West Cork in a ray of Mediterranean glory

FRIDAY, Saturday and Sunday, July 14 to 18, was the best weekend for horse-racing on the sandbanks or lazing on the beach for this or many a year.

On the Sunday afternoon, race day at Courtmacsherry’s “undiscovered gem of the West Cork coast” — as the brochures have it — the street was thronged with people in shorts and suntans, horses decanting from horse boxes, jockeys in white jodhpurs and starry shirts, and yet more horses returning, foam-flecked, from their ferocious gallop along the sands.

The commentary on a tannoy speaker, flowing as fast at the horses galloped, relayed the excitement of the race and bookies chalked their odds under umbrellas and straw hats in the 28C bright sunlight of the afternoon.

Our Canarian visitors, two young girls — who, the week before had thought that West Cork was the nearest thing to Antarctica and had appeared one day in woollen scarves and gloves — now admitted that the climate in Ireland could be every bit as pleasant as that of their ‘preciosa’ La Gomera.

They stood in out of the sun. One girl, a redhead, with freckles, could well be Irish, while the other is a real Visigoth, with typical Spanish features, olive skin, dark eyes and hair. The Canarians call the mainlanders “Godos” (Goths), a not always complimentary nickname; they themselves are proud to be Guanches, whose ancestors were mountain Berbers from North Africa. These crossed to the islands in two waves in the first millennium and found their new home so pleasant that, having no need to travel further, they lost the skill of making boats.

The fact that one of the girls, and her father, an old friend or ours, are red-haired, pale-skinned and freckled, may go to prove the film-maker Bob Quinn’s theory of blood kinship between the Irish and the Berbers — based on the similarity of sean nós singing and the unaccompanied singing of North Africa.

By extension, such distant kinship might, therefore, exist between the Irish and the native people of La Gomera, who claim to have the purest strain of Guanche blood of all the Canarian islanders, and to be the least adulterated by the colonising Spanish Visigoths.

Meanwhile, as the sun continued to shine, the beaches at the Seven Heads were thronged over the weekend and into the following week, and it was hard to find parking within half a mile of some. “Fresh,” might be a kind way of describing the water temperature but there were dozens of bathers in the sea and all seemed to amuse themselves without a wince or a whine. For myself, I could pleasurably spend 20 minutes immersed at Dunworley, where the open Atlantic rolls in, and 40 minutes in the coves at Courtmacsherry, where the water is almost as warm as the sea around the Canary Islands in winter. But, of course, the La Gomera girls wouldn’t venture in — they don’t swim in their local seas in winter and think foreigners must be dumb and numb for doing so.

Meanwhile, most evenings my 19- year-old son and his friends, younger and numb-er than I am, headed off after their summer jobs to swim in the sea at sunset, and dash in and out of the water until dark. Skim-boarding is the flavour of the summer of 2006. However, while I could, of course, skim the surf with the grace of a ballerina, I don’t think it would be fair to embarrass the lads with my Hawaii expertise. Skim-boarding is, I think, akin to playing the bagpipes and, as Oscar Wilde said: “Any gentleman can play the bagpipes, but doesn’t.” Besides, there is already sufficient overcrowding in A&E.

On weekend evenings, après-races or après-beach, the village street was positively Riviera, all skimpy clothes and oiled limbs, shining with après-sun cream. Al fresco drinkers clustered like amoeba around pub tables beside the street, and residents held garden parties on their seaside lawns. Oh, yes, West Cork in its summer glory can equal the Meditteranean or any Canary island, indeed surpass them! Sunlight, green fields, 28C, and fresh breezes. Will the Gomero girls dare to whisper the truth when they get home?