Torc deserves better than WC fields

YOU don’t have to be a naturalist to know what bears do in the woods.

Naturally, in Killarney’s National Park, the native deer do it in the woods, and they do it all over the distant hills and valleys as well. Sheep too. But do tourists have to follow in their tracks? On a busy Bank Holiday Sunday visit at one of the Park’s main attractions, Torc Waterfall, it seemed like it.

Late October, with the 10,000 hectare national park all turned autumnal russet and gold, with the red deer’s annual stag rut just about over, and the rain coming down in squally sheets, Killarney town and its adjacent natural glories were still jamming in the visitors, from every county and country.

Killarney and its heavenly hinterland operate almost in parallel universes: one is teeming shops, bars, bed-nights and outlet centres, all wrapped up in this year’s Tidy Towns award-winning package. The rest is what makes it different, courtesy of sublime scenery and the plainly picturesque.

The town has been managing the guest package fairly well for, oh, about 250 years of tourism — and that’s for a full 100 years or more ever before Queen Victoria’s August 1861 visit put the place on a larger, mass visitor map (the town it figures strongly in US academic William HA Williams’ book, Creating Irish Tourism: the first century, 1750-1850).

So, you’d think that after feeding and watering its guests on the year’s final bank holiday, a functioning suite of WCs and some relevant signed information for the visitors would be on hand at one of the park’s most visited attractions... OK, this is Ireland, so you know what coming.

Hundreds of people milling about, having arrived on foot, by bike and by hike (Torc is on the 200km Kerry Way), by bus or mini-bus, eager to see the fall in its cascading splendour. The anticipation was particularly buoyed as it had already rained so much that weekend, abetting a sound-track of running water acting, unfortunately and suggestively, like it often does on the human body.

Lo! Locked-up visitor centre log hut, looking like the very opposite of hospitality. No information, and scant signage about Torc, or its trails.

The toilets provided were dirty, blocked, not visibly maintained on the day — while, bizarrely, a Kerry County Council road maintenance crew was setting up for a Bank Holiday afternoon’s work (brushing up the leaves?) with a dozen or so men in waterproofs, complete with Lollipop-shaped signs signalling the familiar ‘Go.’ ‘Stop’. As conflicting a set of signals as Torc’s underachieving toilets sent out, as it were.

This grumble may seem ungracious when we’re clearly out in the country: it prompts recall of the Jeff Goldblum character in the classic movie The Big Chill in the woods opining, “that’s what’s great about the outdoors, it is one giant toilet.”

But this is Torc. This is where hundreds, if not thousands on a busy day, of men, women and children get directed to. This is An Attraction. This is a Brand Name. Surely running water and plumbing that works isn’t asking too much?

Not asking a whole lot more might be staffing the visitor hut given that this is a busy weekend (though 70% of Killarney’s visitors are from overseas, and hence not particularly directed by public holidays) and surveys show that 82% of Killarney’s visitors engage in outdoor activities and visits.

A bigger bugbear: the signage of Torc’s walking routes, is appalling, a throwback to the 1970s. There are three, easy looped walks, but most visitors don’t get to do them. They don’t get any encouragement to go much above the falls, despite the lure of broad, stone-flagged steps initially paving the way and leading on, then, to further tracks to explore.

Torc is a 20-metre waterfall, it’s no Niagara. It’s not Angel Falls, nor is it Victoria Falls. Heck, it isn’t even a Powerscourt Waterfall. That Wicklow one is 120m, six times higher, so Torc punches above its height. It does so in terms of its Friar’s Glen setting, sublimely beautiful in its mossy greenery and gnarled oaks, beeches and odd soaring pines.

To really appreciate it, you have to climb above it, to viewing points of the Lakes of Killarney, and the start of trails into mountains, the Old Kenmare Road, the Kerry Way, back where the Owengarriff river stars by Mangerton and the Devil’s Punchbowl, or even up to the top of Torc Mountain.

Encouraging people to visit places of natural beauty, and to partake of wilderness and solitude is, of course, a bit of a paradox: if everyone went, well, it would be a bit like Killarney town itself up there. There’s no end of wild places in Killarney’s National Park, but Torc is a good first step, and rightly popular.

A bit more information and a bit of shepherding up its trails would open up an appetite for more, as would a bit of running water that isn’t just Torc.