On Ireland’s west coast, it’s the people and the landscape that offer the real adventure

Scrambling up the final yards of Ireland’s sacred mountain, I’m toast. Granted, Croagh Patrick tops out just a bit over 2,500 feet, but the cone-shaped craggy peak is covered with scree — nasty little shards of rock that, to my feet at least, feel razor sharp. But when I reach the summit, I know instantly why I’ve huffed and puffed my way up. It’s just a good thing I’ve got a walking stick to steady myself for this dizzying view of Clew Bay — a blue expanse speckled with hundreds of islands — and the mist-shrouded hills of the Currane Peninsula. To the south are the peaks and lake-dotted bogs of Connemara. But it’s here atop Croagh Patrick where they say St. Patrick fasted for 40 days and banished the snakes from Ireland, which, of course, is why today there are no snakes on the island. You believe that, don’t you? I did when I made that climb 25 years ago, and I still do.

It’s those stories, the people, and the landscape that keep bringing me back to Ireland’s west. Others visit Ireland to revel in the cosmopolitan charm of Dublin and Cork — and the charm is considerable. But personally, I come here to explore wee villages, isolated peninsulas, and remote isles — getting lost and making new friends up and down the west coast. Dublin, in the east, has changed dramatically in recent years — it’s a prosperous world capital and has all the glitter to prove it. But out in the wild west, the secret is this: Ireland has changed little in the past 50 years. And it’s that auld Ireland whose call I cannot resist.

Fish Stories

Connemara, a 1,400-square-mile region in western County Galway, is blessed with indigo lakes, dazzling streams trickling through bogland, a craggy coastline, and some white-sand beaches. But it has another attraction for me — the poetic promise of a songwriter from Clifden, a town that’s the unofficial capital of Connemara. “You should come back in summer when the hills are splashed in heather and the bogs are full of wildflowers and wild orchids,” pleaded Mickey MacNamara wistfully, some years ago. Frankly, he had me at wild orchids, but he continued on. “We’ll go fishing at night, when the salmon will leap right from the stream into our arms, and we’ll fry them right there by the light of the moon.”

Ever since, a trip to Connemara is never the same unless I see my old friend Mickey. This time I’m on my way from Shannon Airport in County Clare to Achill Island in County Mayo, with just one night in Clifden. I’m not going night fishing with Mickey because I don’t want to ruin that delightful fantasy, but I do indulge his claim that Connemara has the largest population of fairies in Ireland.

A fishing boat near Roundstone Harbour

To back up that claim, Mickey takes me out on a fairy hunt in the dark of night, the only time, he says, you can spot them — yes, many Irish do believe in fairies. We sit quietly in his car parked on a narrow coastal road, but when the rain starts and gale force winds blow in from the sea, any hopes of fairy spottings fade. Why? “Fairies are cobblers by trade,” Mickey explains. “On a blustery evening like tonight, the tic-tac-toe of their hammers just wouldn’t sound right. Besides, the water would ruin their shoes — and fairies wear much nicer shoes than leprechauns.”

Before leaving for Achill the next day, I meet Mickey for lunch in the bar at Eldon’s Hotel in Roundstone, the small fishing village nearby, where he grew up. (He was born, in fact, on the other side of the Eldon’s wall, in his parents’ pub.) Today he seems not quite himself — the whole village is mourning for a beached baby minke whale that died this morning. Gazing out the window pensively, Mickey seems poised to utter something profoundly wise. “See those peaks out there?” he asks, pointing to the Twelve Bens, a quartzite mountain range that dominates Connemara. “Me grandfather built them.” Mickey is back.

Leaving Connemara, I get a closer look at those Twelve Bens while driving the Clifden-Westport road (N59) to Achill Island. Four of the Bens are inside Connemara National Park, a hiker’s paradise and home to red deer plus a herd of wild Connemara ponies — a hardy little horse that holds up well in the wind and rain and is a symbol of this rugged part of western Ireland.

John O’Reilly plays the bodhran, a traditional Irish drum made of goatskin

Tater Tales

Crossing the causeway from the Currane Peninsula, a place that looked mighty wild to me years ago from atop Croagh Patrick, I drive onto mountainous Achill Island, which is dominated by two towering peaks. At the foot of the isle’s highest mountain, Slievemore, lies a village of mysteriously deserted stone cottages. There are no real towns on Achill, just four main villages, the largest of which is wee Achill Sound. So is this one of those wild Irish places that hasn’t changed much? In some respects it’s a spot that’s trying to preserve some tradition and history — a large part of the island is officially designated by the state as Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking), and on the rest, English is the main language.

Forget language though — to me the views are the draw. As I motor along the Atlantic Drive, grass-covered ridges drop off to rocky cliffs, waves crash on the rocks, and some tight hairpin turns overlook Ashleam Bay. But the most impressive coastal road — the stretch between Dooagh and Keem Bay — isn’t for the faint of heart. If you’re height challenged like I am, stick to the Atlantic Drive and you won’t be disappointed. Every time, it leaves me struggling for words.

Main Street in Clifden

“How lucky you are to live in such an untouched spot!” I tell Anthony Kilbane, whose home sits on the Atlantic Drive, the Achill equivalent of the famed 17-Mile Drive at California’s Pebble Beach. But with nearly a century of perspective, the sharp-minded Kilbane, age 96, sets me straight about life on Achill. He was one of the island’s tattie-hokers, children sent to Scotland to pick potatoes every summer because families desperately needed the income — a common practice until the late 1930s.

“We sailed as third-class passengers on a cattle boat from Dublin to Glasgow,” he recalls with no bitterness. “Every morning we got up at 4 a.m. and started digging before the plowman showed up. Our accommodations weren’t the best, but ’twas only for a few months.” Although it might sound grim to outsiders, Kilbane explains, “in Achill we were used to hardship because children were working the land at 10 or 12 years of age.”

What a picture Kilbane paints. But how about the wild landscape I’ve seen? “If you saw the old photographs, you’d think it was a different place altogether,” he claims. “Back then everybody lived on their own produce and didn’t buy anything. The land was manicured. There are no cattle now, only a few sheep. And no one plows the land, so it’s gone wild.”

A car travels along Sky Road

When You Wish Upon a Chair

Anthony Kilbane may be old — though he did ask me to make a note to visit him four years hence when he turns 100 — but if he traveled to Tír na nÓg (pronounced “teer-na-NOAG”), he could drink from the fountain of youth. Just a couple of hours away from Achill, in County Sligo, is a tiny village that some locals believe is Tír na nÓg, the mythical land where time stands still and nobody ever grows old.

That’s how it feels when I arrive at Rosses Point on a wet and windy night and step into Austie’s, a 200-year-old pub. Everything seems exactly as it was the last time I tipped a pint here. The place is so packed with nautical memorabilia that it’s more like a seaman’s museum. Seated around the Captain’s Table, salvaged from a shipwreck in Sligo Harbour in 1825, Dominic Rooney and Joe Burgess are playing cards, drinking Guinness, and telling stories, same as always.

Kieran Devaney introduces me to the gang. “There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t yet met,” he chirps, quoting W. B. Yeats, who spent part of his childhood in Rosses Point. After learning that I hail from the United States, they wonder why I’ve landed in their small village on such a stormy night. Aside from my interest in the poet and his brother Jack Yeats, one of Ireland’s most celebrated painters of the 20th century, I’ve come to find St. Patrick’s Wishing Chair on Coney Island, a narrow 1.5-mile-long isle just offshore. Legend has it that anyone who sits on the chair-shaped boulder will be granted a wish — but only once a year. If I had a wish right now, it’d be for the weather to clear up overnight.

Sure enough, the storm clears before morning. At low tide, I drive over wet sand from Cummeen Strand to the flat, treeless island (boats go to Coney in summer only), motoring alongside a line of tall stone pillars that mark a straight and safe path across the tidal flats of Sligo Harbour to Coney. Before those markers were erected in 1845, many people drowned trying to make the crossing, misjudging the timing of the tides and veering out of the safe zone. Separating Coney from nearby Oyster Island is Shrunamile, known as the channel of a thousand currents. Here, heavy winds can push an incoming tide across the sand flats in just minutes.

Austie’s Pub regulars play cards at the Captain’s Tables

I wander around for a couple of hours enjoying the solitude of a quiet beach and the off-island panoramas — on one side the Atlantic Ocean (next stop New York), and on the mainland side Strandhill Beach and Knocknarea Mountain, which is topped by a huge ancient stone tomb that locals claim holds the warrior Queen Maeve. Not lost but unable to locate the wishing chair, I’m afraid of getting stranded by the rising tide, so I head back to the mainland.

With my plan derailed, I drive inland from Sligo to Lough Gill to see the speck of a wild island that inspired Yeats’ most famous poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” I’m lucky to have hired John O’Connel, a lakeside resident who will row visitors out for a circle around the island. And as the water laps around the shore, I can see why the Nobel Prize–winning poet found peace there in “the deep heart’s core.”

“Next time you’ll make it,” Kieran consoles me that night as we dine on pan-fried Dover sole back at Austie’s. “Tomorrow we’ll drive across, very slowly to avoid spraying salt water on my car’s undercarriage.” He keeps his promise, and at 11 the next morning I’m on my way back to Coney Island, this time with Kieran as tour guide. He describes the simple life on Coney, which wasn’t even wired for electricity until 1999: “There are only two year-round residents, the McGowans. And the isle’s only business is John McGowan’s pub, the Michael James Ward. John’s never drunk a drop in his life and opens the place only when he feels like it. But visitors can usually persuade him to unlock the door by calling John at his cottage. It’s said if he opens on St. Patrick’s Day, it may be October before the pub closes. Certainly music has been heard there long into the night.”

County Donegal tweedmaker Eddie Doherty in his shop in Ardara

We park near the pub and walk straight ahead for about 15 minutes until the road ends at a field on the western side of Coney. And there it is, in all its mysterious wonder — St. Patrick’s Wishing Chair. Will I get my wish? “I once asked for an air rifle, and I got it — 10 years later,” says Kieran, noting that not all wishes are granted immediately. Soon I’m seated in the bowl of the chair, eyes closed, thinking long and hard about a worthy wish, and all the yearnings expressed here since the days when St. Patrick visited the isle in the sixth century. I could wish for more stamina so I can stay up late with the old-timers at Austie’s. They may be older than I am, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in Ireland, it’s that one shouldn’t try to keep up with the Irish. Here, age is a state of mind.

The Last King in Ireland

Some places are worth the trouble to get to, like Tory Island, a rocky, virtually treeless outpost 7.5 miles off the northwest coast of County Donegal that some might call bleak. Soil isn’t deep enough for raising crops here, and the 2.5-mile-long island gets battered by raging seas and cruel North Atlantic storms. Otherwise, it’s a peaceful haven where earlier wayfarers left behind their mark, relics like a sixth-century granite tower and monastery and a unique 12th-century Tau (T-shaped) cross. Modern signs such as advertising, postcards, and souvenir shops are nowhere to be found — the grocery store isn’t even marked. And if that’s not offbeat enough to inspire a quirky adventurer like myself, the fact that this Gaelic-speaking island has had a king continuously since the sixth century puts it on my must-visit list.

Patsy Dan Rogers, the honorary “king” of Tory Island, in his home on the island.

After the 90-minute ferry ride from Bunbeg through ferocious waves, I’m relieved to step on dry land, the only outsider on board that day. “We’re honored to have you on our lovely island,” says Patsy Dan Rodgers, the “king” of Tory, who greets every arriving ferry passenger and says farewell when they depart. Not only is Patsy Dan the island’s honorary leader, he’s also an accordion player who modestly points out he’d be runner-up to the isle’s most powerful box player, Paul Rodgers. He’s a painter as well — one of the self-trained primitive artists collectively known as the Tory Island School of Painters, whose works have been exhibited and sold in Europe and the United States, as well as in a gallery on the island.

It’s impossible to separate Tory from its legends, like Balor of the Evil Eye, a cyclops who could kill with a single glance. But here on the island, the stories seem real. “We have respect for all types of history, whether there’s proof or not,” says Patsy Dan.

And then there’s Tory’s patron saint. “In the sixth century,” Patsy Dan goes on, “a member of the Duggan family helped St. Columcille land safely on the island — the saint named him king of Tory and gave him the right to distribute the island’s holy clay.”

Ashleam Bay viewed from the Atlantic Drive on Achill Island

Since then Tory has always had a king and been free of rats. Islanders believe the clay’s power will ward off rats anywhere in the world, and visitors have carried it off far and wide. But just don’t go bagging up sacred clay to take home for rodent control. Only the eldest man in the Duggan family can take the clay from the graveyard near St. Columcille’s monastery. “When a Duggan distributes the clay,” Patsy Dan advises, “he can’t take any money. But if you wish to give him a drink, he will gladly take that.”

The ferry is leaving soon because the seas are kicking up, so I take a rain check on the clay, and the revelry — Patsy Dan plays accordion four nights a week at the Tory Hotel, calling out the singers and dancers until almost dawn. I also have to pass on making a wish at Tory’s Wishing Stone, a towering flat-topped rock off the promontory ruins of an early Iron Age fortress that islanders call Balor’s Fort. Wishes are granted, it is said, if you land nine stones on its top.

“You must be very careful,” Patsy Dan says. “Three stones thrown lightly, three flung in an interesting way, and three tossed with sincerity. Then you have a good reason for hope.” But as I tell him, I’ve already been granted my wish made on Coney Island — a safe crossing to Tory and an audience with the king.

— Gail Harrington

Getting There: Continental offers daily nonstop service to Shannon from its hub in New York/Newark.

Sleeping Around

Abbeyglen Castle Hotel
For an Irish country house party you won’t forget, the experience at this 176-year-old home on Clifden’s Sky Road includes afternoon tea, old-fashioned sing-alongs around a Steinway piano after dinner, and Gilbert, a chatty African gray parrot who mimics the sound of a telephone. Sky Road, Clifden, County Galway, 353.95.21201; abbeyglen.ie

Park Inn Mulranny
Even at the doorstep of Achill Island, you’ll find city style and amenities at this restored 19th-century railway hotel on the Currane Peninsula, overlooking Clew Bay: 61 spacious rooms with a contemporary vibe; food by noted chef Seamus Commons, formerly of Dublin’s L’Ecrivain; and a 66-foot swimming pool. Westport, County Mayo, 353.98.36000; parkinnmulranny.ie

Tory Hotel
Tory Island’s only hotel doesn’t promise high style, but it does serve up a generous dose of hospitality, and it’s good enough for the king — Patsy Dan Rodgers plays accordion in the bar late into the night three or four nights a week from St. Patrick’s Day through mid-September. County Donegal, 074.91.35920; toryhotel.com

— G.H.