"I HAVE no history", says Torn Whitty. "Sometimes, in a way, that can be a real advantage."
What he means is that as an American he has no history here in Ireland. No tradition of wrongdoing for which he might be blamed as he travelled these hills preparing the Sheep's Head Walk. This is in Durrus, that squally, rocky spur of land that marks the southern edge of Bantry Bay.
Out here the hills, on a dull winter afternoon with sweeps of rain driving in from the Atlantic, are alive. They are peopled all summer long, which is only to be expected, but even in winter and early spring the walkers follow, with a dedication born of a love for territory and for isolation, the Sheep's Head Way around the craggy peninsula.
Indulging this love is the focus of the Sheep's Head Development Committee, a loose collection of like minded residents spear headed by Tom and by James O'Mahony; a group that has become increasingly aware of the tourist potential of the simplest countryside activity of them all walking.
They have brought a slight, enabling formality to the Sheep's Head path, giving it a title - The Sheep's Head Way - and providing directional signs which will keep people from falling off the cliffs as efficiently as they will keep them out of the few grassy fields on the route.
Forgotten Peninsula
"Putting the signs up I felt I was the first person on these hills in decades. I wasn't, of course, but the sense of untouched landscape is intense. That's what the walkers love, that and the fact that we re sending them along old green roads, fishermen's paths, boreens and bog roads and little tracks among the rocks. In a way this is the forgotten peninsula, overlooked in the scramble to get to Schull and Baltimore on one side and Glengarriff and Adrigole and Castletownbere on the other; it was only when we formed a small tourist association and began talking to the walkers that we realised everything they were looking for was here," says Tom Whitty.
"Here" is the promontory jutting into the Atlantic between Durrus and Bantry, forming the southern wall of Bantry Bay. It is reached by a left hand turn off the main road from Cork to Bantry, just a few miles before the town. It is not Tom Whitty's place to say this and he didn't say it - but anyone who hasn't been in Bantry town recently had better prepare for a shock. The square has been remodelled. Ramparts of yellow brick have been built across the central width of that delicate space, the historic grey stone, wind swept and sea rimed, has been reduced to a peripheral architectural fringe and cars and people swirl in contra flows; around the yellow glacier which now consumes the town's core.
So be sure that you're fit and well before exposing your historic sensitivities to the best that Bantry town could do with itself. Ideally, just turn left beforehand to go up the Goat's Path and the Horseshoe Road marked out for you and thousands of others.
At the summit is the stone seat carved by Ken Thompson with a line from Seamus Heaney's poem The Peninsula Water and ground in their "extremity". This marks the pass the beginning of the back again in the series of timed and measured walks inaugurated by the President, Mrs Robinson, last July.
Titled With Enchantment
Although the townlands of this territory are titled with enchantment - Ahakista, Kilcrohane, Dooneen, Gortavallig, Gerahies, Fahane, Kilnaruane - the walk is not for the romantically inclined. Walking distances are outlined on the promotional literature: Bantry to Glenlough 3.5 hours, Finn Mac Cool's Seat to the Turning Table at Tooreen 4.5 hours, the stone circle at Ahakista to Durrus three hours.
But that's to entice trippers. The walk itself, the whole experience of the Sheep's Head Way, is a commitment to four days on the headlands, with prearranged breaks for bed and breakfast in local houses along the route.
To facilitate the journey one of the most attractive maps ever made in Ireland has been produced by the Development Committee; this is the work of the artist Colm Murphy (yes, it is he, the bodhran player with De Danann) who has put in all the little roads with their markers, all the bigger roads with their destinations, all the mountains on either side in a dim blue perspective, all the more immediate mountains - Ballyroon, Seefin, Rosskerrig - just where you're likely to meet them, all the little lost villages, the townlands, the Holy Well, the Standing Stone, the light house and the signal tower, the Giant's Footprint and the lakes (Akeen, Doo, Coolturtaun, Glanlough), the promontory forts, the bardic school, the Penal Mass house, the copper mine at Gortavallig, the coves and beaches and bawns and burial grounds, the poet's well at Farranamanagh, the hotel and the post office, the cillin and all the main and minor roads and all the route markers.
The map comes as part of a package: a booklet full of historical and other information is included (illustrated by Murphy and by C.P. Burrell); there are lists of suitable accommodation for anyone wanting to stay in the district and there's even, on completion of the walk, the Sheep's Head Way achievement sticker.
Perfect Place
"This is a tourist product, walking holidays can be a big market and this is the perfect place for a long distance walk although, as the peninsula is a loop, it's easy to design smaller routes as well. But our main aim is for the long distance walker, the people who like to get off the road. It's a kind of tourism too, which doesn't impinge on the landscape, there's no infrastructure, nothing to, change the way the place has been for centuries. Also, it means that the money that's brought into the community is spent in the community, in the houses and the pubs and restaurants."
Getting it all together, however, took Tom Whitty and James O'Mahony - assisted by Cork County Council, European Regional Development Funds via Bord Failte and Cork/Kerry Tourism, Durrus Community Association, Sheep's Head Tourism, FAS, Kilcrohane Development Association and other local and national organisations - a little bit of time. Every Sunday for a year they drove and walked from farmer to farmer.
The guide reminds walkers that the trail is dedicated to the farmers and landowners of the Sheep's Head peninsula and the Bantry area, without whose way leave it simply would not have been possible.
Every effort had to be made to ensure the landowners would be indemnified for insurance purposes. Warning signs on the cliffs had to say "danger" in five languages. There were more, than 200 farmers to meet James, with a background in the IFA, would talk for hours about the price of calves and the advantages of slatted housing. And Tom, an American who, with his wife Suzanne, runs a restaurant behind Paddy Barry's pub in Durrus, could keep quiet and listen to the folklore because, in this area, he has no history.