A new ecotourism initiative in the north-west promotes activities and accommodation on both sides of the Border, writes Susan McKay.
If you happen to be near Castlebaldwin in Co Sligo on a Sunday morning, you might like to drop in to the Gyreum for "soup and a sermon" and amazing views over the mountains and lakes of south Ulster.
"It's for people who don't go to church," says Colm Stapleton, the creator and owner of this large replica cairn. "We've had a man who talked about helping people to die. We had a woman talking about love. The basic rule is the person giving the sermon isn't peddling salvation."
Offering alternatives is what a new approach to tourism in this beautiful Border region is all about. The Gyreum is Ireland's first "eco-lodge" and is in the Green Box area, an integrated ecotourism destination that includes counties Fermanagh, Leitrim, west Cavan, north Sligo, south Donegal and north-west Monaghan.
"People come to Ireland looking for something different," says Mary Mulvey, chief executive of the Green Box. "They don't want soulless places that could be anywhere. Far too many places have been ruined. Bord Fáilte could and should have objected to a lot of inappropriate developments, but it didn't . . .
"There has been zero policy at national level on this, and a lot of small-minded competition between counties. That made it hard for us when we were starting out with the Green Box. We really got going in 2004 with the help of cross-Border funding and a lot of vision," she says. "On the Border, people have a tradition of doing things differently." Mulvey welcomes the fact that Bord Fáilte now has an environmental manager.
"Working across the Border has brought a great openness. The North is more developed in some ways than the Republic - there is a renewable energy agency in Fermanagh, for example - but there is less confidence. This is about a marriage of tourism and the environment. In 2006 we won 14 EU flowers, the equivalent of Blue Flags for beaches, and an award at the World Travel Market in London as an emerging destination."
The award-winning projects include B&Bs, self-catering cottages, a hostel, a health farm and the Gyreum.
The Green Box can now give grants, and has 44 projects in the pipeline, which include a glass-blowing furnace for the thriving sculpture centre at Manorhamilton. "This will be for the use of the many sculptors who have settled in north Leitrim, around the centre, but also for tourists who want high-end art activities as part of their holiday," says Mulvey. "People shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that this is marginal. Eco-tourists spend more and stay longer. This will make up 10 per cent of the world market within the next 10 years."
THE BEAUTY OF the area is spread out beneath your feet up at the Gyreum, in the mountains behind Lough Arrow. Inside the cairn, Colm Stapleton has just had his new geo-thermal heating system switched on, and is waiting anxiously for the vast domed chamber to warm up. "I daren't look at the meter," he says.
There are signs on the toilets requesting that visitors "don't flush for pee only." A high proportion of the electricity used in the building is from sustainable sources including wind energy. "I've had to do all sorts of worthy things and I have a beautiful EU flag for my eco-efforts," says Stapleton, fishing it out from under a sofa.
From Dublin, Stapleton is a documentary film-maker who undertook to make a programme for TG4 in 2001 about the making of a work of art. "Then I decided I'd create the work myself," he says. "I designed it as I went along." The central dome is surrounded by smaller rooms, including dormitories and a couple of double bedrooms.
Stapleton goes away to make programmes, and is working on one about a seed vault in Spitzbergen. "It's a sort of Noah's ark for food seeds so that in the event of a macro disaster there'll be a fallback seed bank." He shows films at the Gyreum. There is to be a Pasolini weekend, and there has been a dawn to dusk showing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. There is an exhibition of work by local artists on at the moment, and Stapleton rents the place out to groups. "We've had Korean Christians, drum-bangers, drama groups, gay hill- walkers and archaeologists," he says. The place is striking, but not for those who like their luxuries.
Alex Delimata's husband is Irish - his father was one of the Poles who came here after the second World War - but the couple lived for 20 years in Switzerland before making the decision to come back to Dowra, in remotest Co Leitrim, in 2001. "At that time there was a wave of people moving into the area - Germans wanting to farm organically, evacuees from Dublin wanting a slightly different way of living," she says.
Some of the incomers are pursuing self-sufficiency. Delimata, who had a been head of corporate and business development at the International Air Transport Association in Geneva, decided to set up a business. "The tourism profile of this area was B&Bs and fishing," she says. "It was dying. I felt one needed to get online and get out into the market." She explored the area, and got to know many of those providing tourist facilities. She encouraged them to offer activities as well as accommodation. She set up an online reservation system, Passport Breifne, which covers a network of some 60 hand-picked tourism providers on both sides of the Border. "I look for rural tourism principles and eco- friendly practices," she says. "Places where people can have an interesting time." She mentions Fortfield House in Cavan, where, she says, Catherine Reilly offers "the sort of B&B experience people want but rarely get." She also highlights the "Creevy experience" in Rossnowlagh, where a local co-op restored three old cottages as self-catering accommodation.
Supported by the Leitrim development board, Delimata's service has also won awards. She offers her clients courses, including gardening courses at the Organic Centre at Rossinver. She likes places too that offer unusual indulgences. "Fishermen like to be able to lie on their beds with their boots on. I have landladies who don't mind that."
IT USED TO be said that even the crows brought their own sandwiches when they flew over Leitrim. These Border places have a sorrowful history of mass emigration, and they were blighted by the Troubles.
This ruin meant, paradoxically, that in tourism terms the area was "unspoiled". Now, many of the ruined and abandoned old cottages have been restored, the roads which were cratered and closed are open again, and there is cross-Border traffic on the Shannon-Erne waterway.
Until recently, the area still had a remote, magical feel, and people came in the spirit of WB Yeats's poem The Lake Isle of Inisfree to find peace and tranquility in idyllic surroundings of water and earth and stone.
There is some unease among eco-friendly people about the massive amount of building that followed the introduction of tax incentives for some of the Border counties. Many of the apartments in the blocks and housing estates that now surround small towns such as Carrick-on-Shannon were bought as investments and lie empty most of the time.
"Of course, the cranes were welcome after years of neglect," says Delimata. "But we must take care that development is sensitive to the unique resources we have here. We aren't trying to turn Glencar into the Killarney of the north-west."