The Western World…

The bus to Dunquin cost the princely sum of two euros each – return. Unsurprisingly it was busy even on a wet Friday, but not just with curious tourists – mostly locals going about their business. The route skirts the north side of Ventry Harbour, which looks to me like another glorious, undeveloped natural harbour – indeed the depths are better than Dingle, but the bay is more open to the south east. There’s a great beach there and an interesting story from the Second World War which bears repeating.

In October 1939 the German submarine U-35 encountered a Greek freighter north of the Scilly Isles but before sinking her, the freighter’s crew abandoned ship. The U-boat commander picked them all up as they were unlikely to survive in the rough weather and took them to Ventry, where all 28 crewmembers were landed safely by small boat. The U Boat commander was subsequently reprimanded for risking his vessel. A few weeks later, the submarine came off worst in an encounter with a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Lord Mountbatten. The British rescued every one of the U-boat’s crew before it was scuttled. In 2009, a memorial was unveiled at Ventry. I like this story, not least because it reminds us that in fighting wars at sea, both sides have a common foe: the power of the sea itself, and seafarers often have great compassion for each other.

I had hoped that the bus route would take us along the southern shores of the Dingle peninsula, but it turned north over the mountains towards Ballyferriter and in the process gave us a great view over Smerwick harbour and further east towards Brandon mountain. Around a thousand years before Christopher Columbus discovered America, an Irish missionary St Brendan made a trip from this place in a leather boat. He travelled to the Faeroes, Iceland and almost certainly reached Newfoundland. His story is beautifully told in Tim Severin’s wonderful account of his own attempt in 1976 to show that such a voyage was feasible – The Brendan Voyage. It is well worth a read.

The bus turned south west and we got a view of the Blasket Islands through the dark clouds. A few minutes later it dropped us at Kruger’s Bar, midway between the pier and the Blasket Island Heritage Centre, an impressive museum built to celebrate and preserve the unique heritage of this place. We set off for the pier as the sun was out. Dunquin is a bit of a sprawl lying at the base of some forbidding mountains called the Commons. It features heavily in the David Lean film ‘Ryan’s Daughter’ which starred Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles John Mills and Trevor Howard. It was set during the Irish Civil War and I loved it as a child. The British Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) was founded at Krugers in the 1970s – perhaps as a reaction to the few alternatives to the Black Stuff on offer there at the time.

It’s a steep scramble down to the pier and you can imagine the islanders trying to push their sheep ashore here from their curraghs and then over the mountain to market at Dingle. There was a small caravan selling coffee at the top of the cliff claiming to be the most westerly coffee shop in Europe. I’ve seen several such claims to fame along the coast from Cape Finisterre in Galicia northwards (see our blog from 11 July 2017) but few with a view to match this – looking towards America past these remote islands and watching the Atlantic rollers throw themselves against the black rocks below.

We picked our way along the shoreline to the museum. It was worth it: this is the heart of the Gaeltacht – Irish-speaking Ireland and it does a great job of capturing the spirit of what it must have been like to live in this remote outpost of civilisation from the time of the Great Famine in the 1850s until the islands were finally abandoned in 1953.  In their heyday around 150 hardy souls lived here, eking a living from fishing, sheep farming, boat building and collecting seabirds eggs. You get a sense of the magnetic draw eastwards to the mainland and west to the New World (many went that way and settled in Springfield, Connecticut) balanced by the beauty of the place and the simplicity of life there. There was a great tradition of storytelling, music and dancing – folk would come over from Dingle for the ‘craic’, probably hoping that the weather would prevent them from getting back for work on Monday morning…

Indeed it was probably the weather, and the inexorable advance of the modern world, that eventually took its toll on the islanders. There was no priest, no doctor, no school, no consecrated burial ground. Infant mortality was high. You can only do so much with natural beauty and music.

On our return to Escapade, we picked up some essentials from Supervalu before welcoming John and Jane MacInnes (Shivinish) and Peter, Christine, Robert and Charlotte Ingram (Troubadour). All three crews are members of the Royal Cruising Club and the Ocean Cruising Club so we should probably have reported a ‘muster’ to a Rear Commodore somewhere. I fear we failed, but made a short survey of Escapade’s museum of Scottish and Irish whiskies instead. The MacInnes’ were sailing clockwise around Ireland from their base in Ardfern, Argyll; The Ingrams were on their way to Iceland to examine some volcanoes. We’d seen Troubadour on our way into Valentia a few days earlier – it turns out they had come out of Bantry Bay and were following us past the Skelligs – as we hardened up and put the kettle on, they hoisted a spinnaker. Now Iceland beckoned, with fresh winds to boot.  Proper adventuring – I think St Brendan would have approved.

The next day we sailed for the Aran Islands.