Damaris Lysaght

Accessible August 

It’s been a very busy week! The best part about it was that my sister, Aoibhinn (pronounced Eeving), is visiting and she and I were able to do lots of things together. That’s her in the coral jacket, above. You see, she has ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and she was really nervous about her ability to participate in the activities I had booked or planned, or stay the course once on them. 

Aoibhinn does really well at managing her condition, but she has to be very careful or she can end up in a major crash. She struggles with tiredness and pain all the time (sore joints, headaches) but finds that sea swimming helps her cope mentally, so she was up for one of the things we planned to do together, our Dawn Swim and Pilgrimage with Gormú. We met Conor and Celine, and two other participants at Castlehaven and started off by walking the short way up to the Holy Well, where we heard of St Barrahane. Readers may remember Conor from the Placenames post.

Next came the swim. While Aoibhinn opted for a short immersion, I surprised myself by swimming all the way to Faill Dic, with encouragement from Conor, and the lovely safety valve of a float if I needed it. Breakfast was so welcome – porridge, fruit and hot tea made by Celine and Conor (below) – while we listened to more stories, all set around the cove we were in. It was a fantastic experience – I highly recommend it!

The Ellen Hutchins Festival and Heritage Week are both in full swing this week, so there are any god’s amount of things to choose from. We concentrated on botany and butterflies during the week and ended with stained glass and history yesterday. 

Micheline Sheehy-Skeffington and Nick Scott led us through the Glengarriff Woods. While this walk involves an uphill section, the pace is easy because it involves lots of stopping to talk about the plants we encounter along the way. We loved Nick’s descriptions of the forest environment, and all the layers that make up the plant life from the canopy down. And we were riveted by Micheline’s focus on the Arbutus (AKA the Strawberry Tree), a rare tree that occurs only here and in the Iberian Peninsula. 

Micheline is investigating her theory that it may have come with the Bronze Age miners who came to exploit the rich copper resources of West Cork and Kerry. Her recent article in Archaeology Ireland sparked my interest and I was thrilled to be able to go along on this walk with her.

The photograph above illustrates the challenges in tracking Arbutus trees – they grow on cliffs and in inaccessible places.

Our Wednesday walk was organised by the Cork Nature Network and was led by my friend Damaris Lysaght, a real local expert in plants and butterflies. And as if that wasn’t enough, it was at Three Castle Head, one of the most beautiful spots in Ireland and a place dripping with history. 

Once again, although this walk involved picking our way through long grasses and scrambling over rocks, the pace was slow, with frequent stops to ooh and aah over butterflies and hear Damaris talk about their habitats and plant requirements. Some of the plants were so tiny that we had to see them through a hand lens to really appreciate them.

We had a rest day on Thursday, and on Friday it was time for Seaweed and Sealing Wax 2. This was the second production masterminded by Karen Minihan, based on the correspondence between Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner. See Robert’s post from last year for an account of Seaweed and Sealing Wax 1. This year, we were joined by the poet, Laura McKenna and the botanical artist Shevaun Doherty. That’s Shevaun surrounded by audience members in the top photo of this post, while Laura is in the photo below.

While Karen and I led the audience through the letters, Laura read a selection of poems that responded to Ellen’s life and work, and Shevaun worked away on painting a piece of seaweed, explaining her process to the audience at one point. 

At the end, Madeline Hutchins, Ellen’s great, great, grandniece, showed us some of Ellen’s books and letters. As with last year, we were under a tent in the grounds of Sea View House Hotel, right next door to where Ellen herself had lived in the opening years of the nineteenth century. 

We finished the week with a trip to Timoleague, where I was booked to give two stained glass talks at the Church of the Ascension Open House. This is part of a huge community effort to save and safeguard the fabulous mosaics in this church and I am always thrilled to be a part of it. Take a look at this video by the Rev Kingsley Sutton, Touching Heritage, to get an excellent overview of the whole project.

The church is truly one of West Corks hidden gems, and the fund-raising effort needs all the help it can get. In between the talks, we were whisked off to lunch at a fabulous private house right on the sea. Nice work if you can get it!

So – it’s been an incredibly busy week of flowers, talks, and butterfly hunting (above) and I am feeling it now. But all of our activities were  accessible to Aoibhinn, with time to rest in between, or go for a lovely dip locally. So – if there’s anybody out there who wonders if you would be able for a botany walk or a dawn swim and ‘pilgrimage’ – no need to be intimidated by a title or a description when the pace is leisurely and, as Aoibhinn found, there’s always a handy rock to sit down on for a while.

Art, Noodles and World Championship Turnip Racing: West Cork in the Summer

We’ve been enjoying a week of laid back excursions, In Ballydehob and Skibbereen, as we take time this week to enjoy what’s around us in West Cork at this time of year.

Top, above and below from the West Cork Creates Exhibition: Alison Ospina’s chaise with Anne Kiely textiles; Angela Fewer paintings; Trees by Jim Turner and Etain Hickey

There are always excellent art exhibitions in the summer – we have written this summer already  about the always interesting Blue House Gallery and Judi Whitton’s watercolours, the marvellous art trail in the Skibbereen Arts Festival and of course the Ballydehob Arts Museum’s current exhibition, Ballydehob on Bahnhofstrasse.

This week saw the opening of what’s always eagerly anticipated – the annual West Cork Creates exhibition on Skibbereen. Curated by Alison Ospina of Greenwood Chairs, this show brings together the best of West Cork arts and crafts in an exciting mix of styles and materials.

Lots of jewellery at the exhibition and among them is this unique dresser pendant by Michael Duerden

Next to it is Geoff Greenham and Melanie Black’s Creative Spaces, a photographic journey through the studios of artists currently practising in West Cork. It’s a great idea and feels like a real privilege to catch a glimpse inside these spaces.

The two images above are borrowed, with thanks, from the Blue House Gallery, where an earlier exhibition matched the studio images with pieces of art from each artist. The first shows Brian Lalor’s studio and the second is that of John Doherty.

And yes, I thought, somehow those spaces do reflect the art that comes out of them. I’ve tried to photograph artists’ studios myself in the last couple of years, so I know how difficult it is to capture the essence.

No studio needed when you paint en plein air. This is Damaris Lysaght at work at a site we wrote about in our post Mizen Magic 13: Dunmanus Promontory

Do catch these two exhibitions if you can. Then make your way to Ballydehob and take in the new space that is the Working Artist Studios, right on the Main Street. We’ve all been looking forward to the opening of this venture, previously situated in Skibbereen but now adding to the thriving streetscape of Ballydehob.

The grand opening was well attended! (The railings are not for the WAS but for the Turnip Races, see below)

Working Artist Studio is an innovative idea that melds gallery and performance space with studios for artists at reasonable rates. Pól and Marie are bursting with ideas and plans and it’s wonderful to see this shop and house, surprisingly roomy inside, so nicely re-purposed.

The opening exhibition was by Caoimhe Pendred (above), titled Hy Brasil – her ethereal take on the notion of the mystical Isle to the West. It was opened by none other than Tim Pat Coogan (below), the Irish historian, and Caoimhe’s grandfather.

But woman cannot live on art alone, and we were delighted to welcome back Bia Rebel Ramen to our village this summer after a stint at the Taste of West Cork here a couple of years ago. Brian and Jenny have made a name for themselves with top restaurant critics as the best place in Ireland for ramen.

The truck is set up to serve the food at Levis’s Corner house. They are only here for a few more days

They normally operate out of their food truck in Belfast,  but are on ‘holidays’ in West Cork. Some holiday – they are so busy that they run out of food on a couple of hours. What can we do to entice them to stay here permanently? This is the best ramen I have ever eaten, and having lived in Vancouver (Canadian home of Japanese food) that is saying something!

Did you know that Ballydehob hosts the World Championship Turnip Races? This Irish Times article in 2006 described it, and 13 years later it’s still going strong and still great fun, with Barry O’Brien (below in the pink shirt) doing the marshalling.

And to round out my week, a major thrill. I hitched a ride on my friend Jack O’Keefe’s Drascombe Lugger as he participated in the Ballydehob Crinniú na mBád. I wrote about this wonderful event a couple of years ago, but it was a whole other experience to be out on the water with the boats as they gathered at the mouth of Ballydehob Bay and then sailed up the estuary. See Robert’s post today, Ballydehob and Boats, for some more of my photographs of this event.

All around us summer is in full swing – we have just mentioned a tiny fraction of what’s going on. Why don’t you join us next year? We can’t guarantee good weather, but you won’t be bored!