From its car salutes to its place between sea and mountain, the novelist NIALL WILLIAMShas spent the past quarter of a century falling in love with Co Clare
And some time make the time to drive
out west
Into County Clare
Postscript,
Seamus Heaney
THIS IS THE only time I can think of where Clare features in a lyric poem by Seamus Heaney. I remember reading it – it’s the last page in the slim collection
The Spirit Level
– and thinking as readers so often do with his poems: that’s exactly right.
In describing the drive around Black Head and along the Flaggy Shore, in the north of the county, in the buffeting wind between sea and land, the poem captures an essence of Clare. It’s a between place. When someone from abroad asks me where Clare is I always begin with “between”: between Kerry and Galway, between the Shannon and the Atlantic.
Clare is a middle child, a shy county. It doesn’t wear the blowsy glamour of Kerry or the postcard curls of Galway. What you’re coming to in Clare is more subtle scenery. And it’s a place about people.
In my first months here, 25 years ago, I became quickly familiar with the Clare way of greeting, the range of car salutes: the full hand, the half hand, the solo right thumb, the half nod with four fingers, with two joined fingers, the full hand slow raise, the snap raise, the full head lift, the half head lift – a whole vocabulary of silent acknowledgment.
Some time make the time. Come into Ennis now that the bypass has taken the traffic out and the town is returning to its people. I tend to judge towns by their bookshops, and Ennis has plenty. Go into Dervilla at the Ennis Bookshop, browse the selection of an independent bookseller – while there still are such things – and if it’s raining go up to Scéal Eile, on Market Street, where, among second-hand books and behind the winding stair, a turf range is burning.
Ennis is a town that rewards browsing, wandering, dreaming. Some time make the time. I like the independence of it, the fact that its music shops are not chains – go down a lane off O’Connell Street to Custys, maybe the best Irish music shop in the country. Go in, listen; there will be musicians there. Buy a fiddle. Browse the CDs. In a room upstairs the guitarist Graham Keane is teaching. Somewhere else there’s a fiddle class. You won’t be asked to leave, you’ll remember Christy Moore singing “If it’s music you want, come to Clare” and you’ll already be nodding.
Farther up O’Connell Street take your choice: there’s the Poet’s Corner pub or the wonderful Town Hall, both part of the venerable Old Ground Hotel, the best address in town. For years I’ve dined here, wined here, stayed here (and even once collapsed here). I’ve worked on novels all afternoon in the front corner of the Town Hall.
Allen Flynn, the owner, is a collector of art, and there is a selection of interesting paintings on the walls. I love the atmosphere, and Allen is never far away; if he leans over to welcome you, ask him what plays he’s seen recently – he’s an award-winning director with the excellent Ennis Players – and knows more about contemporary Irish theatre than almost anyone.
In Clare it’s inevitable: you are always heading towards the edge. (East Clare is for another day, a different poem.) So for now drive west on the N68 through the long village of Lissycasey, where on your right you’ll see the Headless Horse – not Horseman but Horse; it’s a long story; stop and ask at Fanny O’Dea’s – and if you need a rest turn right at Kilmihill and stop at the lovely lake of Knockalough, with the fairy island in the middle.
Kilrush is fifteen minutes farther along the N68. There in town stop into George Brew Sons, one of those old family hardware shops that sell everything and through which the town itself comes and goes, and say hello to George. Go down to the marina, where the wind plays clacking music with the boats. From here in summer you can sail out to Scattery Island, a dream place, a between place I love, neither here nor there, with its ruined monastery, round tower and rabbits in the middle of the Shannon.
But when you’ve come to Clare you want the sea, so take the road on into Kilkee. If it’s summer stop into the Pantry for a bite to eat. Then follow the road out to the West End and walk along one of the best cliff walks in the country. A quick nod (half head incline) to the statue of Richard Harris as you pass along the Pollock Holes, where the children swim in the warm after-sea. Take the tarred path that rises to the west where at its peak the cliffs are utterly spectacular, and without the crowds of Moher.
If you’ve time (and some time make the time), feeling the tug of the triangular county drawing you towards its end, take the Loop Head drive to the lighthouse. Near Kilbaha you’ll pass Krys Pomeroy’s cottage and gallery, where she crafts her extraordinary figures out of papier mache. There’s a thrilling moment out here when you see the Atlantic on your right and the Shannon hurrying to meet it on your left. You feel the confluence of energies that is the character of a between place.
From one end to another. At Loop Head look back along the Atlantic and drive now to meet the Heaney poem. You’re heading all the way back up to the Black Head coast, in north Clare. When you return to Kilkee take the N67 in the direction of Miltown Malbay, but in passing Doonbeg consider walking the best beach in the county, Doughmore, which runs along the dunes below the Greg Norman golf course and adjoins the five-star Lodge at Doonbeg.
That’s unless it’s Willie Week, the first week of July; if it is you have to go to Miltown Malbay and walk around inside the music, you have to go up the town and down the town, sit inside a pub or outside on the window sill in the middle of the afternoon, turn your head to the sky with music playing and feel the luxury of what you have just given yourself, some Clare time. If it’s not Willie Week take the R482 along by the beach at Spanish Point, then carry on towards Lahinch.
If, like me, you don’t like driving past so many sea views, if you keep wanting to stop, then turn right at the sign for Blue Horizons BB, follow a narrow road parallel to the main one and stop at Wayne’s. Wayne is on the Irish surfing team, and, like one of those happy concurrences you find in Clare, he also runs an excellent and pristine BB with some of the most beautiful unobstructed views of the Atlantic. Last summer, during one of the Kiltumper Writing Workshops that I hold at my house, a dozen writers came from half a dozen countries and stayed at Blue Horizons; all of them loved it.
Of course if you are a surfer there is a different kind of mesmerism here. And everywhere in west Clare now, like emblems of a new religion, you see boards being borne to the sea. I love the sense of pilgrimage in those who want a dance with the waves. It’s that between thing again; it’s standing neither quite on land nor on water but on a temporary plane between both where, for a brief moment, you are your own place.
Leave the surfers at Lahinch, take the road between the golfers towards Liscannor and, on the left-hand side across from Egans pub, stop into Egans Too. You’ll quickly notice the floor is filled with cases of wine. Then you notice the shelving and the hardcover books. There are first editions, signed editions, hardcover Becketts and Banvilles, a wall of fiction, and then a wall of books on wine. I asked what the idea of the combination was – a bookshop of literature and wine, and literature on wine – and was told that sometimes people like to bring a book and a bottle to their guests, but really these were just the taste of the owner. I liked that answer and thought it spoke of Clare, too, and a kind of independent thinking. As with the hotel owner who directs plays, and the Irish surfer who runs a BB, so too the wine merchant who sells classic Irish fiction. The surprises of Clare.
I have brought so many visitors to the Cliffs of Moher – and the new centre is a kind of magnificent thing – that I prefer to double back a kilometre from Liscannor on the R478 and turn left at the sign for Kilshanny to go cross-country towards Doolin. The road runs up through quiet townlands before rising into a lonely bog and rushland where it seems you are driving into the sky. Then a crest, and out before you in a picture is the wide Atlantic, the Aran Islands and the Doolin ferry heading to Inis Oírr.
There’s been enough written about Doolin to keep it going for another few decades. (I prefer it in the winter, when there’s only the hard core left, when you enter the pub out of the gales and give the half head lift, as if to acknowledge that neither of us has yet been blown away.) The music is still there.
Out of Doolin along the R479 then, past Fanore, and soon you are on the edge of the country again, with the deep waters on your left throwing up their spray, the gray stone of the Burren on your right. You feel you’ve driven into somewhere, but, with Doolin behind you and Ballyvaughan ahead, it’s a place between sea and mountain that has its own magic. The sea can be rough, but you’ll feel calm.
You’ll pass the first lay-by cut into the rock but not the second. Here you’ll stop. You’ll get out and you’ll meet the wind and it’ll shake you off your firm footing just a little, and the thing you’ll feel will be between wanting to shout loudly and wanting to be very quiet, and you’ll be here where the poem sent you, glad that some time you made the time to drive out west into Co Clare.
Niall Williams’s most recent books are John (Bloomsbury) and Boy and Man (HarperCollins). The next Kiltumper Writing Workshops are on July 11th-13th, August 1st-3rd and August 22nd-24th. See www.niallwilliams.com
Where to stay, eat, go and shop if you're in Co Clare
Where to stay
The Old Ground Hotel. O’Connell Street, Ennis, 065-6828127, www.flynnhotels.com.
Blue Horizons Bed Breakfast. Ballyvaskin, Miltown Malbay, 065-7079863, www.bluehorizons.ie.
Moy House. Lahinch, 065-7082800, www.moyhouse.com.
Where to eat
The Town Hall. Old Ground Hotel, O’Connell Street, Ennis, 065-6892333, www.flynnhotels.com.
Food Heaven. 21 Market Street, Ennis, 065-6822722.
Burren Perfumery Tea Rooms. Carron, 065-7089102, www.burrenperfumery.com.
Where to go
Scattery Island. See www.heritage ireland.ie/en/ShannonRegion/Scattery IslandCentre. Boats from Kilrush marina; call 065-9051327.
Kilrush Marina. Kilrush, 065-9052072, www.kilrushcreekmarina.ie.
Dolphin Discovery. Kilrush. 065-9051327, www.discoverdolphins.ie.
Willie Clancy Summer School. Miltown Malbay, July 4th-12th, www.willieclancy-summerschool.com.
Where to shop
Krystyna Pomeroy. Kiltrellig, Kilbaha, Kilrush, 065-9058364, www.krystynapomeroy.com.
Custys Traditional Music Shop.
Off O’Connell Street, Ennis, 065-6821727, www.custysmusic.com.
Ennis Art Gallery. 2 Francis Street, Ennis, 065-6892760, www.ennisartgallery.com.
Doolin Crafts Gallery. Doolin, 065-7074309, www.doolincrafts.com.