Eternity in a Primrose

Started out Saturday 20 April.  Left Mary Ann and Katy at Mizen Head Lighthouse and faced north.   It felt daunting and a little lonely facing the long walk ahead.  Worse was to come.  I came to aT junction after 3km and found that Mizen was signposted to the right.  I had just come from Mizen so I thought that there must be two ways to mizzen.  I turned left and climbed a long steep hill that brought me to private property.  This could not be right so I turned back to a farm I had passed.  Two voracious dogs came at me barking and snarling.  The two walking sticks were very effective defensive weapons.  The old farmer seemed totally unconcerned that the dogs wanted me for breakfast.  Anyhow he put me back on the road I had come.  Some smartass had changed the sign to Mizen.  I was quite disgruntled to have taken a wrong turn so early in the walk and I was aready 45 mins behind schedule.  On the road into Goleen there were a couple of men working the church grounds so I stopped to ask the way to Toormore .  a priest in a car who was chatting with them got out when he saw my walking jacket saying I was doing the walk to raise money for  Malawi.  He had been in Zambia next door to Malawi and knew my friend and class mate Fiachra Fahy who died quite young of cancer.  Ciara and Neil called their son Fiachra after him.  Before we parted he gave me €50 for Ndi Moyo.  I walked on towards Toormore.  I was feeling tired and ready for a snack and coffee, but could see no sign of Toormore.  There was an isolated clothes outlet on the road so I called in to ask them how much further I had to go.  The lady told me I was already in Toormore.  There was no village or coffee shop.  She invited me in and gave me coffee and biscuits and I had a great chat with some of the customers.  I got as far Durrus that day.  I had hoped to get further but my feet told me otherwise.  So I went into a café had coffee and waited for Joan O’Leary, my host for that evening to come and pick me up.

The walk had been enjoyable.  I had the wind on my back helping me along and whispering around my head, or was that my guardian angel helping me gently along?  Lots of primroses along the ditches smiling at me.  Patrick Cavanagh said that there is eternity in a primrose.  And the whins were in full bloom, golden yellow with their heady smell of coconut.

Joan brought me to the pub in Ballydehob where I was to stay the night.  It belonged to her aunt whom she started to look after some years ago when she was 97, but she lived on till she was 104.  It is a pub and house that has not changed in 70 years, very quaint and very old fashioned.

Joan only opens it at the weekend for a few regular customers, so it is not a very profitable business but for nostalgic reasons she is finding it difficult to make the decision to sell it.  I had conversations with four different people in the pub.  Three of them were English and the fourth had spent 40 years in England and come home to retire in Ballydehob.  One of them said he had left becaue of Mrs Thatcher.  I don’t know if he will go back now that she is dead.  It is a very quaint old village.  Enough for day one,  John.