Early Sand-grass

The First Fine Day

It’s not my imagination – we did indeed have more than average rainfall this winter, according to Met Éireann. It felt relentless and it just stopped the other day. 

I am, apparently, wrong that the winter was also colder – above average temperatures resulted in the 20th mildest winter since 1990. It didn’t feel like that, though: looking at this chart from Sherkin Island shows lots of below-average spells, while Dublin airport had its ‘dullest’ winter since 1994.

So on Friday when my forecast app showed sunshine all day I headed out into this unexpected and most welcome balmy weather, pointing my car towards the end of the Mizen. As I drove I couldn’t help thinking of the story by Ray Bradbury, All Summer in a Day. It’s set on a colonised Venus where it rains constantly, and the sun emerges for only one hour every seven years. You can read it here, if you don’t know it, or watch it here, but be warned it’s very sad. 

My immediate goal was to do my rare plant count. As I have related before, I monitor several rare plants for the Biodiversity Data Centre, and the one that comes up earliest is the least visually exciting. In fact, it would be hard to imagine a more homely little plant than Early Sand-grass (Mibora minima for the true botanists among you), although this illustration makes it look quite attractive*.

Spelled several different ways (one word, two words, hyphenated) this is one of the smallest, if not the smallest, grasses in the world, it is only found in Ireland in the dunes at Barley Cove and on Bull Island off the coast of Dublin. I volunteered to count it in 2022. So this is my 5th year observing it and I can say that it is holding its own and perhaps even expanding its range slightly each year.

Seeking the plant involves walking slowly through the dunes with eyes always down and when I finally came up for air it was to realise that I had one of those days that often happen after extended periods of bad weather when the colours seem to spark off each other and the land and the sea provided a glorious panorama of hues and contrasts.

I also noticed what I think was quite an increase in rabbit activity on the area of the dunes I was traversing. Rabbits are both a blessing and a curse for dunes – see my post The Bunnies of Barley Cove for what I mean by that. The warrens can destabilise the dunes but on the positive side for my plant specifically, rabbit grazing keeps competitive grasses and coarser vegetation down, which can favour low-growing specialists that would otherwise be shaded out. Their burrowing also kicks up new patches of sand to host the Sand-grass.

The path from the car park (I was the only car there today for a time) ends in an innovative pontoon footpath that allows access across the backchannel to the front dunes.

The pontoon is pulled up all winter and it hasn’t been re-set yet. There’s another way down, though, from the hotel at the far end, and it was good to see a couple enjoying the sensation that only walking on a beach barefoot provides. 

Having finished my count, I drove around then to Crookhaven and since it was lunchtime of course I had to stop at the iconic O’Sullivans pub, currently undergoing renovations and operating out of Nottage’s. (Fish pie to die for and a large americano, if you must know.) 

Surely this is one of the most scenic villages in Ireland. Hard to believe that it was once so busy that it was said you could walk across the harbour from ship to ship.

The two tall skinny towers on Rock Island are testament to that – this was where pilots could get a good view out to sea so they could send their boats out to guide ships safely into harbour. They may also have been used, according to one authority, for reporting ship movements to Lloyd’s of London for insurance purposes.

Rock Island is as full of history as Crookhaven – way back in 2018 we spent a day with Aidan Power getting the expert account of this tiny island where once over a hundred people lived and worked. It deserves another post one of these days.

I admit this post is a bit ‘light’ today – nothing much happened, I wandered around, took photographs, and enjoyed this wonderful part of the world. It’s what Robert always called a “then we went home for tea” type of post. But my last few posts have been pretty dense, so I hope you all forgive this dalliance with triviality.

* By Jan Kops – www.BioLib.de, Public Domain

Ogham Stone or . . . ?

It’s been an eclectic week – Amanda, Peter and I had a skite out to Inchydoney, and I finished off the week with a trip to Barley Cove.

Inchydoney Island is a beautiful, unique and historical part of West Cork. Just south of Clonakilty, it was indeed once an island but now is connected to the mainland with causeways. The reason for our trip was to check out an intriguing stone, spotted by Willie O’Regan, along the shore. Willie’s thought was that it might be an Ogham stone and he wanted to check that out. It had fallen forward out of the bank in recent high tides, revealing parallel grooves along its length – just the sort of thing you might expect from an Ogham stone.

We rendezvoused with Willie on the north side of Inchydoney, across from Clonakilty (above) and walked along the shore, while he told us about the history of the area. We could see across the pond known locally as the Beamish Lake to the Hungerford House, originally called Inchydoney House. It has been purchased and magnificently restored in recent years, the owners pouring resources and loving attention into their project, including restoring the walled garden.

The shoreline had been – er – shored up by rocks and rubble all along its length. It may originally have been walled – designed landscapes were very popular in the 18th century – take a look at New Court, for example. There may also have been small inlets and launching places along the edge. At one such possible spot Willie showed us what he had found. 

We examined it thoroughly and took lots of photos. It wasn’t an Ogham stone – although anyone could be forgiven for mistaking it for one! The grooves are actually plough marks. 

As the plough passes over and through the soil, it runs across stones that are just at the right depth below the surface, gouging out these grooves. Over the years, many grooves appear. Sometime the stones, if they are small enough, roll over and the grooves appear on other surfaces, as seems to be the case with this stone.

Plough-marked stones like this could be any age – this one could be medieval or more recent. It was probably finally unearthed and tossed to the edge of the field to join the other rocks keeping the water from eroding the shorelines, eventually falling forward and revealing itself to Willie’s keenly observing eyes. It tells a story – a story of cultivation and hard work and a story of never throwing anything away, and a story of a man who walks these shores for pure pleasure and never misses a trick. Thanks, Willie – we had such a good time on this walk!

And – to learn all you ever wanted to know about Inchydoney Island, read Robert’s epic post from 2021, Inchydoney – and Virgin Mary’s Bank. 

And Barley Cove? As last year, I went out to see what I could see of the Early Sand-grass. A remarkably homely little tuft of grass that is nevertheless precious because it is extremely rare. I found lots and it felt so good to be out in the fresh air, lying in the dunes, and taking an unconscionable number of photographs of this humble little representative of our incredible West Cork biodiversity.

And then home through some of the most scenic coastline in Ireland. Not that I’m biased.