The Fields of Athenry
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A Newfoundlander’s bicycle journey across the Emerald Isle
By Dennis Flynn
Special to The Charter
Author’s Note:
This article appeared on Page 5 of “The Charter” on
March 10, 2003.
This article also ran in “The Compass” on Pages A14 and A15 on March 11, 2003.
Travelling
on bicycle across rural Ireland is slightly intoxicating.
Not just in the sense that at every turn there are pubs where friendly
strangers are only too happy to buy the Canadian cyclist a pint of the ebony
elixir known as Guinness and share with him stories of magic, humour, and
folklore in abundance.
No, what I am getting at is the overall impression of the place and how it
almost overwhelms the senses.
There is the turf itself, which is still a vibrant green as I roll through the
Irish Midlands on this last day of October 2002.
There are the countless miles of rock walls that divide every meadow and
paddock into a gigantic checkerboard pattern interspersed with quaint cottages,
stands of trees in their fiery autumn dress, and crystal lakes and ponds where
I am told fish abound.
There are the small towns that spring up on the horizon and, shortly after,
disappear once again in my wake leaving sounds of daily life and sweet smells
from tiny restaurants lingering in the air like ambrosia on the wind.
There is the feel of the warm rain at dusk as it caresses the skin while
simultaneously warning of a storm that never materialized.
There are the myriad sights and smells of remarkably well-fed cattle,
ubiquitous herds of sheep, and the occasional horse or Connemara pony the
further west I go.
It is a cornucopia of sensations that one cannot possibly experience driving
through in a car, bus or train, for as one old Irish farmer outside Loughrea
told me when admiring my choice to travel on bike, “you have to be close to the
earth to feel it talk to you”.
In my estimation, he was a pretty smart man.
For that, in a nutshell, is what rural Ireland does. As strange as it may
sound, the land itself speaks to your soul.
The wind carries melodies and the abandoned castles drip history like the dew
falling off the tree branches in the morning.
Meandering along the spider’s web of roads at a breakneck pace of 10 miles per
hour on my trusty old 21-speed mountain bike it is almost impossible not to
feel the urge to whistle or sing the songs of this ancient place, even if you
are like me and couldn’t carry a musical note in an empty Guinness barrel.
So it was that I found myself chirping out a rusty version of the tune about
“watching small free birds fly” while turning off the N6 (a main route across
the midlands) and heading down a country side road for a visit to one of the
most famous landscapes in Irish music, the Fields of Athenry.
The fields
The “back lawn”, or the expanse of farmland circling Athenry, is what one first
encounters and while much of it still remains intact and unchanged, as it has
for centuries, there is considerable evidence of new home construction as
developers from Galway, about 15 miles west, are putting up some very upscale
residences in the area.
Perhaps this is evidence that the “Celtic Tiger”, or the booming Irish economy
fuelled by high technology investments (which has slowed a little in recent
years), still remains a force to contend with.
Beyond that one enters the town itself and the first thing they see are the
huge Celtic crosses standing like mute sentinels outside the crumbling walls of
an archaic, ruined building.
The eerie sensation of stopping to explore the remnants (of what I assumed was
a church and the accompanying graveyard) near dusk on Halloween is enough to
curdle the blood.
Yet, such opportunities present themselves rarely in this life, so in I go
shouldering my way through the heavy, iron gate on creaky hinges, mustering
bravado against both the cooling evening and the ghosts that surely are the
denizens of such sacred ground.
The building itself turned out to be a surprise as it was a Dominican Priory
dating back to A.D.1241.
All told it was in remarkable shape and would probably still be standing
unscathed had it not been partially destroyed by the forces of Oliver Cromwell
in 1642.
One thing that will immensely improve your enjoyment of a visit to Ireland is
fostering an appreciation of local history. It is the thread that holds
together the fabric of life in many of the places I encountered.
You would also be well advised to know that the people of Athenry have elevated
this to a high art form since their community was declared an official Heritage
Town after undertaking the major restoration of Athenry King John’s Castle in
1989.
Just for those who are curious about the origins of Athenry, the town dates
back to at least 1178 A.D. (as the premier Barony of Ireland) and the name is a
derivation of the Gaelic “Baile Atha an Riogh” and, very loosely translated, means
“The Town of The Ford of The King,” referring of course to the famous ford in
the river.
Medieval necropolis
Such matters were far from my mind, however, as I stood in the tiny medieval
necropolis on the scariest day of the calendar year. Resting by the
vine-covered stonewalls and the empty window casements I marvelled at what this
building must have looked like in its full glory. Snapping off a few pictures
of the burial crosses, the remarkable grave slabs, and the vault of the main
chapel (now lacking a roof and with only Heaven itself for a ceiling) I was
touched by a tinge of sadness for both the departed souls and the priory.
I’m no expert on ancient warfare, but it seemed a terrible tragedy, to me
personally, that a building of this magnitude be destroyed by any side, in any
conflict. It is, in a small way, a crime against the future to annihilate the
past and I was happy to leave the tiny cemetery behind and move back to the
land of the living.
Time enough for graveyards when we have no choice on the matter, but for now I
went in search of good food, good stout beer, and good conversation. I found
all in abundance in Athenry.
Hospitality
After cycling around the incredibly neat inner town a few times to get my
bearings I enquired of a woman near the castle where to get a decent meal.
She pointed me in the direction of a small hotel called the Newpark and the
waitress on duty (a very helpful lady named Phil) brought me a delicious feast
of beef from grass-fed cattle and fresh vegetables that I washed down with
creamy Guinness.
To my mind, it doesn’t get much better than this.
Maybe it was the 51 miles I cycled that day; or the 90 miles I did the day
before that; or the 26.2 mile Dublin Marathon I ran two days before that which
gave me such a fierce appetite; or maybe it was just the fact that everyone was
so friendly to me, but whatever the reason the food in Athenry was good enough
to convince me to venture no further afield this night.
So I found lodging for the reasonable rate of 38 Euros and, with the
contentment that only a full belly can bring after a day on the bike, I
ventured off to explore the town.
Held for ransom
Then a most curious thing happened. After dropping a few postcards into an
ornate letterbox on the side of a building, I turned and encountered the Devil
himself and a wee pixie-winged fairy with twinkling, blue eyes who “held me up”
and demanded in an almost indecipherable lilt of voices, “Mister, give us 50
Euros please!”
“Fifty Euros, no less?” says I. To which the little girl of about five or six
years old replies, “Well OK, not 50 Euro - but how about one Euro each?”
Finding this a most reasonable sum for which I could ransom my liberty I gladly
complied with my pint-sized captors’ demands and was on my way, momentarily a
free man.
Free at least until the entire procedure was repeated again down the road by
another group of demons and goblins, who good-naturedly spouted riddles and
rhymes at me in rapid fire Gaelic, rationalizing why I should relinquish my
tightly held Euros into their coffee cans and paper carrier bags.
I, of course, gladly acquiesced on every occasion being the easy mark that I am
for kids on Halloween.
In all fairness the preschool would-be tycoons were as cute as buttons,
extremely polite and their parents apologized for their bothering me.
But the truth of the matter is that they were no trouble at all. In the final
analysis I more than got my money’s worth in sheer entertainment value alone.
Still I figured I’d best take refuge in a little pub called J.F. Murphy’s, The
Arch Bar, (so named because it is adjacent to the North Gate Arch portion of
the medieval wall of the town) before the Irish trick-or-treaters ended up
bankrupting me unintentionally with their industriousness. This turned out to
be a good move as the night progressed very nicely from there.
Dennis
Flynn is a resident of Colliers. Next week, the traveller recounts further
experiences from his bicycle tour of The Emerald Isle.