The Faithful Foot

Tuesday June 4^th

I stayed with Lourda McGowan last night in Mohill and we went to her sister’s house where we had a wonderful meal and plenty of chat.  Just outside Lourda’s house is a statue of Turlough Carolan the famous blind harpist.  He was harpist in residence to a local family – the landed gentry of course.  The statue was the final piece of work by the well known Irish sculptor, Oisin Kelly.  He died just when he had finished sculpting the head. Mohill is a neat little village where many of the people are related to each other and everyone knows everyone else.  A stream flows through the village and passes in front of Lourda’s house.  There is a bridge between her house and the street and the statue of Turlough is just across the stream. 

I set out from Ballinamore to walk towards Enniskillen via Swanlinbar.  Before I got as far as Swanlinbar I heard 4 more cuckoos – such a feast of cuckoos I have never experienced.  I think it must be to do with the kind of the terrain, peat bogs and bushes.  It is a treat to hear their clear two note call but when I think about them, I know that they are the ultimate in exploitation and survival of the fittest.  Not only do they expect another bird to hatch out their egg, and then to feed their hungry offspring, but that same off spring dumps all the other fledgling birds out of the nest so that it can benefit from all the food their surrogate mother brings back to the nest.  A sweet voice can hide a ruthless soul. A couple of miles before I reached Swanlinbar, I came across three workmen on the road, one operating a digger and the other two emptying the truck when full.  We got to chatting and they each gave me 5 euros for the hospice.  One of them passed me with the full load and I came across him again unloading it.  He came over to the edge of the road and wanted to talk some more. He told me he is the president of the Cavan beekeepers association and is very enthusiastic about the young people doing courses with them to learn how to look after their bees. He claims that this recession has brought the ordinary man to the fore so that the young people on the two courses they are currently running all have bees already, whereas previously they would have had a lot of yuppies and hippies who never had bees. He said the Church of Ireland has always been strong in Cavan and it has been mainly them who kept the tradition of beekeeping alive, when young Catholic men were only interested in running off to Gaelic matches.

I stopped for lunch at a bench outside a pub on the only street in Swanlinbar.   The pub was closed and the whole village seemed to be asleep.  The day being hot I fancied an ice cream cone but the best I could get was a choc ice in a shop run by two women in their eighties.

 As on the previous days I was flanked on either side by myriads of beautiful yellow buttercups – a sign perhaps of meagre cattle fodder but easy on the eye.  I don’t know of any poems to buttercups, nor for that matter dandelions and yet they both proliferate and delight the eye mile after mile.  They are irrepressible. Soon after that I came into Northern Ireland for the first time on my walk.  The roads were indeed much smoother and easier on the feet.  I passed two memorials to IRA members who had been killed during the troubles.  The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful.  I walked to the junction of the Swanlinbar road and the Sligo road, sat down on a bench outside another closed pub and waited for Maria to come and pick me up. Not a lot of luck with pubs today.

Wednesday June 5^th

Another hot day like the past three days, but each one a little hotter.  I had a wonderful evening with Joseph and Maria.  Maria brought me back to where I had left off yesterday.  There was a long traffic tail back coming into Enniskillen on the Sligo road.  The alternative way into the town is already closed due to the G8 summit.  Walked the three miles back into Enniskillen and got some Nuerocol in Corry’s chemists for my back pain.  On the way out of the town I bought a whipped ice cream in Subway.  It was just the ticket for the hot weather.  By the time I got to the new South west Hospital my feet were already hurting a bit so I went into it and had a lovely cup of coffee and a Danish pastry and doctored my feet.  I was already well ahead of schedule so I was not in a hurry today.  I wrote an ode to my feet while sitting there.  Here it is: 

My poor feet are down below

In the smelly darkness of my boots,

I’m like a tree going walk-about,

And my feet in darkness are my roots.

My eyes can see such great delights,

Colours, sizes, shapes and hues.

My ears can hear the songs of birds,

But my feet are trapped in smelly shoes.

My nose can smell the heady scents,

Of saffron whins and meadow sweet,

But in the end they all depend

On my obedient smelly feet.

So you my feet I now salute

Hidden down in my smelly boot,

Pit ponies labouring in the dark

A song of praise for my faithful foot.

I stopped for lunch in a gap on the road and tended to the smelly feet down below.  Walked on refreshed through a tunnel of trees.  I came on a council worker picking up garbage on the roadside.  He was keen to chat.  Told me what a great man I was to be doing what I was doing.  I liked that.  He thought Donegal where I was headed was a great place but personally he said he would rather be on the bike.  He loves sitting in the centre of Donegal town and just watching the world pass by.  I passed a large house that someone had started to build, walls and roof were complete though there were some slates missing around one of the chimneys.  Windows had had stones thrown at them and were mostly broken.  What is about empty houses that seems to attract yobs to throw stones at them and break the windows?  I expect there is another sad story behind the half finished house and someone’s broken dreams.  I went on through Irvinestown and Joseph came to pick me up a couple of miles further on the road to Ederny. I am well ahead of schedule.