Sunshine a good excuse for walking

I HAVE been revisiting walking routes for which I wrote guides over the years for a Selected Walks of West Cork to be published by Collins Press in Spring 2011.

Some, but by no means all, have changed. The Celtic Tiger boom transformed some country roads into suburbs lined with houses where, 10 years ago, there were hedges of gorse and sceacs. These days are, of course, magnificent walking weather. Those of us follicly challenged – bald or part bald – have to reach for the sun-block or else wear a cap like a Kerry independent politician, a sweaty business in the heat of the midday sun.

The Sunday before last we set out from Aghadown church on the Skibbereen to Ballydehob road and walked down the valley of the Roaring Water River. Alongside the impressive church, with its beautiful stained glass windows, stands Kilcoe National School, built in 1897. Ten years ago the surroundings were much like those of the rural school described by Goldsmith in The Deserted Village, “... Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way. With blossom’d furze unprofitably gay .... ” The hedge is now gone, but furze still blooms on the hillside behind.

Two large Irish yews, probably as old as the school, sprouted through the asphalt in the yard. They, too, are gone, knocked in a storm. Yews are slow growing and may live 1,000 years; perhaps wind velocity has increased with climate change. The dark leaves and red berries are poisonous; yews are typically grown in enclosed yards and churchyards so that animals cannot eat them. All Irish yews are female, and their needles curve. Longbows of yew made English archers the long-range artillery of medieval wars. The iron rings set into the outside of the church wall were hitching rings for the horses and donkeys of churchgoers. They survive and, indeed, are ‘featured’, being painted in silver.

The river gurgles on the left of the road, descending in small cataracts through breaks of hazel, goat willow and alder. In shallow swamps where the river seasonally overflows, marsh marigolds grow in carpets, their big, bright yellow, buttercup-like flowerheads lighting up the shade.

Reaching the creek where the Roaring Water River runs into the bay of a hundred islands that bears its name, the scene was idyllic, with two bathers, brave women who had taken to the water in honour of the weather, drying themselves on the ancient quay. The sea, they said, was freezing, but the day so warm that they could not resist. Here and there, white scurvy grass and sea pinks were in flower, harbingers of the multitudes that will bloom before long. On long-ago Sundays, mass-goers would row in from the islands. moor at the quay and trudge uphill to the parish church, now in ruins, above the creek.

Standing near the water’s edge, under an escarpment bright with gorse, is a small, corrugated-iron cabin, painted rose, with a stone well alongside and a track leading to the mouths of some small caves, once the entrance to copper mines.

Presently it looks dilapidated; some extensions are in progress. It was once the modest home of a German scholar whose many interests included studying choughs, sketching Stone Age sites, drawing wild mushrooms and exploring connections between the myths of Siegfried (of Mozart’s opera) and the progress of the stars. In the tiny interior, all necessities for life and work were at hand. The tenant might well have been a latter-day Thoreau, and this creek his Walden Pond.

The absolute peace, the bright sun and the still, brown water tempted us to dawdle and to sample the water in the well, said to have curative powers and still used by locals and people who come from afar.

We missed, also, the St Patrick’s Cabbage – a pretty saxifrage that bears no resemblance to the vegetable that goes so well with bacon – which grew robustly along the gable of what was a fine, traditional farmhouse beside a little stone bridge, since become a formidable Des Res.

Large gates with entry phone front the road, somewhat unexpected in this old-fashioned setting.

It seems a great pity that this unique plant has been cleared; it is one of our Lusitanian species, having arrived from Iberia via a land bridge, long since drowned. Happily, it can be found elsewhere on stone walls, along with wild strawberries, blackthorn and primroses, all in bloom.