At the Edge of Ireland by David Yeadon Page B

beheld…and the appearance of the dwellings of the peasantry was more truly wretched than I have ever seen…Some of the younger children were completely naked.”
    Rose Trollope, however, wife of the famous novelist Anthony, obviously had a tolerance for Beara, as they both enjoyed several family holidays in Glengarriff. Anthony quickly absorbed the nuances and subtleties of Irish life in his official position with the post office in Banagher, which he portrays vividly in his novel The Kellys and the O’Kellys . However, in 1849, Anthony’s mother, Fanny (herself a distinguished author), did not share their enthusiasm and found: “the food detestable, the bedrooms pokey, turf fires disagreeable, and so on, and so on.”
    Virginia Woolf, like so many other celebrities of the time, also enjoyed a vacation in Glengarriff in 1934, and although she and her husband, Leonard, toyed with the idea of buying property here, she also saw the “underbelly” of life in the country, which she described in her typically terse and acerbic manner: “How ram-shackle and half-squalid the Irish life is, how empty & poverty-stricken.” (Interesting how she makes “half-squalid” sound far worse than just simply ‘squalid.’)
    As the twentieth century progressed and conditions improved along the peninsula in terms of roads, housing, and employment, especially in fishing and the British naval yards at Castletownbere, the mood and reactions of visitors began to improve. One particular commentary by Sean O’Faolain in his book An Irish Journey (1941) combines the direness of the past with a new romantic effervescence celebrating the power and majesty of this remarkable corner of the country: “If there is in Ireland a harder world than the Bere Peninsula, a tougher life, a sterner fight against all that this loveliness of nature means in terms of poverty and struggle and near-destitution I have yet to find it.” But then he switches tone and lets his eloquence flow:
    Few more lovely seascapes exist in Ireland than that which unfolds itself on the walk to Glengarriff and beyond…The sweeping grandeur…the vast elemental infinities…the Glen, as we call it in County Cork, has three things peculiar to itself. It has tiny refuges of inlet nooks and coves where the mind can dream itself into a drowsy peace for days on end, hidden low-tide or high-tide lagoons, lovely at any season, little islands where one can bathe and bask, silent but for the cry of a curlew or gull, or the chattering of herons or the suck-suck of the seaweed caressing the rocks. It has foliage of a tropical variety in abundance. It has a climate so mild that the place flowers with rare flora, and on the more moist summer days, the bay lies heavy as molten metal, and the very rocks seem to melt, and everything swoons in a land-locked sleep.
    Ironically, while the Beara has remained relatively aloof and unexplored, it is seen today by many to capture the very essence of the Irish people and the enormous power and beauty of the land itself. “Beara,” I was told by one proud resident, “is just quite simply the best place in the whole of Ireland.” And by the time Anne and I left at the end of our seasons here, we were of course in total agreement with such sentiments.
    SCURRYING FROM KILLARNEY AND THE RING OF KERRY
    A ND WE ARE BOTH in total agreement about Killarney and the Ring of Kerry too that runs around the Iveragh Peninsula. Out of season, if the weather holds, this is indeed an enchanted realm of soaring mountain ranges with such entrancing names as Macgillycuddy’s Reeks reflected in broad forest-edge lakes and a tumultuous chiseled coastline pounded by the Atlantic Ocean. A dramatic dreamworld indeed that conjures up all the boisterous charms of the Ireland of popular inspiration.
    But come during the peak late spring to early autumn season and you’ll need to brace yourself