On a squeaky-clean weekend in Sligo, Jane Powers languishes in the 'warm, gelatinous soup' of a seaweed bath.
'You don't mind if I hide?" says Lothar Muschketat, biologist and bird-handler, and owner of Eagles Flying, a raptor research centre in Co Sligo. And he runs to a shrubby corner behind an aviary. His teenage son, Alex, is about to let loose Alaska, the American bald eagle. And Alaska doesn't like Lothar in her territory. When she rises into the air, I pray that she doesn't take against me. She is a huge, dark bird, with a two-and-a-half-metre wingspan, a cold eye, and a strong, cruel beak. She disappears out of sight, but reappears, winging darkly - oh no! - towards us. She changes her mind at the last minute and lands on a rock. She eyeballs Alex, calling to him with a strangely girlish, high-pitched chirrup. He swings the lure, and coaxes until she flings herself into a dive, taking the bait, and nearly knocking him over with the force of her flight.
It's a powerful start to our trip to Sligo - and the end of a flying display that begins with a small lagger falcon, continues with a slightly larger Harris hawk and a regal steppe eagle, until finally, Alaska steals the show.
There are perhaps two dozen birds of prey here, including owls and vultures. All are captive bred (acquired from zoos or other reputable sources), or are injured birds that were brought for treatment. Given that most will never be equipped to live in the wild, this seems a pretty good place for them: with plenty of exercise, boundless attention and squeaky clean accommodation.
Our own accommodation is with Brian and Lindy O'Hara at Coopershill House in Riverstown, home to O'Haras for seven generations. At the end of a winding, bluebell-speckled, beech avenue, a peacock dawdles across the gravel, trailing its long, bejewelled tail. In comparison to the fierce and athletic raptors whom we have just met, he is a real drag queen, and we laugh merrily. (We are repaid for this unkindness at four in the morning, when he lets loose a stream of shrill invective from beneath our bedroom window.)
The elegant Georgian building is filled with Big House paraphernalia: paintings and prints, blue-and-white china, antlered heads, ancient weapons, marble busts, Wellington boots, croquet mallets, dishes of golf balls. We repair to our room (this is the kind of house where one repairs), and make ourselves cups of tea (Twinings Darjeeling) and coffee (Rombouts). Alas, there are no biscuits, and dinner is nearly two hours away. My fellow traveller takes to the garden to eat some cigarettes, while I submerge myself in a hot bath.
At 8 p.m., we convene in the drawing room for drinks (and welcome bowls of peanuts and crisps) before dinner. The meal is a formal affair (although this doesn't apply to the guests' dress: jeans are just fine), and the food is simple, but nicely cooked. Before the cheese board and desserts appear, I go in search of Penny, the African grey parrot, who has been making abrupt screeches in the hall. She is nowhere to be seen. Her large cage, standing on several sheets of The Irish Times, is empty. But Lindy knows just where to find her. As she pulls open the central drawer of the drinks cabinet, Penny unfolds herself from its flat space, looking slightly annoyed at the disturbance.
The next day dawns grey and chilly, but we're not bothered. We're off to Enniscrone's famous seaweed baths. The road is quiet. "Traffic", as in herds of angry cars, does not exist in this county. The roughly scissored shapes of the Ox Mountains are in our view until we near our destination, when the land flattens and the sky grows large.
Edward Kilcullen, whose grandfather opened the baths in 1912, leads us to our double room. Two enormous baths await, filled with Fucus serratus and hot seawater. But first there is the cedarwood steam cabinet, an ominous-looking brown box. I climb in and perch so that my head protrudes through a hole in the top. There is a lever inside, and I feel like I'm operating a steam train: "All aboard!" and hufffff! Hufffff! Hufffff! Grey clouds of warm vapour gush out - bathing skin, opening pores and softening weary muscles.
After five minutes, I'm ready to slip into the brown water and green weed. It smells of the sea: salty, fishy, seaweedy, elemental. It's dark and murky, an indoor rock pool of marine vegetation. Could there be snappers and pinching things in there?
There aren't. Just a warm, gelatinous soup urging me to lie back and soak away the aches and pains of a lifetime. My fellow traveller, now steamed and pink, slides into his matching vat of seaweed. We are Mr and Mrs Poseidon. I am a mermaid and he is my merman. We are water babies in our twin tubs of water weed. I am Ophelia, languishing in fronds of green, and over there, also enfronded is, oh... who cares! never mind. I'm too relaxed to pursue this metaphor.
I'm also too cowardly to pull the chain on the cold seawater shower above the bath, but my companion does, amid loud whoops of discomfort - and it puts him in great form for the rest of the day. And I feel cleaner and more buoyant than I have felt in months.
We drive to nearby Easkey, past the Split Rock, a massive cleft boulder, dropped by a glacier - or sliced by Fionn MacCumhaill's sword, or perhaps even newly-riven by the sun that has just appeared. Our friends, Catherine and Joel, who live here, give us a perfect lunch, and then bring us, and Maximus the bouncy dog, along the coast to Aughris Head.
We walk for hours along the lonely cliff tops, dipping down to a little beach to witness the power of the Atlantic rollers. At St Patrick's holy well the water is reputed to be good for your eyes, so I wash mine with it, hoping to delay the onset of a stronger pair of reading glasses. Further on, Joel and I gingerly nudge our heads over the cliff, while my fellow traveller hangs onto my legs. The sea crashes and foams far below, while in between kittiwakes indulge in spectacular aerobatics. They hover for seconds, metres from our faces, then with the tilt of a feather, catch a breeze and go slinging elegantly through the air.
We are mesmerised, and could stay for hours, but our dinner reservation beckons. At Christy and Moira Tighe's excellent Cromleach Lodge, poised on a hill above Lough Arrow, we are fed impeccable food and looked after with unfailing hospitality. Outside, in the clean night air, we admire the star-pierced skies, untroubled by urban light pollution. They are indeed, Yeats's "heaven's embroidered cloths".
Next morning we rise (ignoring the 3 a.m. peacock-sounded reveille) and go to the poet's grave in Drumcliffe churchyard. The vast crenellated bulk of Benbulben crouches on the horizon, while hordes of inky-black rooks make a mournful chorus among the sycamores.
We have an unsatisfactory lunch at Yeats Tavern, where we are served mediocre food in a Babel Triangle of canned music (two tracks playing at once), television, and the bar staff's bragging banter. It's the only sour note in an otherwise delicious break.
One more point to note, though. As journalists on a research trip, we were treated to the best of accommodation and meals. Had we paid the full price of two people eating and sleeping in such high style for two nights, it would have cost more than 600. But in fact, Sligo has so much natural style that you could do it all on the cheap and still have a whole lot of fun.
Jane Powers travelled to Sligo as a guest of Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority. Our Roving Writers series continues next week, when Róisín Ingle goes cruising on the Shannon
SLIGO FOR IT
Eagles Flying, Portinch, Ballymote, Co Sligo. Contact: 071-9189310. www.eaglesflying.com. Shows daily at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Adult: 7, child: 4, special family, school, student and group rates Coopershill House, Riverstown, Co Sligo. Contact: 071-9165108. www.coopershill.com. Bed and breakfast: 85 to €109 per person sharing; dinner: €48. Kilcullen's Seaweed Baths, Enniscrone, Co Sligo. Contact: 096-36238, bathhouse@eircom.net. 17 for single bath, 30 for double. Massage therapy 22.50 per half hour (must be booked in advance). Cromleach Lodge Country House and Restaurant, Castlebaldwin, Co Sligo. Contact: 071-9165155, www.cromleach.com. Dinner: €60. Click on www.sligo.ie for more information on Sligo's many attractions, and www.ireland.ie for more on holidays in Ireland