To the Ceide Fields, in North Mayo - not for the first time, but bringing a visitor from Switzerland, whose first it was. What was her main impression? Well, the beauty and freshness of the whole setting; standing on the terrace over the sea, with fulmars gliding on fixed wing, and other sea birds; and the layered face of the cliff, with their slices of shale, sandstone, limestone. But her eyes were drawn northwards to the horizon. A distinctive place in the world, she thought. What land lay before us? On return, she got out the atlas and announced that her vision took a line that would lead east of Iceland, then between Spitzbergen and Greenland, over the North Pole and ultimately would touch land around the Bay of Chaunskaya Guba in Siberia.
Back to the building we had come to see, spectacular in its setting, yet simple. A pyramid of limestone and stainless steel, with a glass tower-top for observation. And, and, grassed over on two sides. Within the pyramid, all is restraint, clarity, calm, restful; an almost white world. The panels which give the information are elegant, clear and concise. There is Seamus Heaney's poem Belderg, for it was there, several miles to the west of the present centre that the schoolmaster, father of Professor Seamus Caulfield, became intrigued by the regularity with which stones appeared through the bog, like markers.
And so it was: for under bog, sometimes up to four metres of it, lie the outlines of the land of a farming community of some 50 centuries ago. The farms laid out between stone walls, as you will see them laid out today, more or less, a few miles away. In other words, an ordinary farming landscape of the West. Writing in 1992, Dr Caulfield had it that "not a stone of these walls has been touched since the bog grew over them all those centuries ago." There has been minimal disturbance of this community area (about four square miles is mapped, and there is more).
And yet, the original community here upped and moved on as the bog grew over their area. There are several views as to why the bog grew. And if you wonder where these people moved to, Dr Caulfield says: maybe just a few miles down the road.
As you drive away westward, you see the Stages of Broadhaven on the horizon, likewise pyramidal.