At the Edge of Ireland by David Yeadon

here is typically evocative of her style: “The mines on Hungry Hill had ceased to work. The fires went out at last, and the smokeless stacks lifted black faces to the sky. The whine and whirl of the machinery was still. A queer silence seemed to call on the place. The mine had a deserted air. The door of the engine-house swung backwards and forwards on a broken hinge.”
    The enormous Puxley mansion, described by one outspoken writer as “a grandiose pile and lump of gross ostentation,” was built a few miles east of the mines. It adjoined the tumbled remnants of the medieval O’Sullivan Bere Castle of Dunboy perched on a Norman-styled motte-and-bailey mound surrounded by ancient yews and huge splays of rhododendrons overlooking nearby Castletownbere and Bere Island. This must have been a sturdy and most imposing monolith if the ornately decorated gatehouse here is anything to go by. But in 1601 the O’Sullivans unfortunately sided with the Spanish against Queen Elizabeth I and were largely massacred. A heroic remnant of a thousand or so supporters led by Chieftain Donal O’Sullivan sought sanctuary hundreds of miles to the north in Leitrim but were largely wiped out on their terrible “long march.”
    A couple of miles beyond Allihies, past that beautiful beach, and almost at the tip of the peninsula, a narrow lane leaves the main loop road and heads down through bosky, sheep-dotted hills. A sign reads DURSEY ISLAND and offers a rough handpainted timetable for the infamously tiny cable car contraption (the only one in Ireland) linking the peninsula with this tiny four-mile-long island. We made a mental note to visit sometime, little knowing what a ghastly Pandora’s box of cruel history we’d discover here. But that, as they say, is another story.
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    T HE ROAD NOW SWUNG abruptly eastward as we began the second segment of our “Ring” drive, traveling along the southern shore of the peninsula by the broad, sparkling Bantry Bay. Moors and meadows suddenly opened out into truly majestic vistas. The land dropped away abruptly into small farms and grazings. To the south we could clearly see the last two of the five peninsulas of southwest Ireland—Sheep’s Head (very rural) and Mizen Head (celebrated by more discerning travelers seeking respite from the self-conscious charms of Cork, Cobh, and the Kinsale region).
    Closer in we finally spotted the capital of Beara, the lively fishing community of Castletownbere nestled beneath the Slieve Miskish mountains and sheltered from erratic bay weather by the languorous green dome of Bere Island. This was once a major Royal Navy base when Britain and Ireland were united, until its closure in 1938. The British were most reluctant to leave what was generally recognized as being the largest natural harbor in Europe, and it took more than a decade to organize their final departure. Winston Churchill was particularly anxious to keep it as a base during World War II and even hinted at a return of Northern Ireland to the Republic—a deal that never materialized. Fortunately, around two hundred devoted residents have discovered what an enchanting hidden place this is (in the midst of the larger hidden place of Beara itself). It’s served by two regular ferries from Castletownbere, dotted with late-eighteenth-century Martello watchtowers; a Bronze Age “wedge tomb” thought to date from around 2000 BC ; a prominent ten-foot-high standing stone; and remnants of British gun emplacements and forts, all still in surprisingly good condition.
    Castletownbere itself (also once known as Castletown Bear-haven) is a pure delight, particularly in terms of sketch-worthy subjects when the huge, often Spanish and Portuguese fishing trawlers cram the harbor wharves here. But equally appealing are the more hedonistic aspects of life here—the town’s pubs, restaurants, and stores—and, for the truly overindulgent and