Taking on Shell: the people of north Mayo don’t fool too easy

IT’S all about place, Maura Harrington says. Protect a place and it will protect its people.

For Maura the most magical place in the world is a rambling bog in the north-western tip of the island, speckled with lakes, patterned by the sweeping shadows of wind-blown clouds and nudged by the waves of the north Atlantic.

At night the sky is darkest black, undiluted by artificial glare, and every merest scrap of starlight sparkles in a display that is hard to match anywhere in Europe.