For a wanderer, everything begins and ends with the humans you meet. This tale begins with Jon Brannen, of the same named pub and BnB in Newport, county Mayo, Ireland. He was a hiker, a gruff and burly man who wore his kindness in his words. I was staying at his place and with a wanderer’s openness asked him the best thing to do in the area: “Walk the Wild Nephin park, but do not miss Achill Island, for sure.”
Achill Island? How had I missed that in my research? Or why was it not as important as he made it? I quickly found out it had the Croaghaun cliffs, the highest in all of Europe. (Though now I know it is Norway that owns that crown.) Having thought the Irish Cliffs of Moher were the highest, I had to see.
He had one last piece of advice: “Take the Wild Atlantic Way, it’s longer but beautiful.” It was not a long drive to the island, nor long before I realized Jon had a deep sense of understatement. Well, I had already driven it on Dingle Peninsula and Ring of Kerry, but this was a challenge of another two-way, one-lane road with as many sheep as cars. It being May, the baby lambs were all over the road like kids too young but learning to drive; I’d sit and wait, I once honked to no avail. So, the sheep are a real part of the drive.
I say that because the real emphasis was in front and all around me — these magnificent and barren vistas, each rolling with the road, getting larger and higher. Granite and peat and green hills all overlapping.
Houses grew sparse, then disappeared. The edge of the road, me on the left of course, got a steeper edge to it as the road bent with the flow of the cliffs. Finally, I came upon the first “I have to stop” view only to find a sad plaque dedicated to all the men who left during the potato famine, but most of all, the brave woman they left behind. One small drawing had a bent woman with a chunk of peat on her back. The suffering.
Like so much of what you see in Ireland, the tragic and the sublime mix easily.
Having recently seen the Ring of Kerry and the magnificent Dingle Peninsula, this still caught me off-guard, reassuring me that nature’s true magnificence is just that, and one should not be put in it an immediate state of awe by it.
By the time I got back to Brannan’s, it was dinner time. I had forgotten to get a recommendation for a place to eat, so the Newport Hotel seemed safe; but even with lowered expectations, the food was almost execrable. Tasteless. Let’s just say, that when the potatoes are the tastiest thing on the plate — and by far — then it is a bad, sad meal.
I had booked for three nights, but by morning I had already called a BnB on Achill, Stella Maris, in the central town of Keel, and booked a room. I had to get back, it was almost a compulsion I felt so pulled to find out more about this mysterious island.
After I had my last Irish breakfast, and swore that I would never have another piece of white toast again, I saw Jon and got his attention; I told him how amazing Achill was and that I was going to check out a day early and if he wanted to settle up I’d pay for the last night as I had committed to it.
He looked at me like I had two heads. “Why would I be charging you for a night here when you didn’t lay in the bed?”
Outspoken Traveler 
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