and the Glenfarne Plateau on my right. A few cottages stood silently besides the road, but the bulk of the route was small fields. I saw one person, a  farmer who waved from his field, but heard the sound of wild geese skeins as they flew towards the lough. I think that the farmer was glad of human contact in his lonely occupation. "Dia Duich" is the greeting [pronounced jia vich] to which the reply is "Dia duich le Pairig.  [God with you, the reply being God and Patrick with you.] 

Somewhere on the slopes of Cuilcagh above there is Shannon Pot, the limestone fissure from which bubbles the stream which will gather Ireland's waters to itself to become the mighty, gently flowing, but powerful Shannon that wends its way through a string of lakes down to its estuary dividing the counties Limerick and Clare.The pot is not on the road, but up the slopes, so it was on another day that I set out for it. Enjoy, but stay out of the water. Divers have descended,  but have been forced to retreat, as parts of a limestone chamber deep down seemed unstable and therefore unsafe.

This is not a high excitement route. Its joy is in its peace, which allows time for reflective walkers to ponder as they go. But there is beauty in the interplay of mountain, cloudscapes and sound. It is a boggy land, so there is little stone for the streams to flow over, and thus the sound is accessible only to an ear that is keen to listen, and that's part of the experience. The occasional lowing of cattle and the honking of wild geese play their part in the symphony. But the ever-changing cloudscapes of the North West of Ireland are the dancers that perform to the gentle symphony of cattle, birds and water.

The circular route back would have been too long, so I retrace my steps and am back in time for prayers and supper. I have seen the majesty of Lough Allen, but time has prevented a full exploration. I long to return and now that I am retired there is nought to stop me. Soon, hopefully!

Cuilcagh is a moody mountain. It broods above the valley from its dark, boggy heights, but underneath it is riddled with the limestone caves of Marble Arch, and the mysterious water flows from which the Shannon is born lie beyond the ken of humans. 

Once in February we were enjoying a spell of crystal clear weather. The previous week the Atlantic-borne snow had suddenly smothered the West and it still lingered atop the summit. But the air was crystal and still, free of clouds, like a diamond in its stark clarity. I was walking down to Enniskillen, hitching lifts as I went. As I passed Lower Lough Macnean I looked over to the lowering bulk of Cuilcagh, to see that in the still, windless crystaline air that the whole mountain was mirrored in the lough, a picture of perfect symmetry, dark slopes over-topped with white snows perfectly reflected. But I had no camera, so this is a memory that I can only communicate in words for your imagination to work on. And here's the problem. There are so few pictures of this overlooked patch of Ireland that I have had to scour for what I can find. Sorry folks. Words will have to do.

Yet I have known Cuilcagh when the mist settled across the boggy summit. The mountain turned dangerous, as there are few landmarks in its featureless wilderness. Eventually we found a cottage high on the slopes, where an old woman and man dwelt, having reared their six children only for them to go to America. They welcomed company and we shared some tea with them ere they gave us directions down the hill. What I recall is that the old woman was still using a spinning wheel. For half an hour we were getting a glimpse of an older Ireland. It was memorable.  

"Who'd want to live in Leitrim? It's misty and wet" an Irish woman asked me dumbfounded when I told her that I liked the county. She was one who had left school and headed straight for the ferry to England. Yet there is a charm to the region that ignited a fire in my soul which has never been quenched. My wife's mother's family are from Mayo, but her maiden name, O'Rourke, is  the clan whose origins were in that county. 

I have never been to the summit of the Glenfarne Plateau, which is also variously named the Ben [the mountain] or Englishman's Mountain, in memory of an Englishman who tried to bring employment to the area by sinking pits to mine the thin coal measures that still survive on the summit. The mountain differs from Cuilcagh as it is sandstone overlain by coal measures. They were ultimately unprofitable and closed, unable to compete with the mass produced coal from England and the Irish preference for peat fires. Yet I have walked the boggy slopes encircling the plateau, if you can call stumbling through tussocky grass and clambering over raised bogs walking. It was there that I espied a mountain hare, the only hare species in Ireland, shoot past me as if to assert its domination in terrain where men stumble. The summit  is genuinely wild land, a small mountain top wilderness of bog and heather. While I was there the farms were beset by a wild dog pack that had formed on the plateau and were killing sheep. We lost eight of our twenty five sheep  in one night. The farmers got together and went across the plateau on a wild dog hunt. I was not involved, but farming can be a hard business at times, and it should not be romanticized. 

The vixen who called her mate from the plantation above the college will now be gone, but her descendants will still be calling. The wild geese will still settle by the lough and make nests on the islets. The pike will lurk in the reeds; the blackthorn will still be purple on the stem; and the veil web spider will still bejewel the Autumn hedges. There is a longing on me to return.