Our last day in Ireland

It’s our last day in Ireland as I write this and I’m happy to report that we’ve been in the gym every day since arriving back in Dublin. The IM training is slowly starting.

Following the wedding and after saying good bye to our Irish mates from Sydney and our new friends from Ireland, Gene and I headed out on our own. The first stop was a little place in County Kerry called Knockngoshel, a way south of Cong, to meet up with my cousin Nora Shanahan, her husband John Joe and their little bloke Alex. Knockngoshel is a stone’s throw from the Shanahan ancestral home which is located in Knockalougha.  My mother Margaret is a Shanahan and her Dad Jeremiah Shanahan, my Grandad, was born at Knockalougha on the 28^th Feb 1892. We stayed in Nora and John Joe for four days and soaked up the family atmosphere by visiting relatives I had no idea even existed. We dropped in on Nora’s Dad, Patrick Shanahan on our first night there and then spent the following day with him. Patrick is 84yrs old and my Mum’s first cousin. He lives about 4 miles up a one lane narrow country road on top of the hill above Nora’s place in Knockalougha.  I think his is the only house in Knockalougha. It was freezing’s and exposed to the wind and rain. Patrick’s house is basic to say the least. It makes the shed out the back of my sister’s place look like luxury.  His grown children all live within 5miles of Patrick and each have tried to persuade him to come and live with them, but as he says: “Only the Man above will take me out of this place” and it seems he’s going to have his way. 

He took us to what he refers to as the ancestral home, a couple of hills across, where his Grandad (my Great Grandad) and his Grandad’s three brothers and their families, were evicted by the British landlords in the depths of winter when they couldn’t come up with the rent. So it turns out the family ancestral home was actually a rented family ancestral home, which was a bit of a chuckle.  For Patrick it still carries a touch of the bitterness and feeling that goes with those times. And as an added piece of spice, the descendents of the people who moved in when the relos were turfed out back in the 1850s, are still living there.  We didn’t drop in for a cuppa.

Old Patrick himself is full of life and as we moved around the area every single person we passed greeted him, which was lovely.  What was also a laugh was that as soon as they’d passed, he brought them to life by telling us all their ‘private’ business; who was from a broken marriage, who was having it off with whom, who owed what to whom, what the family business was, how the family farm was going, who got bitten by the banks, who had recently died or had babies and so on. It was all done with a little grin and a chuckle so you never really knew if he was taken the piss or deadly serious.  I believed it all regardless.  Patrick was infectious and as sharp as someone half his age. And he didn’t feel the cold at all. He must have thought us a pair of complete wusses.

And sadly while we were at Knockngoshel a 50 year old neighbour was buried after committing suicide. He was a married man and the father of three kids and Nora said that suicide in the area was all too common these days. Reading about the politicians and developers in Ireland is a sickening business and the state of the Irish economy is a tragedy writ large. The suicide of Old Patricks neighbour is only part of the cost the country is paying.

While at Nora’s we also visited various other cousins and relations and kept meeting them over the coming days. One of the cousins, Bernie (Bernadette Shanahan) had a copy of a family tree going back generations. From my Grandad’s time alone we lost count of the relations. And everyone we met was delighted to see us. I enjoyed it hugely and am keen to get back there. By the time we left the combination of Cong and Knockngoshel was making us feel almost Irish.

We travelled to various other locations including Castlebar, Westport (amazing), Clifden (gorgeous), Galway (where we’d previously stayed with Enda’s sister at Oranmore), Athenry, Ballinasloe (Enda’s home town), the Cliffs of Moher, Kylemore Abbey, the Connemara Plains, Tralee, Limmerick, Listowel, Abbeyfeale, Killarney (beautiful) and somewhere in there Dingle as well. They’re the places I can remember and all had their special charm.

The thing about driving around Ireland is it can be a touch tricky. There are signs telling you which way to go, but there is no guarantee the signs are correct. They may have been changed by some of the locals for a lark, or simply not fastened into the ground then turned the other direction with the wind.  Then when the signs are easy to read and well fastened, they tend to appear 3 or 4 streets ahead of the one you need to turn into. So when you turn at the street indicated by the sign, it’s generally a bad move. On top of that when you ask people in the bush which way to go to get to their place, the directions can be vague at best and completely indecipherable at worse. And people never seem to know the number of their own street or lane, let alone the numbers of the streets leading to theirs. Streets in the bush have numbers in this country, not names.  And then there are the roundabouts. Someone in the Roads Department in Ireland thought it would be a good thing if every intersection in the entire country was turned into a roundabout!  The roundabouts exist in even the tiniest villages; sometimes it’s only a tiny circle painted on the road and at other times they’re so big they’ve been named after some town dignitary.  It’s a riot. And so many drivers seem to have absolutely no idea how to navigate around the frigging things.

Happily for us we had time to spare.  Nothing in the bush however prepares you for driving in Dublin. It’s probably the most signed city in the world. The problem is, the signs all tell you what’s down this street or that, but the street signs themselves, i.e. the ones with the name of the street itself, are hidden away somewhere high up on a building and barely legible. Dublin can be a complete nightmare for the uninitiated driver, but we’ve been here six days now and between walking the city, catching the train to Dalkey and driving around, we’ve got it wired. 

Yesterday we drove up to Belfast.  In Australian terms it’s really just up the road. Here’s a city with a truck load of history, much of it unhappy and all about what keeps us apart. I can’t say too much about Belfast except that to me it had a great feel. I’ve got relatives who live on a farm outside of Lisburn, 8kms south of the city, one being an old auntie who came from Knockalougha (knock-a-locker) when she married a bloke by the name of Mickey Drane from the North.  With so little time left we decide not to drop in on the family up North but rather to save it for the next trip.  Apparently we have as many relos in the North as in the South.  So Belfast was just a taster.  I’d also be keen to talk to POD a bit more about life in North and then visit places such as Derry from where he hails.

And finally we did as many of the sites of the City as possible: Trinity College, which is world class with the Long Room in the Library, the Book of Kells and my favourite the Book of Martyrs on display in the Long Room are well worth the  visit; St Stephens Green, the pubs, restaurants, Christchurch and so on. The one that took the cake was Dublin’s favourite, the Guinness Store Room and factory on Drane St. It’s fabulous and I’m growing quietly fond of the dark stuff.

Tomorrow it’s back to London and an opportunity to catch up with Jade and Bala and get stuck into some work. It’s gonna be a big year.