Hills and Duhallows – An Irishman’s Diary about a road-trip in Limerick and Cork

I spent a pleasant weekend recently down around “Ballyhoura Country”, as it calls itself, a part of Ireland that had hitherto escaped me.

It might have escaped longer except for my teenage son, whose enthusiasms include mountain biking.

And as I now know, not only does Ballyhoura have mountains, it also has the country’s most extensive mountain biking trail – a network of hills and hollows stretching nearly 60 kilometres.

So we dragged the younger boy along too, for an all-male road trip, not the least enjoyable part of which was the discovery en route of Ballyhoura’s most famous village. I had noticed the sign in passing, and decided – given the company – it might be worth the detour. Sure enough, it was much appreciated by the passengers.

There is, in truth, not much to see in Effin. But the signs, of which there are surprisingly many, considering their potential value to Irish pubs abroad, are enough. Between Effin This (the GAA club), Effin That, and Effin the Other, they provided solid entertainment for a good 10 minutes.

As for the mountain biking, that was also a new experience for me, and one I wasn’t looking forward to even before we saw the weather.

Whatever about climbing mountain tracks, the idea of hurtling down them in torrential rain and high winds was daunting.

My only cycling of late had been on the Dublin rental bikes, which despite weighing as much as a small car each, have all the road-holding abilities of greased golf balls.

But our hired mountain machines, despite being what the man called “entry level”, had uncanny grip and balance. Once I learned to trust them, I was soon careering over roots and rocks with the recklessness of lost youth, the storm only adding to the thrill. In short, it was Effin brilliant.

Detours

Back on the road, with a car-full of wet clothes, we drove south into darkest Cork, heading towards the sea but with no particular destination in mind, and making detours on a whim. In fact, when you get off the motorways and bypasses – which I too rarely do these days – Ireland can still seem a foreign country – full of mysteries to be unravelled.

Passing through New Twopothouse, for example, we derived great enjoyment from speculating how that Cork village came to be so called (apparently from a pub sign with two pint pots of ale, although there is some debate about this).

And then there was Bweeng, a name you might expect in the Australian bush, somewhere “Back of Bourke”.

Here, a little disappointingly, it turned out to be just a phonetic rendering of an Irish word meaning hills.

Exotic in its own way is “New Tipperary”, yet another Cork hamlet, and one for whose name I have not been able to find an explanation. My guess is it relates to another “New Tipperary”, in the actual Tipperary town, which became a political flashpoint once, during the Land War.

That arose from a protest against a hated landlord called Arthur Smith-Barry, who was Cork-based, but led a syndicate that acquired the land on which Tipp town stood. Tenants withheld rent and were evicted. So with the support of nationalist leaders including Parnell, they started building a breakaway town, just outside Smith-Barry’s territory.

But that short-lived “New Tipperary” was in time absorbed into the regular Tipperary.

As to its small echo, in a village 50 miles to the south, well behind Cork lines, I am mystified. Was it an attempt at colonisation by Tipp imperialists? Maybe readers can advise.

A sign for New Tipperary notes that it is also part of the ancient barony of Duhallow. Or “Duhallow – A Living Countryside” as a slogan puts it. And that is indeed a lively part of Ireland.

But as I was reminded during a visit to Picardy and Flanders earlier this year, it has a more sombre connotation there, in the countryside of the dead.

Commemoration

Near the Belgian city of Ypres, there is a Commonwealth war cemetery called Duhallow, which for one of its innovations, also gave its name to part of the architecture of commemoration in general.

Most war graves are individual, bearing single names or, when a body was unidentified, with the designation “Known to God”. Where remains were intermingled, the gravestones were placed in contact, shoulder to shoulder. But where graves were known to exist and then lost or destroyed, the names were recorded on a standalone marker – called, for its origins, the Duhallow Block.