It's the season for studying holiday brochures - blue skies and bluer seas, golden sands and palm trees whether in the Caribbean or the Canary Islands. But the new issue of Ireland of the Welcomes carries pictures to ease the eyes in a completely different context. Along with a detailed article by Alannah Hopkin come two startling photos to make you want to get up and go. Both show that famous, award-winning building which has been likened to a space ship just landed, with, in the background, blue of sea and sky.
It is the Ceide Fields on the north coast of Mayo, about five miles west of Ballycastle. The story is told of the local schoolmaster who thought he saw a certain pattern in stones which projected above the surface of the bog, and how he persisted, and later his son became an archaeologist and helped move things on, so that now, thanks to Patrick Caulfield and his son Seamus, lecturer on Archaeology at University College, Dublin, we know that the four square miles or so of bog which first intrigued Patrick Caulfield, covered a formerly prosperous farming population of some 600 people, it may be, some five-and-a-half thousand years ago - farmers with their stone walls, their cattle, their houses and kitchen gardens - who, whether suddenly or not, moved out.
Why? Because, the writer tells us, the climate became so wet that they couldn't work their land and they moved on, all of them, perhaps only five miles to the west. And the bog grew and grew and buried all. Now we have a fine record of their lives, reconstructed from actual objects such as a huge Scots pine, the centre-piece in the building, carbon-dated to 2300 BC. The visitor centre doesn't re-open until mid-March but a note says "Off-season by appointment." Yet while you miss a lot by not going into the centre, the land around is spell-binding enough.
Across the road is a viewing balcony at the edge of the cliffs. These show a fascinating layering of rock; and seabirds - gulls and fulmars it may be - planing, floating on the currents of air, lazily, you would think, and making noise. Some say that looking north you are facing Iceland. Even out-of-season, Brian Lynch's photographs would tempt you. This summer, the article tells us, a new facility will be opened at nearby Belderrig for serious study and archaeological investigations. Meantime, salutes to all concerned, starting with Patrick Caulfield.