Shimmering Islands

You get unforgettable days like this in the West

You get unforgettable days like this in the West. A few mild showers, maybe, but the sun on the water seems to make the islands and the rocks dance. You look left and would swear that the bigger island (or rock) has changed position with its nearest neighbour. And now and then they even seem to lift themselves farther above the horizon. We are on the run up from Newport in Mayo to Achill, known as the Atlantic Drive. You understand how there are legends around Hy-Brasil and Ultima Thule.

All mirages? Well, hardly that domineering Clare Island, a somehow, intimidating feature. Praeger in The Way That I Went writes of its hill of 1,520 feet dropping into the Atlantic "in a grand cliff covered with alpine plants above and with great bird colonies below", Prosaically enough all these enchanted shapes turn out to be, according to the map, Caher Island, Inisturk, Inishark, Inishbofin. The rocks are said to be as many as there are days in the year.

On the edge of the sea you notice a change in the colour of the stone, to reddish and on the other side of the road there are single examples of a colour which recalls, to one of the party, the line "a rose-red city, half as old as Time". That is Petra, described by a poet. Montbretia, that georgeous-coloured roadside plant is not unknown even in Dublin suburbs, but in a day's wandering here you come across, time and again, long runs, maybe two to three hundred yards of it - on both sides of the road.

A sight to stir your emotions: very near the sea, on a slight incline there are traces of the old potato ridges. The ground, unusual for the seashore, is boggy. The tide, surely, at times, must have come up so far - the spray anyway. How did they live, these people?

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The rock around the area is a wonder to all. Paul Henry, the artist, lived for years in Keel. "Achill spoke to me, it called to me as no other place had done". And what was he to do with these huge masses of rocks? We know now.

Back in Newport, a young man went out to fish the river. He hooked one of two to three pounds, and lost it. It was a rainbow trout, escapee from a fish farm. And a local man says that the river is in danger from the many which escape. Home via Charlestown and a stop at John Healy's Forest Park. More, much more, about this tomorrow. Y