Jaywalking with the Irish by Lonely Planet

Author:Lonely Planet [Monagan, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-74220-479-6
Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications
Published: 2004-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 13

Where oh where had my own protective Paddy hat gone? A ride on a golf cart is supposed to be a tame affair, but the one I found myself enjoying a couple of weeks later should have been kitted out with some form of helmet and perhaps a parachute and crampons. A sheer cliff dropped 250 feet into the ocean from about four feet to my right and the treacherous gravel path was suddenly veering in that godforsaken direction as well. Why was I here? An American magazine had commissioned an article regarding the ultimate Irish Xanadu, the spectacularly situated and steeply priced golf course on the Old Head of Kinsale.

Jim O’Brien, the unflappable manager of the place, was at the wheel, proudly pointing out the sights as I held on for dear life. The surf roared below us, and a squall fluffed and vanished a few miles off, close to where a German torpedo rent the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, sending 1195 drowned passengers floating toward the Old Head, and the U.S. careening into World War I.

“Look there,” Jim said, jamming on the breaks and pointing to an opening in the cliffs that was surrounded by countless bickering gulls. “It goes from one side of the head clear through to the other. There are fifteen caves out here that do the same thing.”

Among other things, the Old Head is a national bird sanctuary, home to untold thousands of Arctic skuas, stormy petrels, great and sooty shearwaters, pomarines and hoopoes. It is also an isthmus of stunning beauty upon which generations of Cork people used to freely walk and picnic, a natural treasure that spreads into some of the most stunning and storied vistas that can be created by water, stone, and sun. In 1989, Jim’s boss, a tough and controversial Kerryman called John O’Connor, bought the whole shebang from a local farmer for about £225,000 and, despite agreeing otherwise with the local planning authorities, began to seal off public access to what rightfully should be an Irish national park.

Jim led me to the dilapidated remains of a seventeenth-century “brazier” lighthouse – only three others exist in Ireland – which once featured open fires on its roof. “It was later said to do service as a whorehouse,” he laughed devilishly. “Some of our guests have asked if we could restore it to its former glory.” And the wallets and attitudes that come with those visitors make it possible that they were not joking.

Back by the Old Head’s narrow neck, one could see the crumbling remains of a twelfth-century stone tower that once reigned over a castle belonging to the Norman de Courcy family who called this place home for centuries. Somewhere close by supposedly lay the ruins of an Iron Age fortress called Dun Cearmna, which the course’s brochures link to the mythological origins of Ireland. The claim is that it was the home base of the second-century B.C., pre-golfing Erainn tribe who gave

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