Ireland 2019 - Part 1: Random Information, Shepherding Demonstration, Skellig Michael

Donna and I recently joined five of her siblings and their significant others for a trip to Ireland. The two of us went a couple days early to go to Galway with two of Donna’s siblings; we met up with the rest for a week in Dingle.

I’ll be writing about this unforgettable vacation in a few installments; in the first I give you some of my random thoughts about Ireland and focus on two activities: a shepherding demonstration and our trip to Skellig Michael.

Random information about Ireland 

Conciseness is not a common attribute of the loquacious Irish. Nor is the direct conveyance of information. Two examples follow:

• One day we were searching for children’s clothing in Dingle. At one shop the proprietor said he did not carry what we were looking for, but gave us these directions to a shop that did: “Go to the shop around the corner with the dolphins painted on the side. Not that store, but the one next door. Across the street from that store is a store; the one next to it is your destination.”
• There was a light post banner announcing the upcoming Dingle Adventure Race. The only date shown was: “June—First Saturday after bank holiday.” 

2   Everybody has a side hustle. I hesitate to use the word hustle because like brevity, hustle is not a typical Irish attribute. There are odd combinations of businesses that remind me of the shop near my town in Maryland that sells athletic swimwear and rents tuxedos. In Dingle we found a whiskey bar that also has a work bench where a craftsman creates and sells intricately designed belts and such; an artist who also runs a horseback riding stable; a pub that also sells hardware.

Ireland has bed and breakfasts like Baltimore has homicide crime scenes. They dot the towns and villages like sheep dot the hillsides. Staying at one is a great way to meet some locals and experience the gracious and friendly character that pervades this country. 

The people are friendly, easy going and accommodating. A common expression is, “Tog bog e” – take it easy. It’s a lesson we could learn here in the U.S. Imagine a restaurant server’s response here if a group of nine paid for dinner and tip with a jumbled mix of credit cards and local and foreign currency – we did this more than once and the waitress was always cheerful and patient as we tried to get our act together.

In summer, Ireland's daylight hours stretch from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Dingle's latitude, 52 degrees North, is similar to that of Ketchikan, Alaska, so its summer days are long and its winter days very short. We were there on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, with 17 hours of daylight.

Much of its ancient past remains untouched. Five-thousand-year-old stone burial markers from the Bronze Age called dolmens, ancient castle ruins, and other archeological remnants from the Druids and beyond are common. There’s a deep respect for and protection of past ages and generations that speaks to the Irish’s proud heritage. Its economy is based on tourism and agriculture, so Ireland's landscape is pastoral, its centuries-old villages unchanged and foreign chains such as McDonald's, Starbucks and Hilton largely absent.

The roads are narrow and twisty, with hedges and walls that abut them, they drive on the left and the steering wheel is on the right. Oh, and they have about a million roundabouts. Major highways are mostly two-lane and often cut through villages, with the speed limit slowing from 100 kilometers/hour (62 miles per hour) to 60 k/m (37 mph). But the vistas are drop-dead gorgeous.

Guinness stout in Ireland still tastes better than Guinness in the U.S., and is a wonderful gift to mankind.

Shepherding demonstration 

Gabriel Kavanagh, the shepherd at Dingle Sheepdogs Demonstrations & Trials, has two border collies, Captain and Sailor, ages 11 and 18 months. He gives commands to Captain in English and to Sailor in Irish, so he can direct them simultaneously without confusing the work dogs. At his command they chased down a flock of sheep, herded them down from one field to another. Working in tandem, the dogs expertly guided the sheep around the field, left, right, through a chute, all at Gabriel’s instruction. In obedience to their master, they sprint around the field, jump through gates, hurdle tall ancient stone walls to steer the sheep. The dogs exist to please their owner, while the sheep do as they please until the shepherd through his proxies intervenes. They are unaware of the motive of the dogs, as the dogs are unaware of their master’s. They simply react. Click here for a video I took of Captain in action.

It made me think about our situation on this little spinning rock. Is there an invisible shepherd—or sheep dog—directing what we do, for reasons we can’t comprehend? If so, are his or her motives benevolent to us or are we players in some cosmic sitcom? Or are we forever free, without external intervention except blind, random chance to disrupt us as we graze on life’s emerald pastures? Talk among yourselves.

Skellig Michael 

Marie, our host at the B&B in Galway, when told that we would be visiting Skellig Michael, told us to ask for her friend Eamon, who works on the island. We promised her we would and didn’t think more about it.

Later that week all nine of us made the two-hour drive in a three-car caravan from Dingle to Portmagee for our Skellig Michael excursion. We headed

east through charming centuries-old villages: Anascaul, Boolteens, and Castlemaine, where we picked up N70, the magnificent and scenic Ring of Kerry, which circles the Kerry Peninsula, through Milltown, Killorglin (home of the annual Puck Festival, where the town crowns a worthy goat), Glenbeigh, Kells, Cahersiveen (a favorite vacation spot of Walt Disney back in the day), to our destination.  We stopped in a pub to use the toilets, piled into the little skiff piloted by Captain Brendan Casey that would propel us through the harbor and eight miles across the North Atlantic to Little Skellig, home to 30,000 pairs of gannets, and then to the main event.

Conditions were better than when Donna and I had climbed Skellig three years prior. Seas were calmer, the sun was out and at the 10am departure time the air temperature was in the mid-sixties.

Skellig Michael (Skellig means splintered rock) juts up out of the sea to 714 feet in jagged points. It looks ominous and imposing, like a villain’s lair in the movies. Historians believe monks established a monastery on the 54-acre island some 1,300 years ago, paddling sealskin kayaks to the desolate rock — an exhausting, treacherous journey at best. What drove such an exercise in isolation — persecution? penance? devotion? — remains a mystery. The monks lived near the base at first, but over the decades and centuries carved hundreds of steps to the summit and built beehive-shaped stone dwellings, a 200-foot-deep cistern, chapel, and more. They lived on fish, vegetables they grew, and bird meat and eggs. In addition to the abundant nearby gannets, whose wingspan stretches to six feet, Skellig Michael is home to nearly 10,000 pairs of puffins, black and white birds the size of a fat blue jay. They blanket the island from May through July to hatch their young, then migrate west across the ocean to Nova Scotia. They are incredibly unperturbed by close human interaction and seem pleased to be photographed at point-blank range.

Our boat landed, one of 15 per day allowed, each of which carry 12 passengers. A female guide gave a brief safety talk and advised that if anyone needed assistance during the climb, she or one of the two guides at the top would help. Their names? Maggie and Eamon! 

We began our ascent. The first leg of the trek was laborious, with a steep incline. Neither the monks nor anyone else bothered to construct handrails and much of the climb is along a great sheer cliff. Climbers share the narrow, irregular steps with those coming down. Wind and rain, from which thankfully we were spared, lessen sure-footedness; a misstep could mean plummeting hundreds of feet to the craggy rocks below. Two hikers were blown off the mountain and to their deaths in the 1990s.

We reached the top after about 25 minutes and toured the ruins. It was in fact Eamon, Marie’s friend, who gave a talk about the history and archeology of the site.

I have frequently told a story about Donna’s and my first visit, in 2016, with our kids and significant others. The guide who coordinated the hikers’ departure off the island was a gregarious sort. As one boat landed at the dock and a family boarded, he called out to the captain, “Seamus! I hear it’s your birthday!” The young sailor replied that it was indeed. “What’re you doing to celebrate?” Shouted the guide. The waterman said he was going out. “Well, I hope you get laid!” Came the booming, salty rejoinder. The guide was none other than Eamon. We shared that story with him and passed on Marie’s greetings and had a good laugh all around.