Wild Atlantic Women by Gráinne Lyons

Author:Gráinne Lyons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Island
Published: 2023-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

the chalky limestone steppes of West Clare, a phenomenon so unyielding it is as if Wuthering Heights were transmitted from paper to a landscape. The visitors talk and are talked at, they fish, they fowl, they eat brown bread, dip into holy wells, kiss wishing stones but have no desire to stay. There must be something secretly catastrophic about a country from which so many people go, escape.

She is right, of course, about the leaving – the numbers, the wakes for those going to America, show it to be true. And she is right about the tourist experience. My walk along the cliffs has been an unyielding phenomenon, that’s for sure, but it’s more down to the Irish weather than the cliffs themselves today.

If anything, my problem at the moment seems to be that I can’t stop coming to Ireland, consumed by what has become an obsession, researching the lives of these women and walking along this coast. It’s a few weeks into my trip now, and my friends back home are beginning to feel a bit neglected – where am I, they’re asking, as I miss summer barbecues and open-air concerts. It’s a nice feeling to be wanted – especially when part of the reason for this trip was that I felt like I was a bit out of step with the young families springing up all around me, that I might have a long summer of not much ahead of me. It’s a reminder that the stories we tell ourselves are often of our own making.

As a child on holiday, I used to think that it rained heavily in Ireland all the time. In fact, this is my first day in a month that it has rained torrentially, and now it has stopped. Outside the visitor centre, people from across the globe pose for pictures against the white space of pure fog where the cliffs should be. This must be a common occurrence because inside the centre there is a digital booth where you can be photographed against the sheer drop. I continue my walk along the cliffs without the spectacular view I was hoping for, the wind whipping me dry. I am simply a body moving through blank nothingness. I could be walking in any landscape. I could be walking in a dream.

I’m grateful for the protected groove of the path, a few feet from the cliff edge, bordered by huge flagstones, pieces of Moher slate hewn from the deposits that lie along these cliffs. All around me is the sweet smell of clover battered by rainfall, and within a matter of minutes the fog starts to lift, as fast as it arrived. Behind me, I can see for the first time this main section of the cliffs in all their glory – the huge rough faces and the great sea stack of Branaunmore, left behind by the relentless waves that crash against these cliffs incessantly, as they have done for millions of years. Out on the ocean, the sea and sky are the same colour – only a silver sheen shows a thin line between them.

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