`It's unreal to see the Ring of Kerry on a fine day. It's more honest to see it in the rain." Martina Kavanagh is turning bad weather into something upbeat, as she takes the mike and addresses a coachload of 45 American tourists. They are on the Kerry leg of a 12-day round-Ireland odyssey with Brendan Tours, which costs some £970.Brendan is the grandaddy of the American tour carriers in this country, having been in operation since 1969.
It's supposed to be summer, but there has just been the most ferocious downpour over the lakes and jaunting cars of Killarney. Mid-day and we're heading off on the 106-mile Ring of Kerry drive, which goes through Killorglin, Glenbeigh, Kells, Cahersiveen, Waterville, Caherdaniel, Sneem and Moll's Gap. Since the Ring road is very narrow in places, tour buses now travel in an anti-clockwise direction.
I'm sitting at the back of the bus with Eric Stoneberg (22) from Oregon. "The first time you come to Ireland, I think you have to go on a tour," Eric says. "The second time, you'll know where to go." He's travelling with his parents, Neil and Joyce, and his sister Andrea (25).
Martina Kavanagh has been acting as guide for Brendan Tours for 18 years. She loves it and it shows in her commentary throughout the day, which is always lively and entertaining, with divil a sign of weariness after so many years on the same route. She certainly has the politician's gene, having effortlessly memorised everyone's name - an impressive feat with 45 souls aboard the bus, all of whom clearly adore her. "She's the only tour guide I've ever had who hasn't sent me to sleep," says Marc Files.
Some myths need exploding. There is not a single tartan trouser-leg in sight on this bus. And it'll be a long time before many of the folk aboard will be collecting their bus passes. In the cases of Rosemary Piech and Danny O'Dea, it will be several decades, as they are both only 10 years old. Their older teenage siblings are also aboard. What do they make of Ireland? "Dublin doesn't have much graffiti," offers Danny's sister, Stephanie (14). "But it has great doors," Danny says enthusiastically.
There are quite a few family groups; mothers and daughters, couples with their in-laws, sisters, and husbands and wives. About three-quarters of them have Irish roots, and they have travelled from all over the States for this tour; from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Chicago, New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida.
Over the course of the afternoon, there are moments of cultural crossed wires. Passing a holiday caravan park on the outskirts of Killorglin, one woman asks: "Is that a trailer park village?" In Killorglin itself, the story of Puck Fair provokes bemused laughter in the bus. "Isn't that cruelty to animals, putting a goat up on a platform for days?" someone asks earnestly.
For the first and only time of the day, Martina is flummoxed by a question. "I never thought of it like that," she says, over the mike. "It's a tradition." Factories get treated with the same respect as ring forts and Famine villages. They all get pointed out as places of providing employment. "That's Prodent, a dental factory. That one's a German factory which makes nuts and bolts," Martina informs us. As we negotiate the narrow roads, the texture of the landscape is commented on. Bungalow blitz gets as much of an airing as turf-cutting. "Cow's caviar," Martina says, pointing out the window to the black bales of silage in a farmer's yard near Cahersiveen. Someone asks what the Irish Permanent building is, when we go through Cahersiveen. "Well, it's not somewhere you go to get your hair permed," Martina reports, straight-faced.
All this time, the sun is flickering in and out of showery clouds, the light is opal-green and gold, the foxgloves are spiking the skyline, and the hedges are vivid with fuchsia. The sheep are ambling across the road, with that feckless, happy unconcern for wheeled vehicles that sheep have. We round a corner and the bay at Kells comes into sight; its perfect little harbour pooled at the bottom of a mountain. Everyone gasps.
Every fresh swing of the road brings sounds of amazement from the Americans. Now we're looking at the turquoise sea between here and the bluey-green wavy line of the Dingle Peninsula. There's a seal down there, diving up and down every now and then. It looks gorgeous, even to me, who's been coming to the Ring since babyhood. Listening to those exclamations, I try to imagine what it's like to be seeing all this for the first time. Wow.
Peggy Cleaveland from Florida has celebrated her 73rd birthday the day before. This is her first time in Ireland. It's lunchtime and she's eating Irish stew at a little cafe beyond Kells. "It's the best Irish stew I've ever had," she reports. "That's because you're eating it in Ireland," teases her sister, Jeannie Dew. "How can I explain all this to the folks back home?" Peggy enthuses, waving an arm in the direction of the doorway and the Kerry landscape.
"I think God kissed Ireland in a special way," she says. Peggy is wearing a brand-new, Kelly-green sweatshirt with the word "Ireland" printed on the front, and white shamrocks down the sleeves. It's the stuff of cliche, and yet, to look at the expression of pure happiness on Peggy's face is to realise that even cliches have their day.
Robin and Sue are the grown-up daughters of Joanne De Lach, from Michigan. Joanne is half Irish. "We Americans tend to be quite rumbuctious," she says, over lunch. "We're loud. I've noticed that here because you guys are so quiet." "Except when you're in the pubs," Robin puts in.
Back on to the bus and onwards to Waterville, "Where Charlie Chaplin spent his holidays in the Butler Arms Hotel". There's a photo stop at the Marian shrine car-park that overlooks the fabulous Coomakista Pass near Caherdaniel, an amazing medley of sea, mountain, peninsula, harbour and inlet. "Is this for real?" someone says, and takes an entire roll of film.
"In Ireland, we don't park our cars, we just abandon them," Martina comments when we drive through the car and bus obstacle-course that is Sneem. We're coming up to Moll's Gap, not far back to Killarney now. I borrow the mike and ask a few questions. One of them is addressed to the Americans who don't have Irish roots: what was the pull of Ireland for them? "Because it's pretty," and "All our friends have been," are the innocuous answers.
But going back down the bus, after handing the mike over, Joe Graf from Virginia stops me. He is holding a map of Ireland. I have to lean over to hear him, he's speaking so quietly.
"That's why my wife and I are in Ireland," Joe says, pointing to the map, on which the town of Castlepollard has been highlighted in pink. "To visit Castlepollard." He pronounces it Castlepolehard.
"Our son Seamus is Irish. He spent the first two years of his life in the Sacred Heart Convent in Castlepollard. The nuns looked after him." The Grafs adopted Seamus unseen, 35 years ago. An off-duty air hostess took him out to the States with her. "We'd like to go and see those nuns," Joe said. "If they're still there. To thank them for looking after our son." Seamus has never returned to Ireland.
Worlds shifted in the bus as Joe spoke: different Irelands and different exiles colliding with each other; one with a Famine in the mid-19th century and another with a furtive secrecy attached to births out of marriage in the mid-20th century. Driving along the lush lakeside road back into Killarney, it began to rain again.
