Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men
Picture the scene: you drive down a heavily ramped road and draw up to the lakeshore in the far north-west of Ireland and look across at the wooded island. There's a little booth with a telephone inside. You pick up the receiver and say you want to travel to Lusty Beg, and a wee car ferry contraption, which would fit a couple of cars, chugs over to collect you.
At that stage you pack preconceptions of time constraints and frenetic activity and modern life away; it's going to take the same purposefully languid procedure to get back to "the mainland" so you might as well enter the time-zone properly. It is neither fair nor accurate to describe the pleasures of Fermanagh - parts of which are farther from Belfast than from Dublin - as forgotten, but it is true that the genuine and varied attractions probably don't get the attention they deserve. That fact, allied with the shadows cast on peaceful times lately, threatening the delicate equilibrium, mean that those involved in tourism work hard and put extra effort into helping visitors enjoy their time and build up an industry they have had a glimpse of. Anywhere you talk to anyone involved in tourism, they mention how, during the first ceasefire, things changed totally - suddenly people started to visit Fermanagh, the place was full of backpackers. Tourism is a desperately sensitive indicator of the state of emotional play in the North; the volume of visitors to the area reacts to the slightest ripple . . .
In Fermanagh, a county bounded by five counties, you continually find yourself sliding through the Border, abandoned crossings and still fortified RUC stations indicating which territory you are in. There's also the peculiarly Northern phenomenon of towns split in half by the border, sometimes known by different names in each jurisdiction. Indeed, Beleek Charter Cruising's office is in the North, but part of its jetty is in the Republic. Fermanagh's terrain is a mixture of boggy ground, farmland that doesn't look great and characterful villages. The positively island-studded Loughs Erne dominate the county. In spots it is like Connemara, but without the stone walls - or the bad roads and bungalow blight.
Lusty Beg is a privately-owned island on Lower Lough Erne, 22 miles beyond Enniskillen in the Boa Island area. It has in recent years been developed by Arthur Cadden as a holiday island with its own rhythm and cadences; though it's a narrow channel of water, it effectively cuts off the outside world in a most agreeable fashion. But visiting Lusty Beg is far from scraping about ascetically on a barren island; accommodation is either in the island "motel" or is self-catering, in one of the lodges or chalets. By far the most enjoyable and luxurious option is the Inish lodges: large (sleeping six), secluded, wooden houses, fronting onto the lake and incorporating every convenience.
The island has its own pub and restaurant, an indoor swimming pool, tennis courts and fitness room. It specialises in water-sports and nature trails (the whole of Fermanagh is coming down with water-sports and sporting activities of all sorts, but you can just as easily chill out and have a slothful break). On Lusty Beg you might also come across "teamworking" groups on management training or company seminars; the combination of seclusion and activity seems to go down well and the island has carved a secluded niche for itself in the corporate atlas, of which Cadden is very proud. One of the groups when we were there was from a unionist Belfast firm, recently taken over by an international company, and suffering because of inter-community tensions in the factory. The team-building weekend forced people to work together and pull in the same direction for the course tasks, Cadden told us.
Incidentally, the conference facilities on the island are in Ned's Cottage, a house originally lived in by Ned Allingham, reclusive brother of William Allingham (1824-89), who wrote the lines at the top, which capture a more superstitious time in Ireland.
As well as a holiday destination, Lusty Beg is also a stop-off point for cruisers on the Erne; with the boat moored on the island marina for the night, sailors join the landlubbers for the evening, having a good meal and a few drinks before moving on. After leaving the island we drove along the north of the lake to Beleek, took a look at the Pottery in the village and went exploring for the afternoon on one of Beleek Charter Cruising's cabin cruisers, from the far western point of the 50-mile-long Lough Erne. At times the Shannon can seem almost crowded, with so much boating activity, and the Erne is a peaceful alternative, with a huge number of stop-off points and what seems like a jigsaw of hundreds of wooded islands on the lower lough, many with marinas and some with restaurants and other facilities. The waterfront development is, however, strictly regulated; everywhere in the county the evidence of strict building control is, thankfully, in evidence.
While the Erne-Shannon waterway now makes this the longest navigable island waterway in Europe, the people in the know, who come back to the area year after year, says Noel Coyle of Beleek cruisers, clearly believe less is more, and take their time exploring the nooks and crannies of a much smaller area, mooring for the day, doing a spot of fishing perhaps, or exploring some of the islands' monastic sites, rather than rushing about, seeking to be there, or to do that. Coyle should know: he grew up on the banks of the lake, with a family history going back over generations, and many stories to tell; after years living in the Republic he and his family returned to his native place. The Beleek company is a community-owned enterprise, growing out of initiatives such as the International Fund For Ireland, set up to develop the local area.
The other end of the scale from either the self-catering luxury of Lusty Beg, or cruising the open lake, is the old world charm of the Manor House Hotel, a four-star country hotel in Killadeas on the shore of Lower Lough Erne; part of the Manor House Hotel's "peace dividend" has been the gradual reincorporation of Enniskillen into its address.
The large period house has had an interesting history, including requisition by the US forces during the second World War; it became a hotel in 1957, and has been gradually restored architecturally. The present owners have paid attention to detail, furnishing it gracefully with antiques to create a refined and comfortable hotel, but including a fitness room and pool. We had a splendid dinner served with grace and charm at a dining room window, overlooking the grounds and the lake from a height, then stayed overnight in a room that was spacious and luxurious.
Even if you're not staying in a fine manor house, Fermanagh has some National Trust properties well worth a visit. Castle Coole just outside Enniskillen is a late 18th-century Wyatt-designed neo-Classical house, clearly built to impress by a person by the name of Corry. (Corry sounds like a rather self-regarding sort who built the ostentatious if unwelcoming house to earn him the title of Earl of Belmore. It did.) Full of false doors and splendid workmanship, it was beautifully restored by the Trust. Florence Court, eight miles south-west of it, contrasts interestingly; dramatically situated, it features some fine rococo plasterwork.
Close by are the Marble Arch Caves, first excavated in 1895 by Martel and Jameson (an alcoholic sounding combination!) and boasting impressive stalagmites, subterranean lakes and rivers; the show caves are only a part of the elaborate cave systems in the county. Enniskillen itself, which divides the upper and lower lakes, seems to have put a painful past behind it. These days it is a pleasant town in beautiful surroundings with the usual shops, some nice pubs and a few eateries, notably the recently opened and unusually named Scoffs (behind the even odder named bar, The Bug), where we savoured rather than scoffed some fine food.
Fermanagh. Hunt out those airy mountains and rushy glens . . .
