There is a sense of permanence here, a sense that this is the only way it can be. It seems so perfect, meandering our way through the landscapes of Ireland. We step forward and back in time at a rate that sometimes makes your head spin, every new vista hurling us back into the Mesolithic, or dragging us back to the modern world or perhaps even looking ahead to the way it might be. Time leaps to and fro in thousands of years, sometimes millions!
It seems an age ago that we moved south from Dublin, through the fertile south coast and to the towns and villages of Kerry that welcomed us so warmly and to the Aran Islands and the fort of Dun Aoenghus. Yet, today was different again, which seems impossible in the space of twenty miles. Here we are in rock, that most permanent of things.
The Connemara landscape speaks of this permanence, rigid against the world, with a rocky beauty all of its own. There is stone everywhere, sheep grazed highlands, the occasional village full of smiling welcoming people. Yet at the same time we heard a history of hardship, of terrible times in the famine, of resilience and optimism and a path to the future. We learned that the permanence is not real – the land itself growing along the flower rich sand dunes, while side by side the raging Atlantic erodes the hard coast. It is a land and a people in flux, and the permanence that seems so clear is an illusion.
We visited the beautiful village of Roundstone, saw turf cut along the roadside, stood in awe and perhaps shed a tear at the romantic story of Kylemore Abbey. We watched a man guide his sheepdog with almost a whisper, fed the lambs and sheared the sheep.
We are happily tired, well fed, full of the laughter and fun of an expedition that’s not sure what tomorrow brings, but certain in the knowledge that we will embrace it fully in this country of rock and sea and smiles and mystery and wonder.
