Rebel City walking: Discovering Cork on foot

Dr. Ethel Crowley is a sociologist and writer. She took to the streets of Cork during lockdown and discovered little pockets of happiness there

The Echo Boy on Patrick's Street, Cork. Picture Ethel Crowley

I love maps: the old-fashioned kind. I spread my map of Cork city out on the kitchen table and decide, mug of tea in hand, what new route to try today within my allowed 5kms. Being denied foreign travel, new cities are off-limits, so I try to find new elements in the familiar, to create a little spark that will sustain me for now.

The city as we know it is so different these days, so my approach to it has to be different too. I can’t go shopping - the commercial function is paused – so I have to look elsewhere for little pockets of happiness. But how do you do that in such eerily empty streets?

The approach that works for me in these very challenging times is to give myself a little project. I plan different routes and I can then convince myself that my walk has a purpose, rather than just aimless wandering. I seek out the little things that make Cork unique. The historical legacy of the streetscapes is more visible when it is so quiet. If something piques my interest, clinging to my mind like a stubborn little burr, it has never been easier to research it afterwards.

Entertaining art works from the PROC & Mad About Cork Picture: Ethel Crowley

The novelist Virginia Woolf wrote about walking in London in 1927. She wrote that when we walk we “become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one’s room.” Indeed. We know all about solitude these days. In fact, I find that people are less blasé and more open to casual chats with strangers like myself, especially if they have a dog for me to fawn over. Walking is also a tonic for the head; it provides the right pace and rhythm for exploring the hinterland of your thoughts.

Woolf’s writer’s instincts lead her to develop what she termed “a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye”, which “floats us smoothly down a stream”. However, when she seized upon a precious moment that made her pause, she likened it to “impeding our passage down the smooth stream by catching at some branch or root”.

In a similar spirit, I adopt a sort of detached photographic approach, sometimes literally and other times metaphorically. I pretend that my mind is a camera, on the hunt for a good image, however tiny or apparently insignificant the subject. It can be the tiniest thing. After all, most of life is made up of tiny things; whether a kind word from a stranger or an elevated, dreamy moment with a piece of street art. They shine a little light on your day. If I bring my camera, I bring home images like a little basket of treasures to enjoy later: old ghost signs high on city walls, the painted power-boxes around the city or the ever-changing light glinting on the river.

The Kingfisher mural on Lavitt’s Quay, Cork. Picture Ethel Crowley

Each street is like a bookshelf to me, containing portals to other worlds. A second-hand bookshop is next to a tattoo parlour is next to a hardware shop is next to a charity shop: endless entertainment and potential for surprise. A Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant in an anonymous black box is a few streets away from a productive garden on the roof of a multi-story car park. And it is always possible for an otter to pop up its beautiful head out of the Lee. My day is made when that happens.

The people are also entertaining, of course. For example, I hear so much Spanish as I walk along, that I sometimes imagine that I am in Cádiz rather than Cork. I imagine the places they came from and their back-stories. I really hope it works out for them here, as they must miss home so much. From its industrial trading past to its reinvented future, Cork is eternally beguiling.

More people are walking the streets than ever before. Some are also jogging: the less said about that, the better. Outside some cafés like Myo, you find little knots of human connection, with people huddled around takeaway coffee cups and the warmth of each other’s company.

Shandon Bridge, facing the Coal Quay, Cork city. Picture: Ethel Crowley

Some routes I have taken (with Himself) during the past number of weeks have been: around Shanakiel, Strawberry Hill and Blarney Street; up Richmond Hill through Young Offenders territory on Bell’s Field and on to Collins Barracks; Albert Quay, the Elysian Tower and Shalom Park; Wellington Road to St. Luke’s Cross towards Montenotte; Shandon, obviously.

I hope that the pandemic will help us to reset our priorities. I don’t want to live in a doughnut city of suburban shopping malls and a commercial and cultural wasteland in the centre. The architectural heritage is not to be messed with – planners seem to be having an affair with glass and steel at present. Everybody knows that affairs don’t last. The future is up to all of us. The planners of the city of the future need to prioritise enabling human connection, which we are all missing so much right now.

When the city is happily peopled again after the vaccine rollout, I will return to all my favourite places: the English Market (especially Coffee Central), Vibes and Scribes bookshop, Izz Café, The Idaho Café, De Calf Café, Cork Coffee Roasters. And the pubs. Callanan’s: be ready. These are all locally-owned businesses; these people are our friends and we need to support them – because that’s what friends do.