Bliain - Part 9

Part nine of my project to make a photograph every day for a full year, or bliain in Irish. Find Part 8 here.

13th April



Now that travel restrictions have eased somewhat in Ireland I took the opportunity to venture a little further from home today. Not that I’ve been pining to get away anywhere; one of the big lessons from the last year for me is how much I enjoy living where I do. Not that I was sick of the place, but being here when I could have been restricted to the suburbs has given me a renewed appreciation for how much is on my doorstep. All the same, I had a desire to visit a special island a little further from home that I’ve not been to for awhile, and with the promise of fine weather I kayaked out there for a night’s camping. We will all be glad to see the end of this pandemic, but it has certainly made for some great opportunities to enjoy more free time than usual. At least for those of us lucky enough to be on the rather generous government payment while the virus stops work. It’s a lot easier for me than most I realise, with my cheap rent, zero debt and no mouths to feed besides my own. While I have a certain amount of guilt for being this lucky there’s no points for being a martyr either, so I’m keen to try and make the most of the free time while it lasts. This was the scene on the beach I arrived at on my little trip. Having set up camp I walked a circuit of the island to gather driftwood for a fire later on, imagining all the while what it might be like to live in a place like this. It’s a dream of mine to live a simple life on an island otherwise unoccupied by humans. Not forever, because I know the romanticism would soon be worn away by the hardships brought on by isolation, but I’d fancy a year in some place like this I reckon. It wouldn’t be easy, or practical, or even enjoyable much of the time, but life isn’t any of those things much of the time anyway. At the very least it would be a wonderful adventure, and one I got to pretend I was living during this short stay.

14th April



After an early start and slow morning packing up I was back on the mainland before midday. My first overnight paddling trip of the year, and hopefully not the last. I spent the evening nearer to home again. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m lucky that I have not been put out much by having to stay local over the past three months. I came to live where I am because I wanted to be near to the mountains and the sea, and that decision has paid dividends during all these lockdowns. Amazing locations I’ve not been to before are revealed almost on a weekly basis, such as this sea cave my friend Jaro (posing) led me to. A beautiful place to watch the sun go down on another fine spring day.

15th April



Sticking with the sea cave theme, here’s a different cavern from the sea cliffs of West Kerry. This was another first for me, a lovely reward from another evening’s explorations. I’m not quite sure how this formed but it seems much too high above high water mark to have been created by the sea in any recent time. The floor of the passage is very smooth and filled with deep pools, suggesting it may have once been a riverbed, or perhaps a sea-formed cave before the land was pushed up or the sea level dropped. The geology of the Dingle Peninsula is very varied and hard to grasp, at least to my mind. The assortment of different rock types leads to a variety in the landscape that is particularly evident along the wave-battered coastline. That diversity of stone, all eroded in its different ways, means there is much to discover for people like me who love to get to know the close-up details of the landscape. And being within the landscape certainly brings on that feeling of intimacy with a place.

16th April



Keeping with the cave theme for a third day running, or just about anyway. This is a wren’s nest. The scientific name for a wren is Troglodytes, which means cave dweller, in reference to these small little mossy hollows they craft for the breeding season. This nest was made in a corner of the shed (on top of an old swallow’s nest no less), but fell down soon after being finished. The ‘shed’ is actually a shipping container, with smooth metal walls and the wind running through the open door. Clearly not the best place to try and attach such a nest, but no worries. I learned from a friend that the male wren makes a number of nests in spring, and in an effort to convince a female to mate with him he takes her on a tour of his various properties. Sounds impressive in fairness. But I wonder how this wren is doing with the ladies this season. While out with the campervan one day recently I found another of his nests tucked in under the rear bumper. The van is idle much of the time, but I do take it out once a week to keep the engine running. It takes a wren less than a day to make a nest, so he can be forgiven for having chosen this spot; if the camper was parked up for good it would have been a fine place for a nest indeed. I can just imagine him trying to persuade some female to come and see his latest build, assuring her of its sound construction, protection from predators, and comfortable space in which to raise a brood of chicks. They arrive at the spot together after much sweet talk on his part -

“Trust me, you’re gonna love it! It’s easily better than any of those other nests you’ve been... Wait a minute?! Ehhhh... what’s going on?!”

“What are you talking about? There’s no nest here. Or even anywhere to put one.”

“Ehmmm, I swear it was here just awhile ago... I only just finished lining it an hour ago! Where’s the big blue box gone?!”

“The what? Is this a joke?!”

“No no no! I...”

“Whatever, I’m outta here. First that one that fell down and could have had me killed, and now this?! Don’t sing to me in the mornings again!”

17th April



I probably should have gone out for a photo this morning while it was dry, but I wasn’t very motivated. By the afternoon it was wet and fairly miserable outside and I still hadn’t been struck with the inspiration I hoped would somehow land in my lap. I have a list of ideas for days such as these, so I decided to let laziness win and use one of them up. Unfortunately that particular one didn’t work out like I had in mind, so I had to go back to the list and strike another one off – this scene, shot from the comfort of the car. Dingle was quiet, which is no surprise anymore, though I did count fifteen campervans in the marina carpark. A somewhat unanticipated number given the times we’re in. I always have a slight dread about the summer in Dingle, which has become so successful as a tourist destination that part of the reason people came here in the first place (the quiet charm, whatever that means) is almost entirely absent in the town in summer. I can’t complain too much given that tourism pays my wages, but the industry has become more industrialised in recent years. The mechanisms of commerce have been brought in on a big scale, to turn all that can be monetized into cash. And money, much as we all need it and like to see it coming our way, has a tendency to tarnish things. The knock on affects of all this ‘progress’ and ‘success’ are far reaching – the local rental market is a disaster, house prices are obscenely high, the pressure on local landscapes and wildlife increases every summer as more and more visitors trample around, and more and more tour boats seek out the animals popularized on social media (I know I’m guilty in this too)... I’m not sure many places have managed to strike the perfect balance of maintaining the year-round economic well-being of locals while still keeping a sustainable level of tourism development, and arguably such a utopian equilibrium doesn’t exist. Some people will always want more ‘expansion’ to make more money, and some places, despite amazing potential as tourism destinations, will remain in decline for lack of development. Trends come and go, including which places are trending as hotspot destinations. Perhaps as time goes on the Wild Atlantic Way’s success will allow for otherwise quiet areas to reap the benefits of tourism and help spread the heavy load we collectively make.

18th April



Sandpiper at Baile an Rannaigh, with a breaking wave framing the scene in the background. These small waders come to Ireland in the summer to breed, from wintering grounds along the west coast of sub-Saharan Africa.

19th April



My motivation for this project has been low recently. Rather than being excited to go out and make an image I’m finding myself trying to get away with the bare minimum just to get the chore done. And so here is a simple scene from another rainy day - ivy climbing an old stone wall, above a patch of nettles and herb Robert. It’s hardly exciting, but when you’re not excited about or mentally engaged with the making of an image it’s unlikely to end up being much good.

20th April



Having legal reason to leave my county for a sea safety course I need for work meant I got to spend some time in West Cork this week, and it was nice weather to be down there for. The first evening was very grey and still, with misty drizzle coming and going. Birdsong and livestock calls were clear in the calm air where I parked up for the night, within sight of this lake and its photographic potential in the windless conditions.

21st April



Another image from the same lake little more than ten hours later. The wind had picked up a bit during the night, but thankfully the near side of the lake stayed calm enough to reflect the pink-tinged clouds streaking across the sky. A lovely start to a really beautiful spring day in one of the nicest corners of Ireland.

22nd April



Emerging beech leaves framing a small waterfall in Glengarriff Nature Reserve. The final day of the course finished near Glengarriff, and I couldn’t resist a walk in its beautiful woods before making for home again. The wild forests in this rough valley (the literal meaning of Gleann Garbh) are similar to what Ireland might have looked like before the first farmers began to seriously alter the landscape on a nationwide scale. Though beech is a more recently introduced tree, much of the woodland in this nature reserve is made up of a mix of species and a structure that is about as close as we have to genuine native woodland anywhere on this island. It’s a world away from the green fields of rural Ireland, which most people probably imagine is a natural landscape. While there is no doubt we need farming to produce food, most of the ways in which we do so is very inefficient, highly polluting and ultimately unsustainable. And that’s not to mention the fact that almost a third of the food produced in the world is thrown out and never eaten. We need more native woodlands for carbon sequestration, water quality, flood prevention, habitat for beleaguered wildlife and as space for humans to recreate and unwind. If we could change our farming systems, most of which are subsidized by tax money, we could be paying for tree planting instead of hill fires, and habitat restoration instead of pollution. Obviously this would require the willingness and participation of landowners, which is probably why the change hasn’t come about yet, despite it making sense in many ways. In the last few days I met one man who moaned about an estate owner in the midlands who decided to leave 700 acres to regrow as wild land, an idea he was disgusted at when “half the world is starving.” As if the impoverished people of Sudan and Yemen are hungry because there’s not enough Irish beef available to the world... I also had a great chat with a farmer and fisherman who only still bothered with sheep because of the payments he got for them. He was also getting payments because part of his land was good habitat for choughs. Personally I hope these payment schemes will start to lean more towards wildlife as times moves on. Many farmers are entirely dependent on these subsidies, and couldn’t make a living without them. If more landowners can be convinced that all land doesn’t have to be manipulated for direct human use, and be supported financially to look after it in a way that’s more environmentally friendly it would go a long way to making Ireland a richer place in which to live.

23rd April



I was tired on the drive home yesterday evening and had been enjoying the change of scenery and compact routine of van living the last few days, so I decided to pull in for another night in the camper before going home. Another sunny morning followed, and this postcard view of Minard gave me a quick and easy photo opportunity. It may have been done a few thousand times before, but I’m happy to stick with the cliché today, if only because I’m still struggling to find any motivation to use the camera. Though this beach is only twenty minutes from where I live I don’t go here often, and am always surprised by the enormous size of the boulders. Many of them are as big as a human torso, and apart from a few that were cracked open in more recent storms, are beautifully smooth. The castle was built in the 1500s by the Fitzgeralds, and abandoned in 1650 after an attack by Cromwell’s forces (which is more or less the same basic history as Rahinnane Castle, which I photographed on the 20th of February).

24th April



One of the last fresh looking lesser celandines in the back garden. There is a nice carpet of them under an ash tree that brighten that corner of the plot every spring, though at this stage most of them are a little ragged looking, with more than a month having passed now since the first few flowered. I can’t believe it’s almost May. Today was bright and unusually warm, fitting with the colour and vibrancy of this common wildflower. I used my free hand to shade out the background and make the celandine really pop. It’s an intense yellow, much more so than on any other Irish wildflower I can think of, and I’ll miss the sight of them once the ash tree shades them out. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing the ash tree in leaf too.

25th April



A pair of the almost impossible looking flowers of kidney saxifrage. This species is quite similar to St. Patrick’s cabbage, which I photographed on the 10th of February while its leaves were still folded tight. That feels like a lifetime ago now. The flowers of both plants have started to appear in the last few weeks, held well away from the leaves on thin, reddish, furry stalks. The flowers of St. Patrick’s cabbage look the same from a distance, but are less finely detailed when viewed close up (and the leaves of each species are very different). These flowers from the kidney saxifrage look like something drawn in a fairy tale illustration, or something arrived at after decades of propagation by ornamental gardeners. Being quite small they are easy to pass by, but if you do notice this plant it’s well worth checking the flowers. The damp, shaded, stony woods and ditches of West Cork and Kerry are the best places to find them.

26th April



Sunrise over Geokaun Mountain, Valentia Island. Yesterday evening I headed for Valentia in the campervan, as today I had to do some painting on the boats I work on before they’re put in the water for summer. For the first hour of the journey I was looking towards the smoke coming from the fires at Killarney National Park. At that stage they were well into their second day of burning, with a third of the land area of the park affected. It is utterly heartbreaking to think of the destruction to life caused by these fires. It has been a constant distress in my mind since hearing about them a few days ago, knowing what’s being lost, and for what? Who are these people who want to burn the world down? The level of indifference and outright contempt for the natural world that so many people seem to have makes me despair. With another warm and breezy day forecasted I was glad to see less smoke than expected as the sun rose this morning, and again later as I drove to the boatyard. I would like to write more about it all but for now I’m just too tired from having it weigh on my mind. I hope it rains for a week and that whoever started the fires is found and jailed. And I hope this will be a wake-up call to turn peoples’ attentions to the catastrophic state the world is in. It’s bad enough to have these fires on farmland, but to have them destroy the last remaining pockets of supposedly protected wild lands is especially distressing.

Find Part 10 here