Shags, walks and Cape in ship shape

SHAGS, despite their prejudicial name, are elegant birds, much more attractive than their cousins, the cormorants.

A fishing party – a float of shags? – some 30 strong bobbed on the swells as we approached Cape Clear Island in Roaringwater Bay, off the west Cork coast, on the Friday morning of the May Holiday weekend. Their plumage shone glossy black, with a bottle-green iridescence in the sunlight, and their top-knots, like crewcuts coaxed over their foreheads, gave them a rakish look. A gorgeous gannet (and I say that not for the onomatopoeia but because no other word could adequately describe this bird) floated so close to the ferry, the Dún Áengus from Baltimore, that we could see the dark blue ring around the yellow eye set in its bright orange head. And then it rose, cruised 50 feet above us and, of a sudden, rocketed down into the sea.

For the folk that find intimations of the divine in west Cork’s rugged beauty, Cape Clear Island, over the May weekend, was as near to heaven as they might hope to experience on earth. The programme arranged for the island festival, with guided walks, talks, poetry and sean nós evenings filled every waking hour with interest and romance. Few could fail to be awed by the beauty of the island, its empty spaces, its quiet roads, its bright blue bays. Westward, far out in the Atlantic, black and alone, the Fastnet light floats on a shimmering sea. To the the east, the other islands of Roaringwater Bay – the Calfs, Heir, Sherkin; too many to name – lie between us and the ‘blue remembered hills’ of Ireland, ‘remembered’ because a few weeks before we had walked the slopes of Mount Gabriel and looked out at Cape from on high.