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Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

Still at Home on Vacation

June 25, 2008

By Cormac MacConnell

I AWOKE at the crack of dawn in West Cork a fortnight ago. We were near Clonakilty in the home of one of the Dutch Nation’s many friends en route to spend a week in the home of another friend in the Italian Alps. I don’t like dawns and I don’t like traveling, yet I was struck by the flat, golden edge of the high sun and by the way it gilded the young clouds of the day.

And I was dumbstruck by the clean beauty of the emerald green landscape. The Atlantic bordered the meadows folded neatly around each other and around rougher outcrops and grazing land. Seagulls soared through the morning.

We drove the 40 miles to Cork Airport. We climbed on an Aer Lingus plane to Nice.

I noticed Aer Lingus have dropped the names of the saints off their planes. Eanna is now simply Eanna instead of St. Eanna!

We soared upwards anyway, and for once I ordered a *9 Irish breakfast. It was small but so tasty. I ordered a couple more slices of brown bread.

I could not get them, said a hostess who remembered the old days when Aer Lingus always had extra bread and was a little bit embarrassed about it. “Never mind,” I said, “the world changes.”

We flew for about two hours over morning Europe’s white clouds. I slept the most of the way.

We landed at Nice. It was a clear, bright morning. We queued for a coach to bring us to the railway station to catch a train across the border into Italy.

I leave all the arrangements to the Dutch Nation. She is far better at it than I am.

We catch the bus. The French, I discover, are very cute at selling their tourist attractions. They have certainly dyed the Med that swimming pool shade of blue. No doubt about it.

They have also employed beautiful female and male models to run along the Prom of Nice. What is more, the bus follows a looped route that brings you past the Prom three times so you think it is about 10 miles long. Very cute indeed.

We eventually reach the railway station. More cuteness.

We are brought back along the Prom several times to make sure we don’t miss it before we plunge into tunnels and out into the country towards the border.

It is all very spectacular indeed. We go higher and higher and faster and faster through exotic stations like Monaco and Monte Carlo. And then onwards and upwards for several hours.

And then the Dutch Nation tells me to alight. I do alight, thanking God for the life’s work of the man who invented suitcases with wheels!

We go in search of another bus. We eventually find it. We are now, I am informed, in Italy. I’m not certain where I am.

The new bus grunts deep in its metal belly and starts to snort up into the Alps. There is bright sunlight and sheer falls to all sides and truly spectacular scenery.

I grudgingly confess to myself (though not to the Dutch Nation!) that there are stretches at least as beautiful as Killarney. The villages look like picture postcards. One is more beautiful than the next, in all fairness.

Rivers froth around vineyards and olive groves, and there are people already sitting outside the cafes drinking (I looked) both coffee and beers and wine. I start to get thirsty, and I’m mad for a cigarette too.

Up and up we go into the mountains. Eventually we start to run out of villages. The road converts itself into a total corkscrew being driven towards all the towering summits.

The bus driver toots his horn as he approaches each bend and clearly needs to. Little three-wheeler lorries coming flying down the other way pass in blurs.

I discover I still know all the words of the Confiteor. Everybody else is as happy as Larry.

At the end of the bus route, as high up the Alps as you can go by engine, we come to journey’s end in the medieval mountain village of Castelvittorio.

It’s incredible, but I’ll stop there because other travelers’ tales become boring always. There is a point to this one, though.

I stumble to the porch of the picturesque nearest ristorante/bar to light a cigarette. It is called Buscuin, and I come to know it well later in the week.

Having smoked, we enter the premises for a well-deserved meal and a drink. I relax at the table and look at the wall in amazement.

Looking at me is the very same West Cork morning sun which had greeted me all those planes and coaches and trains ago outside Clonakilty!

Beside that painting was another which showed the Atlantic frothing gently against the Cork coast, the green meadows folded in and around each other and the outcrops and grazing lands. All resting under a gentle morning. Incredible.

There’s always an explanation. And sure there’s always at least one Irishman about the place no matter where you go.

The young Cork painter John Adams is a regular visitor to this area of the Alps, and they like both him and his work hereabouts. And that’s how I traveled all the way from West Cork to see West Cork, if ye know what I mean.

That’s it.

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