Jeremy Hart has heard tell of a place in Ireland w
Wading at the Edge of the World: Cold, Wet, and Mostly Alone on the Irish Coast (2 of 3)
Ireland
Nervously hoping the Bord Faílte people hadn’t steered me that far wrong, I hurried down the road to the tiny town’s even tinier tourist office to check on the bus schedule (I’d left mine, along with all that I owned beyond a book, my camera, and a t-shirt I’d bought for my little brother that morning, back at the hostel in Skibbereen). I couldn’t find the book-sized schedule in the office, so I waited patiently for the woman behind the desk to be off the phone. She chatted, and chatted some more, and chatted some more, and I watched as the last bus of the day pulled out and drove back to Schull, without me on it.
I didn’t have much choice at that point, so I booked myself a comfy little room at a farmhouse owned by an older couple, the Downeys. Of course, then I had to find the place, which was a whole journey in itself – the woman at the tourist office told me to turn right past “the church,” which would’ve been great if there weren’t two churches on the same road, and the most visible one was one church too far.
The Downeys took me in, when I finally got to the house, warmed me up and sat me down in front of the TV for a bit. I still wanted to get down to the beach, though, so I headed back out after consulting with Mrs. Downey on how to get to Barleycove. When I told her that I’d like to see Mizen
Head, as well, but that on the map it looked like too much extra walking, she pshawed me and said “if you’re going there, you might as well go to Mizen Head, too – it’s just down the road!” She also advised me to hurry and hitch a ride, as most people would be on their way to and from town shortly.
Unlike hitchhiking from Schull to Goleen, hitchhiking to Barleycove Bay was relatively painless. I wasn’t walking three minutes when a young Brit stopped to give me a lift in his battered, stripped-down Land Rover. I described to him my troubles hitching earlier in the day, and he sympathized, pulling up a shirtsleeve to display a spiderweb of blue-tinted prison tattoos.
“Not many people’ll pick you up if you look like I do,” he confided, echoing my earlier thoughts.
The trail to the beach wound down through the hills, sand mixed with rock and cows everywhere, glaring balefully when I came near. I rounded the bend, and there it was: perfect, crystalline blue-green water. I made my way down the rocks to the water’s edge; where I was there wasn’t much “beach” to speak of, but instead mounds of slippery, jagged volcanic rock. It was apparently normally under the tidal line, because wedged into the crevices lacing the rock was an array of tiny shells, all colors and kinds, deposited there by the waves.
Feeling like a kid down at the old fishing hole in summertime, I quickly stripped off my boots and socks and walked out into the ocean. The water was ice-cold, but I stayed in as long as I could stand it, almost until my toes turned blue. The waves roared and crashed on the sharp rocks, sending freezing spray into the air, and the perfect water rolled in from the unbroken horizon. I felt like I was standing at the edge of the world, and I wasn’t far wrong, really; I could see the spit of land that is Mizen Head off to the right, and the Head itself is technically the southernmost point of mainland Ireland. From where I stood, the next land south was Spain.
I splashed around a little while longer, giggling and shivering uncontrollably, then put my damp socks and boots back on and headed for the road to Mizen Head. The light had started to dim, but I still had a few hours ’til dark, and figured that would be plenty of time to get there and back to the Downeys’ by dinnertime. Unfortunately, the wind had started to blow harder, sending the soft rain and salty sea-spray sideways – even in my hooded poncho, my face was crusted with a thick layer of salt and grime. I ducked briefly into a portable toilet to get out of the wind and change the film in my camera, and then, skirting a herd of unfriendly-looking cows, I crossed the causeway and started up the hill.
In the end, I suppose “right there” is relative. All the signs promised that it was close, a mere 5 km away, but the hike to the Head took me the better part of two hours, even at a fast pace with only a small pack. I stuck out my thumb, but all the cars I saw were going the wrong way, down the hill towards town; after about an hour and a half, the cars had stopped coming completely.
To make matters worse, I’d traded the sea spray for actual rain, one of those deceptively light Irish storms. Unlike the rain I was used to, where it pours so hard you have to find shelter or get drenched immediately, rain in Ireland is more of a thick, penetrating mist than anything else. It doesn’t pour down like rain elsewhere, but sneaks in through cracks in your raingear, slowly and methodically, which meant that the walk up the Mizen Head road was a long, drawn-out, determined soaking.