Most of you know I love Tipperary......I have to summon up all my willpower when it's time to leave.
But I love the wild mountains, lakes and bogs of Mayo too.....my Mother's home county. Forum members who know me well would tell you I inherited some of the wildness. Last year when my plane touched down, I had a strong urge to go to "Mammy's Country" (I am sure she was right there with me, steering the rental car, though she never drove in her life).
I went to see the little cottage where my grandparents, and their parents, raised fine healthy broods. Actually my great-grandparents were lucky to survive the famine into which they were born. Thank God for putting them on a lake and river full of fish and seaweed, and next to a bog full of peat for fuel. That's why you see me saying Grace before I eat.....I never take my next meal for granted.
There is for me such a spiritual feeling about those wild mountains near the NorthWest coast of Mayo, it is as if my ancestors have come to take me to Heaven. Anyhow I digress....
I drove to Belmullet, a sleepy little town surrounded by desolate landscape. I took the coast road to a little stretch of beach.
I felt like the Monks must have felt when they were looking for solitude and finally found it. I slept in the car, on the beach. In the morning I awoke refreshed, and walked barefoot along the strand. Then I drove into Belmullet looking for breakfast.
The most unexpected thing I saw there was this......an Internet Café!
Something else you would not expect to see in this wild landscape is a monument to 11 victims of the Titanic Disaster,
all from the Parish of Addergoole.
I am familiar with this area, and those 6 young men and 5 women set out for Cork with hope in their hearts, a new life ahead of them. They perished, but 3 women who set out with them were saved and settled in the USA.
Every year, on the Anniversary of the sinking, the Church Bell tolls for the 14 souls who are not forgotten.
