Today

Just returned from a week in Ireland on the Sheeps Head peninsula. We've been there many times now and feel really at home. We flew Ryanair to Shannon for the princely sum of £4.99 + taxes each, were in Ireland in 50 minutes. A 3 hour drive over the Killarney mountains and we were there. The roads were mostly good or being improved with 80% grants from the EU. After a rainy start, which made us wonder if we'd done the right thing, we had a beautiful time and allowed the place to exert its healing influence on us.

We generally stay in the same cottage; when we first went there, in 1997, there only about 1/2 a dozen cottages in the village. Now there must be 50 or 60, with more going up. Ireland has not been slow to recognise its potential as a holiday venue. Plus, as the population expands, homes are needed. Let's hope they don't kill the goose.

So far, the building has not spoiled the beauty or essential wildness of the place. And, after a trying year for all of us, we needed to experience the benefits of its physical and spiritual qualities.

In My Day

We first went to Ireland in 1990. We took the girls and Paul's Mother who had convinced herself that her family came from Tipperary and that all she had to do was walk into Tipperary and people would instantly recognise her and take her to the home of her fathers.

We decided to stay in Banagher, which is in county Offaly on the Shannon. Getting there was more of a palaver than it is now, via drive to Fishguard, ferry to Rosslare and long drive along shocking roads through worsening rain. Eventually we arrived in Banagher. It had taken us all day and it was now 10 at night. We went to the address of the cottage - all was dark and we had no idea how to find our landlady. No mobile phones. With some nervousness we knocked on the neighbours' front door - after all it was now 10.30. "Ah!" they said "you want Mrs...... at ....... address just down the road. No, no problem; we were just popping out for a Guiness."

We found our landlady who let us in. "Would you be going to bed right now?" she asked. "Well, we've a few things to unpack yes and we need to unwind." "Only I've just baked you a fresh pan of soda bread and I'll be right back." So our real introduction to Ireland was to be greeted with hot soda bread which we ate at 11.00 pm with Kerrygold butter and strawberry jam.

Like many people new to Ireland we tried to take in too much that week, with drives to Connemara etc, and learnt that getting a meal outside the towns was nearly impossible. We discovered Haughey's Bar in Banagher, which was by far the dirtiest, liveliest, most crowded bar I've ever visited. There was a regular Irish folk duo - a woman with 3 teeth, the blackest hair and largest bottom who could play five chords on the piano and sing "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" in a basso profundo that shook your boots like the notes from an ocean liner and a female demon fiddler who was aged about 80. We loved it and laughed almost continually.

Ireland was still pretty poor in those days - 15 years of EU grants and the rise of IT have utterly changed it in many ways - but we had a wonderful time and didn't mind the rain.

Mum never found her relatives who, I suspect, were largely figments of her mother's imagination, but this didn't shake her faith.

I hope that the Irish stay the Irish, regardless of the new-found wealth that is coming their way, because the place and people have something irreplaceable.