Sligeach: 'Abounding in Shells'

Sligo and Eagles Flying

I must have something or someone watching over me, as the 'great overseer' blessed us with another phenomenal few days for a bike trip, this time to Sligo. It's been a while since we have been in Sligo and having just come back I cannot for the life of me figure out why. It is close enough to be reached after a comfortable and picturesque ride, but far enough to make one feel that there has been some sort of journey there. Our rough compass point was west-south-west towards Monaghan and Cavan before hitting the wetlands near Leitrim. My sat-nav was on 'twisty route' setting, taking us on roads we had never travelled before; the scenery was new to my eyes and vivid in the sunshine.

The sat-nav was taking us along small 'R' roads and away from both motorways and/or 'N' roads - I think we are all similar in this regard - the older we get, the more we dislike motorway travel. Motorways remove one from the travel experience and, indeed, the landscape. Take the smaller roads, they are almost always more interesting! We passed through Ballinamore onto the R208 just north of Fenagh, here the road skirted smaller lakes before turning northwards and flanking Lough Allen. To the west (our left hand side) the topography rises towards Corry Mountain Bog, whilst to the east the waters of the Lough looked inviting as the temperature rose. 

The view east over Lough Allen

In my peripheral vision was an old white sign for Tarmon Abbey ruins; somewhere in my brain was an image of them, now not much more than a dilapidated little church shell, quite the juxtaposition to nearby Boyle (approximately 14km south-west) which we would pass through later. The sat-nav told me to turn west off the R280 onto a small trackway, a sign pointed to a 'scenic waterfall' and I had no idea where it was taking me, but I followed regardless. The road wound up the hillside, climbing steeply and narrowing - this was clearly not the way to go, but the sat-nav must have wanted me to see this waterfall! 

We pulled in beside what appeared to be abandoned farm buildings to regroup; the weather was hot and this, again, raised the debate of leathers vs textiles. I ride in Dainese armoured textiles, but the school of thought is increasingly towards leathers, and I have to agree, the reason textiles are choice is mainly weather related. The views over Lough Allen were spectacular, the abandoned cottage simply adding to the ambiance. We never did see the waterfall though! Only after coming back did I manage to retrace our steps and find the location of this little trackway and alcove (G 93944 18817) and for a while I was unsure if it was Lough Allen or Lough Arrow, but the view is seared into my memory for some reason so it touched some nerve. 

Old Friends & Tubbercurry

By this stage I realised that the 'twisty' option was all well and good but it might drag us through a hedge backwards to get to the accommodation and although it made for great biking roads I plumbed for a more conventional route. We turned onto the R285 southwards to join the N4 and a heavily smoking lorry just south-east of Lough Key and Lough Key Forest Park arriving in Boyle in the blink of an eye. Boyle is a location we have visited several times, once by chance and once by design and it felt familiar; its fantastic abbey and bawn ruins are well worth visiting, but this time we managed to startle some American tourists by overtaking them just before the R294 tightened to a glorious twisty, undulating ribbon of tarmac towards our destination of Gorteen / Gurteen. The accommodation was a bungalow situated in what felt like the middle of no-where but the silence was something to savour, disturbed only by the house martins that were nesting in the eves and the 'splat' of an occasional cow-pat hitting the ground! 

We were soon on our way to Tubbercurry for dinner; Tubbercurry (Tobar an Choire meaning 'well of the corrie') lies 17km west of Gorteen and is the second largest town in terms of population and land area in Sligo. We feasted in Cawleys before riding back with the slowly setting sun on our backs glowing orange and red and the grip the warmed road yielded was simply magnificent. 

The next morning was glorious, warm and clear, and we decided to go to Shells in Strandhill for breakfast. For the uninitiated, Strandhill is something of a surfer town and Shells - located right on the seafront - is legendary for its breakfasts. Most of the route was northwards on the R293 through Ballymote then the N4 briefly before taking the R292 that hugs the coast with the western side of Knocknarea mountain looming over it, a joyous experience that served to increase my appetite. However, the 'surfer dudes' parading around the seafront complete with their wet suits at the hip in catalogue-esque poses served to make me rather conscious of my expanding waistline! Bugger....that battle is lost! 

Nine kilometres south-east from Strandhill, and still somewhat within the reach of Knocknarea is Carrowmore megalithic cemetery. Carrowmore or An Cheathrú Mhór meaning 'great quarter' is one of the four main passage tomb cemeteries in Ireland (alongside Carrowkeel [Breac Sliabh], Loughcrew [Loch Craobh] and Newgrange in the Brú na Bóinne) and the entire landscape is ritualised and significant in a prehistoric context. Carrowmore also boasts one of the oldest used passage tombs. As you stand in the fields that make up the site, the first instinct is to look around at the surrounding area something I savoured as it was 2012 that I was last here. 

The cemetery is surrounded by dynamic peaks that almost seem to enclose it, all of which seem to have some sort of megalithic monument atop them; there is, of course, Knocknarea with Miosgán Médhbh (Queen Medb's grave), Carns Hill and Oz Mountains (Sliabh Gamh) and Ballygawley Mountains the latter has four peaks (Calliach a Vera, Sliabh Deane, Sliabh Dargan and Aghamore Far) which have cairns on their summits. Carrowmore, therefore, cannot be viewed in isolation, it is part of a much wider and much much larger prehistoric landscape. Carrowmore has approximately thirty monuments today in various states of preservation; most are small dolmens, some with their original enclosing boulder circles (Tomb 7 [middle picture] is an example of this). 

The most famed is Site 51 or Listoghil (Lios an tSeagail) which is the largest monument at Carrowmore; crudely 'excavated' over the course of its history it was re-excavated in a scientific manner by Göran Burenhult in the 1990's and it is his work that exposed the intact curb stones. Bone and other material recovered during his excavation was dated to 3500 BC. Other dates suggest that there was something going on prior to the tomb being built, with a radiocarbon date of 6100 BC also obtained. There has also been debate about whether the tomb has an alignment, with Meehan postulating that it was aligned with Imbolc or the beginning of Spring around the 1st February (Meehan, 2012). This was an auspicious time with the end of Winter (or a new beginning) celebrated by pagan cultures and later adopted by Christian festivals; Imbolc is now St. Brigid's Day although St. Brigid is also thought to be based on an earlier Gaelic goddess. 

We bumped into a biker from England travelling on his Triumph 1050 Tiger, we meandered round the northern part of the site together and shot the breeze, envious at his retirement at what we thought was a young age although we never did find out how old he was! All I can hope for is that I am that chilled out and in that position at his age! He got a picture of us, but we didn't get a name of a picture of him so he becomes a 'traveller we met on the road'. I like that description, it sounds good, he becomes something in my own little saga. 

Ballymote Castle

A name I haven't heard for many years! Ballymote Castle was included as part of the fieldwork for my undergraduate thesis, for which I travelled the length and breadth of Ireland alone in my car at the time, a bullet-proof Mitsubishi Colt, sleeping in the back of it as I ran out of money for B&B's after three days! Those were the days before sat-nav's and a lot of main roads, when map-reading was a necessary skill. 

Ballymote Castle

Ballymote Castle is one of the great 'keepless' castles in Ireland; that is there is no great central donjon or keep. It was built at the tail end of the 13th / beginning of the 14th century probably by Richard de Burgo (Richard Óg de Burgh - The Red Earl) who was the most powerful of the de Burgh Earls of Ulster and friend of King Edward ('Longshanks') I of England. The castle is remarkable as the accommodation is housed in the great gatehouse, therefore the design presumably relinquishes a little defence for comfort by doing away with a great tower which would have often served as the final retreat. The south wall (opposite wall to the gatehouse) bears scarring and this is presumably related to a tower that was designed to protect a postern (secondary) gate in this wall that was never completed. A similar design, although on a much much larger and grander scale, is Beaumaris Castle - one of the great Welsh castles of Edward I. The Red Earl did not keep the castle for long, losing it to the O'Connors of Sligo in 1317 (de Burgh died nine years later) who in turn lost it in 1347. It has been suggested that the castle was all but abandoned after its loss to the O'Connors and this could be true; a castle was more than a domestic building and/or stronghold, it could be politically and economically important as well as strategic and it could also act as an important symbol or power.

Eagles Flying

What can I say? This place is something of a revelation and I cannot recommend highly enough. Not usually on our radar, the Irish Raptor Research Centre / Eagles Flying is home to 100 eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, vultures and other animals and is, genuinely, a phenomenal day out. The centre opened in 1999 and it was only in 2003 that is was opened to the public.

The walk up to the house and amphitheatre is flanked with small huts that are the shelter for the most beautiful and majestic birds of prey including a Black-Chested Eagle, a Golden Eagle and an Eagle Owl. Once at the house, a peacock squawked to be answered by parrots behind us. It is, initially, almost too much to take in with birds that stir something primeval in the soul everywhere you turn. They are breath-takingly beautiful...sleek, purposeful and in evolutionary design terms, perfect. Although there are ropes to stop you getting too close they didn't seem skittish or afraid, but this enabled a look closely into their eyes and the difference in size between the various birds is immediately apparent with a small falcon beside a buzzard and then Eagle Owl.

The show takes place at an amphitheatre of sorts, with the biology and behaviour of the birds being described in great detail, all mixed in with some humour; I think the guy running it is German, although his Germanic accent is interspersed with an Irish 'twang'.  The smaller falcon/hawk type birds are first, they fly swoop directly overhead and sometimes their wings brush the top of your head, it is phenomenal to see these birds in flight, and the "oo's" and "ahh's" are testament to what is happening. The birds get bigger and bigger; after the hawks come the owls (one of my favourites), and they are movingly beautiful. It is, though, at this point the educative part of the show can be a little depressing: there are, for example, 40 pairs of potentially breeding Barn Owls in Ireland. Forty. If you think about that for a moment it is a sombre thought and leads to a little melancholy reverie. What have we done to so effectively destroy a native species' habitat and make them endangered? As was said; how can we destroy something so beautiful? 

The birds continue to increase in size, an exceptional Eagle Owl flew in complete silence which is eery in itself, but glorious to see. The climax of the show was the White-Tailed Sea Eagle (see left). The bird swooped overhead and it has a presence, it is a force of nature and you are acutely aware of this. Again, though, there are tales of woe with attempts to reintroduce the bird thwarted to an extent by poisoning of several birds worryingly recently. The question is again, how can we do this? The show explained that very few of the birds are physically capable of killing livestock (e.g., lambs) and that even the ones that are tend not to do it, if they are caught eating a lamb it is usually one that was either injured or already dead. Therefore the assumption that it has killed the animal are usually wrong and has led to unjustified persecution.

The crowd was encouraged to visit the small petting zoo beneath the main site and we duly made our way there to be confronted by a racoon, pigs, mice, an albino hedgehog and a fox amongst other beasts. The interaction is genuinely heartwarming, with one boy standing outside the area looking in with his mouth open and hands shaking by his side in excitement. After this we were brought up to the sanctary to see owl boxes - I had hopes of trying to get one at my own house to help the Barn Owl population, but their scale means I'll have to help in other ways. I hope to return soon with my own family, but at the same time it was a little surreal! I wish I had bought a t-shirt....maybe next time!  

My journey home took me through the 'wetlands' towards Carrick-On-Shannon and northwards to Swanlinbar then the Newbridge Road to Lisnaskea, Maguiresbridge before turning east. All in all approximately 460 miles of unalloyed joy, eye-popping scenery and memory making experiences. Thank you to all involved.