Pleasure island
MALCOLM ROGERS travels to Co. Kerry to visit Valentia Island and
looks at holidays in Ireland’s defunct lighthouses, administered
by the Irish Landmark Trust
 By Malcom
Rogers
You’ll be dazzled by the constellations of Orion, Cassiopeia and
The Plough. No light pollution here, so the dust of the Milky Way will
cause you to stare into the night skies and wonder about the unheard music
of the stars. By day, the siren songs of sea birds and salt winds which
sough gently across Valentia Island will play a melody on your soul.
Oh dear, sorry about that. Waxing lyrical so early in the day, I mean.
But Valentia does that to you.
With so much of Ireland on fast forward these days, the slow pulse of
life among Europe’s most westerly community has a profound effect
on the mind.
About 700 souls live on this green morsel of land lying half a mile
off the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula. Idyllic it sounds, if somewhat
at the end of the line. Once you get to Valentia, there’s only a
few yards of the Old World left.
But lest you get the wrong idea, this is emphatically not the sort of
place to come for a penitential weekend. Leave that to the religious types
who visit Skellig Michael. Rising some 700 feet out of the ocean, the
huge precipitous mass of slate rock a dozen or so miles in the Atlantic
was at one time home to a community of monks. Obviously just some zealous
guys.
On Valentia, on the other hand, there’s a lot of gracious living
— at times it almost seems more like Dalkey-on-the-Atlantic and
the craic reaches levels which must be dangerously close to exceeding
limits laid down by the Geneva Convention. Rightly do they say that pagan
abandon allied to a Christian soul lie at the roots of Irish culture.
The view from Valentia
The character actors of geography is what they call islands and Valentia
doesn’t disappoint. It’s only seven miles by two, but somehow
seems much larger, packing an inconceivable numbers of historical sites
and views into one small place.
Valentia is a well-populated island so every scrap of land has been utilized.
Mostly rolling farmland, the fields are divided by slate walls and the
boreens bleed with fuchsia. The island is supposedly the first part of
Europe that the Gulf Stream comes into contact with and certainly the
climate seems tame and the vegetation abundant — a surfeit of palm
trees sometimes seem incongruous when it’s a fine soft day absolutely
bucketing down.
Two towns serve both locals and visitors. Knightstown, named after the
Knight of Kerry, the title held by the Fitzgerald family, is reminiscent
of an Anglo-Irish settlement with its many stately buildings and refined
ambience. Facing Cahersiveen (the birthplace of Daniel O’Connell
on the mainland of Kerry) the village has fine views of three of Ireland’s
highest peaks — Carrauntoohil, Beenkeragh and Caher, all over 3000
feet. Behind these lie the Lakes of Killarney.
It’s hard to avoid a good view on Valentia. The 888 foot Jeokaun
Mount — the highest point on the island — the Cliffs of Fogher
and the 792 foot Bray Head offer views across to the Dingle Peninsula,
the Skelligs, the Blasket islands and the tiny little Church Island.
From these headlands nothing but ocean separates you from Newfoundland.
Stand on your tiptoes and you can see the New World.
Long distance information
Commonsense is what tells us that the earth is flat.
But of course we know the world isn’t flat. Fortunately for us explorers,
adventurers and astronomers didn’t go with that gut feeling and
worked out long ago that if you sail beyond the Blasket Islands you don’t
fall off the edge of the world. The headline “Flat Earth Society
ship feared missing” evokes humour not tragedy, as it once might.
The early pioneers in the field of telecommunications likewise didn’t
believe in commonsense, and in an engineering feat which conquered almost
unbelievable odds the first trans-Atlantic cable became fully functional
in 1866.
For many years after that, Valentia had better communications with Dublin
than with New York. You can find out more about the men who wired up Ireland
at the old schoolhouse in Glenleam which now serves as the Valentia Island
Heritage Centre and Museum.
Commonsense also dictates that Tir na nÓg, the Land of Eternal
Youth, doesn’t exist. But the VIPs (Valentia Island People) know
it does. Because this part of Kerry is where the legends of the Fianna
are set.
Their leader Finn MacCumhaill — pronounced ‘McCool’
as a general rumhaill — would gallop out to sea, sometimes riding
on the magical wave Tonn Toime, to visit those other fugitives from Irish
mythology, Oisin and Niamh.
You bet Jurassic!
From legends going back a couple of thousand years to footprints going
back substantially further, in fact as far back as the Paleozoic era.
In old money that’s some 385 million years.
Valentia attracts visitors for myriad reasons — the views, the fishing,
the hiking, the cable, the craic — plus one thing of major international
significance: the tetrapods.
The footprints of these primitive four-legged animals, the ancestors of
amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, were found here on a trackway
in the shadow of Jeokaun Mount.
About 200 prints representing the passage of one or more tetrapods across
this part of Kerry are clearly visible in the purple siltstone at Dohilla.
These ancient monsters are a key record of the important evolutionary
step of vertebrates leaving aquatic environments and breathing air on
land, and this site ranks with the best the world has to offer.
Slating the Commons
A slate quarry on the north side of the island which opened in 1816 still
flourishes today. The famous Valentia Slate (aka Valentia Flag) has been
used in many prominent buildings including the British House of Commons,
Waterloo and Charing Cross stations, and the Opéra in Paris. The
Public Record Office in London has 26 miles of shelving of Valentia slate.
At the mouth of the works, somewhat incongruously, is a grotto to Our
Lady. Pray to the Blessed Virgin here and you’re likely to get,
er, a clean slate.
Valentia is well used to visitors, consequently restaurants and accommodation
are fairly easy to come by. VIPs are warm and friendly but you could hardly
do better in the whole of Ireland, never mind Valentia, than Coombe Bank
House.
This beautiful turn-of-the-century mansion caters for large groups as
well as individuals. Just 10 minutes walk from Knightstown, the main building
can sleep up to 18 comfortably. Coombe Bank House boasts everything you
could want from luxury accommodation — multi-channel TV, en-suite
bedrooms, free laundry facilities etc. But its real charm lies in the
welcome you’ll receive.
The charming proprietor Anne O’Driscoll is endlessly helpful.
If you happen to be in Valentia at a time when Anne is holding a party
— and you have to trust me on this one — I’d definitely
go along. I received one such invite and decided it was my duty to present
myself at the festivities.
Well, after a meal which must surely have depleted the entire fish stocks
of the south west coastline (salmon, mackerel, trout, hake, lobster et
al) and a collection of drinks and cocktails which would have floated
the entire Irish Navy, the serious partying began. Music, ballads, poems
and recitations.
Should you get the chance, ask Anne to sing James Connolly for you. A
truly memorable version, and a truly remarkable night. In the best of
journalistic tradition I made my excuses and stayed.
Coombe Bank House, Knightstown, Valentia Island, Co. Kerry.
Tel: 00 353 (0) 66 94 76169
Email: coombebank@ireland.com
www.coombebank.20m.com
Valentia Factfile
Oilean Dairbhre / Valentia Island
Population: 650-700
Main activities: hill-walking, scuba diving, fishing
Getting there: The island has been linked to the mainland since 1970 by
a bridge at Portmagee. Alternatively, a ferry runs from Cahersiveen to
Knightstown, cost ¤4.
Further details: contact Cork & Kerry tourism on 353 (0) 64 31633.
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