Achill Island: a postcard from the lost world

A walking festival draws us to Achill Island on Ireland’s wild and beautiful west coast.

On the first night of the festival, we meet walkers from all over Ireland. Among them are Maree & Seamus O’Brien, Brid & Paula (named after the last Pope), the O’Reilly brothers and their nephew Jean-Paul (also named after a Pope) and Michelle, a fellow Camino aficionado. There’s also Anne & Ivan, an American couple keen like us to walk the land of their ancestors and know more of its stories.

Our leader is Tomás, an Irish-speaking archaeologist and mountaineer. Before we start climbing, he advises us to move gracefully up the slope, stop and let the wind pass and be mindful of our fellow walkers.

We climb Croaghaun and Corraun Hill, up past cories and hanging valleys to take in the spectacular views from Ireland’s highest sea cliffs. We look out to off-shore islands and the vast Atlantic Ocean, all wild surging sea from here to Newfoundland, 3,500 kilometres away.

Tomás holds us spellbound with stories of myth and landscape, interspersed with tales of the more recent goings-on of the islanders.

We walk through snipe grass country, past peat bogs and the remains of neolithic hill forts. There are cliff faces black with tar lichen, sea arches and blowholes. Great cracks in the rocks make you fear that the land upon which you stand is about to surrender to the sea. We visit a small tidal Island where Tomás points out the layers of history held in a dune face exposed by a recent storm. He invites us to look down a rabbit hole. In the gloom, we see the rounded shape of a human skull. Ireland’s history runs deep but is never far from the surface.

All night foghorns sound across the bay. In the morning we wake to the cry of seabirds.

As we’re here on St Patrick’s Day, we do as the islanders do and attend mass before following the pipe bands around the island. The music of pipes and drums reverberates off the high stone walls and carries across the peat bogs, far out to sea. When the bands stop, we mingle with the red-haired islanders and enjoy a Guinness in the spring sunshine. Later, we retreat into a bar and soak up the high-spirited bonhomie and the music.

They still cut peat on Achill Island although most houses are heated by oil or cheap Polish coal. We’re told that peat is expensive because it holds magic within it. Even bad peat, which a local tells us can break your heart, is not without its own malign magic.

In the last decade or so, Ireland has known undreamt-of prosperity. People whose families lived in dire poverty for generations have been able to find work in Ireland, buy a house, and travel for pleasure. There’s a recession biting deep now and the Celtic tiger is subdued. But, as Seamus O’Brien said, you can still buy a bag of spuds for under five euros and if you turn off the television news, you can enjoy a good life.

Achill Island Walking Festival, Ireland, early spring, 2009

Postcards from the Lost World are from places we roamed before borders closed and overseas travel ceased. As we sit out the long interlude between journeys, we reimagine past wanderings and dream of a time before this time began.

See our other postcards from the lost world: Cinque Terre, Gotland, Jodhpur and Istanbul.