Last year, from March to October, I walked the Beara Breifne Way, a 700km-long historical trail following the path of Domhnall Cam O’Sullivan Beare, the last Gaelic chieftain of Ireland. He left his homeplace of Beara on New Year’s Eve, 1602, hounded and harassed by English forces after taking part in the Battle of Kinsale.
He quit Glengarriff in the depths of a bitter winter, a price of 300 pounds on his head, with a thousand followers, soldiers and civilians. On their march north they were continuously attacked by English forces and fellow Irishmen. Two weeks later he reached safety and refuge in Leitrim at the castle of Brian Óg Ó Rourke: 35 followers made it with him, the rest having fallen in battles, through hunger or exhaustion, or having deserted.
The walk, from Dursey Island at the edge of West Cork to Blacklion in Cavan on the Border, is a series of 14 connected walking trails. Going through counties Cork, Tipperary, Galway, Roscommon, Sligo, Leitrim and Cavan, if done as a through-hike, it takes five-six weeks. As a single mother, I couldn’t get time like that together, so I went out two weekends a month, beginning at the spring equinox in March and aiming to finish by the autumn equinox in September.
Wildly unprepared and not fit enough at the beginning, the Caha and Shehy mountains almost destroyed me, but over the months, I went from crying at mountains to skipping through them. In the hundreds of kilometres walked, my body became more flexible and agile, with an unexpected sensation of the years rolling away from me. I walked alone, without music, headphones, podcasts; I used the phone as visual notebook, taking photos and videos that would help write my book, Walking to the Foot of the Sky, that came out in May.
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Walking alone, I met hardly anyone: one girl on the Beara Way, hiking with a sliced thumb; a through-hiker outside Ballyvourney who mansplained about gear and my navigation skills; joy of joys, a fellow Beara Breifne walker near Milestone in Tipperary who saw me on the road, rucksack-clad, poles in hand, and with whom I became friends; and outside Clonfert in Galway, a vision in pink in an August woodland, another solo woman hiker, vastly more experienced than me, who regaled me with tales of routes and pilgrim ways throughout Europe.
[ Walking the 700km Beara Breifne Way: ‘I wanted to test myself, test my body’Opens in new window ]
The Beara Breifne way offered a stunning diversity of landscape that few people in the country seem to know about or have passed through. I walked across all kinds of terrain, mountain, forest, bog, hills; beside and over rivers, around lakes, and I also passed by all kinds of houses, country piles, derelict shacks, abandoned buildings and, particularly in Tipperary, some stunning architectural new-builds.
Not up for wild camping or even glamping at my age, I stayed in Airbnbs, guesthouses and with friends along the way. On Dursey Island, I stayed in a tiny house in the island’s first village; all building materials have to be ferried over by boat, so every house here is a kind of miracle. In Tipperary I stayed in a Georgian house at the foot of the Galtee mountains that had been the old hunting lodge of the Cahir Butlers, Earls of Glengall. The oldest oak tree in Munster adorned its immaculate lawn. Deep in the Slieve Felims, an enchanting, intriguing round of 12 hills just below the M7, I stayed in Maggie’s Cottage with a story as interesting as the house itself, with windows and doors picked out in scarlet. The nearby village of Upperchurch near Thurles had a vibrant community spirit, anchored by the phenomenal Jim of The Mills pub, a tiny oasis of culture and music.
On the shores of Lough Derg I stayed in a sweet cottage in Ballinderry, and swam every evening in the tranquil deep blue water at Mota Quay. This part of Lough Derg, south of Terryglass, would make an ideal spot for city dwellers looking to relocate. On the road around Clonfert, where Brendan the Navigator is buried, I was invited for tea to a tower house, Brackloon Castle, where I chatted to its architect owner about its stunning renovation.
[ Walk for the Weekend: Beara-Breifne Way, Co CorkOpens in new window ]
Further north on the Hymany Way, outside Ahascragh in Co Galway, on a day of stifling August heat, I walked past a cut-stone, rose-adorned, two-storey cottage with the owners and their children working assiduously in the perfectly tended garden. At its end was a deep, long pool, shaded by ash trees, and I could not help comparing its harmonious charm and unaffected beauty to the formal Victorian redbrick grandes dames, high, venerable and imposing, that form my usual Irish Times property beat in the salubrious quarters of Dublin 4 and 6.
My favourite stay probably came at the walk’s end, at Hartley House in Carrick-on-Shannon, where the owner, Kate, after a life as a project manager on London building sites, came home and renovated a Georgian gem by herself. The rooms are full of curated antique furniture and her breakfasts are akin to the morning-after repasts of the Joycean dinner of the Dead.
Through all the time walking, I passed through countless bypassed towns that could be transformed with new residents – buyers willing to look outside cities to try something radically different. I often went online in the evenings after walking to look at properties in areas I’d walked through, and was stunned by the prices and the availability of country homes and derelict potential doer-uppers.
I finished my walk later than planned, at the end of October. But my delay gave me the deep pleasure of walking through vivid autumnal landscapes, feeling the oncoming bite of winter, battling through all kinds of weather to get to the end of the walk.
Looking back on it now, it was, I can see, much more than a walk of history and landscape, it became a personal odyssey, rooted in time, nature, art, stained-glass, saints, ghosts; I followed a line I did not even recognise, something internal, within myself.
“Storytelling,” wrote Tim Robinson in Connemara, his epic three-part work on the landscape, “walks us out of the comprehensible dimensions of space and place into those of history, dream and myth.” I certainly felt transported, over the course of my walk through Ireland, firmly from the future back into the past, into a tapestry of myth and memory, a vast landscape of dreaming I doubt I shall ever be able to quit.
Walking to the Foot of the Sky by Miriam Mulcahy is published by Eriu
Six homes for sale along the Beara Breifne Way
Dursey Shore Lighthouse, Garnish, Beara, Co Cork
Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill West Cork, €1.15m
This exceptional property at the end of the Beara peninsula, overlooking Dursey Island and just up the road from the cable car to the island, was built in the 1860s as two houses, accommodation for the Calf Rock lighthouse keepers and their families. Sold by Irish Lights in the 1940s, the property was completely renovated in the late 1990s and is now a luxurious four-bed, five-bath retreat on over two acres with a pier and a private cove. With two elegant Victorian-style conservatories, the option is there to maintain it as one residence, or to split it in two. Thirty minutes from Castletown Bere, it has a number of stone outbuildings, including a boat house that has been repurposed as a bar. It’s a unique restoration, with many of the rooms featuring sections of old walls exposed. It also has flagged floors underfoot, a Ber of E2, solar panels and oil-fired heating.
Sopwell Hall, Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary
Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty, €5.5m
Sopwell Hall, built in 1745, is an early Georgian mansion on 300 acres of parkland, and includes Killeagh Castle, which dates from 1590. The hall has five reception rooms, a beautiful entrance hall with sienna marble columns and 10 bedrooms, and its area is 1,322sq m (14,235sq ft). Set in the most stunning countryside, the hall is deep within the estate, at the end of a half-mile long drive. Accommodation ranges over three floors and a basement, the upper floor has a games room, and there is a studio in the courtyard. A deep native woodland forms a perimeter belt around Sopwell and there is also an ancient beech wood. The nearest village is Ballingarry, and nearby towns include Borrisokane and Cloughjordan.
Castlegar East, Ahascragh, Ballinasloe, Co Galway
Property Partners Moore Larkin, €595,000
This three-bed semidetached property on 21 acres could suit a family looking for a small equestrian set-up, as it comes with stables. It’s within the Castlegar estate, so adjoins an ancient woodland. Ahascragh is an overlooked gem of a village in east Galway, about 10 minutes from Ballinasloe and set in gorgeous countryside. This 114sq m (1,227sq ft) three-bed property requires some modernisation, but would make a perfect country escape. Along with a prosperous orchard, the house comes with a meticulously maintained rose garden.
The Thatch, Falleens, Monasteraden, Co Sligo
Savills, €495,000
I fell in love with this part of Sligo. Monasteraden is a lakeside village north of Ballaghadereen in Roscommon, and it is full of beautiful places to walk, fish, boat and swim in Lough Gara. . The Thatch is a lakeshore property on 10 acres that comes with its own island, Inch island, just offshore. An A-rated four-bed home, it also comes with equestrian facilities, so it really is a dream of a country retreat. As well as stables, paddocks and a sand arena, the house comes with a greenhouse, outbuildings, an orchard and a vegetable garden, so it truly is the last word in self-sufficiency. Extending to 201sq m (2,166 sq ft), the house is in perfect decorative order, with a fresh new kitchen, exposed stone walls and cosy living areas.
Roosky More, Culfadda, Co Sligo
Sherry FitzGerald Draper, €150,000
This six-bed home on an 1.3 acres is firmly in the doer-upper category, yet the price for what could be a fantastic family home is attractive. The setting is superb, down a quiet rural laneway, with a mountainous backdrop to the rear and open country stretching away to the front of the 175sq m (1,883sq ft) property. It has outbuildings which are also suitable for upgrading or conversion, subject to planning. With the mythical hill of Kesh behind it, where lovers Diarmuid and Gráinne were reputed to have stayed on their flight from Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the property is also beside the Bricklieve mountains, full of wonderful walks.
Aghaginny, Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim
Sherry Fitzgerald Farrell seeking €345,000
Built on the foothills of the imposing Iron Mountain which rears above Lough Allen at the top of Leitrim, this four-bed bungalow on an eighth of an acre has been vacant for more than two years, so may qualify for the Property Refurbishment Grant. Its current Ber rating is B3. Three kilometres and so only minutes’ drive from the town of Drumshanbo, the 145sq m (1,560sq ft) home is listed at a price that would be difficult to find in other parts of the country. With a large kitchen and dining area, a good-sized sittingroom and two bathrooms, the maintenance-free grounds have been well kept despite its lack of use.
