Along the road, somewhere in county Kerry I recently did a discovery. While on one of my journeys I stopped to take autumn photos and also to take a look at this cottage. I had often wondered while passing who would have lived there long ago, and why the people left, and where did they go, maybe across the sea to America as a lot of Irish people emigrated there in the late 19th or early 20th century. Anyway the house is boarded up but still looks in good repair. It is nestled among beech and other native trees, now beautifully coloured, and it looks out down the valley with hills in the distance. Some of the land is bog-like with a variety of grasses and sedges, some rocky outcrops and low bushes, and lots of bracken, beech and birch trees, a mixture of colour at this time of year.
To my surprise I found a notice fastened to the wall of this cottage, it happens to be a roosting place for bats, and in particular for the lesser horseshoe bat. An organisation covering both Ireland and England called the ‘Vincent Wildlife Trust’ has a long and successful history of establishing and managing reserves for rare bat species. It manages 37 sites in Ireland, England, and Wales, all of which are roosts of the greater or lesser horseshoe bat. In Ireland, the Trust manages 12 reserves for the lesser horseshoe bat. And so this cottage has been put to very good use.
Some days ago I took the notion to spend a few days in Glengarriff in West Cork. Glengarriff is a peaceful village lying in a lush valley surrounded to the south and east by the Caha and Shehy mountain ranges and to the west by the Bantry Bay. Its climate is subtropical and this is seen in the lush plant growth, home to several rare plants and trees, like the Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) and the royal Fern (Osmunda regalis) for example. Close by are the Italian gardens, situated on a small island better known as Illnacullin island, a beautiful place to visit.
Sugar mountain and Shrone hill, part of the Caha mountains in which glacial valley Glengarriff lies.
The Blue Pool, accessible right from the village
I think that most of all Glengarriff is a place where you can relax and unwind, but also a place where, in the village itself, people congregate in and outside of pubs and eateries, and so a lovely ambience resides. I often travel through this little village, I always stop to soak up what Glengarriff really is, a place of beauty, of peace. Even the scent is full of fragrance, the fragrance of fresh air, of oxygen. Very restorative!
Early spring in the village 2025
Why am I writing about Glengarriff? First of all I love the place and have spent time there, and secondly because of where I stayed. I like to put the Glengarriff Hostel on the map because it is an amazing place. I’ve always loved and travelled using hostels, and this is one of the best. What a nice way to travel and meet new places and people in a way that is adventurous and affordable. Glengarriff Hostel has a mixed dorm, a female dorm, family and private rooms. A comfortable sitting room and a great kitchen with a terrace looking out towards the Blue Pool and Shrone hill. Find out more on https://glenhostel.ie/
The Hostel with Shrone hill behind itPrivate roomChill out roomKitchenEntranceOne of the dormsFamily room
One of my favourite things about Glengarriff is the Nature Reserve which is just a stone’s throw away from the village on the Kenmare road. This is an original Oak forest, lined with pathways and walking trails, both long and short. Very interesting are the lichens, the mosses and the polypody ferns found here. The Glengarriff river runs through this forest. Both this reserve and the surrounding area is a wonderful place for hikers, hill walkers and for those interested in geology, botany and nature in general. People who like the sea can also live it up in Glengarriff, there are boat trips, fishing, and swimming.
Irish spurge Euphorbiacae hybernaWild Rhododendron Along the coastline at Glengarriff
For the horticulturist there are several gardens to visit with interesting and sub-tropical species. Springing to mind are The Bamboo Gardens, The Ewe Experience, Garnish island. And Ardnatrush gardens which are my favourite, this is the garden developed by botanist Ellen Hutchins and where she did research into seaweeds among other things. Here are some photos I took there at my last visit.
Gunnera manicata at Ewe ExperienceLichen at ArdnatrushMy brother Johan and ITree Fern – Dicksonia antarctica at Ellen Hutchins gardens
Following is a link to a website about Ellen Hutchins:
Glengarriff is easily reached by bus from Cork, via Bantry and from Killarney via Kenmare.
I’ve enjoyed looking up some websites for information, but basically I’m quite familiar with the gardens, the botany and the interesting things about Glengarriff. It is the place where in 1965 my family emigrated to from Antwerp in Belgium. Us eleven children have since dispersed all over Ireland and Belgium too, with a huge number of descendants.
The surrounding mountains are a great place for the geologist.
Travelling through the Caha mountains during winter I find that there is plenty of interest to see and get excited about even just along the way. While some of my drives are taken in bad weather conditions, heavy mist, rain and or wind, most of the time I’ve experienced dry and also regularly sunny weather.
Most of all, this winter I find the skies fascinating. The colours, subtle, in pastel pink, light blue, ashen grey or radiant white, and even as if with a magic brush, diffused streaks of periwinkle purple. I’ve seen it all in skies over the Bantry Bay, over the Caha mountains and over the Glengarriff valeys. Ever changing skies with light of a beautiful quality. It certainly holds the attention of the traveller. These days I drive home when the sun is setting, adding another marvel of light, the setting sun, often spectacular!
Looking down into the valley there is a whole palette of different browns, beiges and forest greens. A true feast for the eyes. As can be seen in the photo below Glengarriff National Forest has a lot of birch trees growing, and apart from their stark white trunks, their branches are particularly beautiful at the moment. Every time I pass clusters of them I try to think how to name their colour, a type of maroon, or a vintage wine, or does it look more like an English lavender, burgundy, gothic mulberry or umbral umber. It is hard to pinpoint exactly the colour of those branches, and it also depends how the light shines on them and how the rain brightens them.
Birch trees in the distance
A variety of other branches, among them the deep red of the dogwoods is always very nice in a landscape, and so is the drama of the bleached grasses, rushes and sedges covering whole stretches of hillsides with cream blonde colours or even rusty browns.
Darkness falls early these days, painting the landscape mainly in moss green, dark brown or black, though the mountains in the distance do give us some mauve. The landscape changes constantly, it is very noticeably when driving higher up, clouds throwing huge shadows over the valleys interspersed with stretches of sunlight. As I said there is a lot of interest even in winter on my journey. Probably much more to discover yet and that leaves me with a feeling of ever more excitement.
I came across two photos of winter foliage recently, these are paintings of the Danish painter Peder Mork Monsted, (1859-1941) from his ‘Winter’ series. I thought it shows the colouring of the birch trees beautifully and rather well. I think his work very nice. (Referenced from Gallery of Art) with thanks.
Molly Gallivan’s cottage is named after Molly, who lived in this cottage hundreds of years ago, she was a widow and mother with seven small children. And showing entrepreneur tendencies she came up with the idea to supplement her small income by opening a “Sibheen” (illegal pub) where she sold her home made “Poitin” that was locally known as “Molly’s Mountain Dew”
In 1840 a mountain road was built linking County Cork and County Kerry, which led from Glengarriff over the mountains to Kenmare and was called the Caha Pass. This road happens to pass Molly’s cottage and when more and more travellers and tourists took this road Molly saw another good way to increase her income. She set up her own cottage industry and started to sell home spun woollens and knitted Aran jumpers which her neighbours helped her to make while the local sheep farmers provided the wool. Such a resourceful woman was Molly.
In the following photos are some of the lovely authentic items that Molly used to look after her family, a butter churn among them. In this kitchen traditional Irish scones are made till today, I’ve tasted them when I visited with my sister Josephine. We both find it interesting to see what utensils women would have used here less than one hundred years ago.
Looking at the heart there are several items, one of them is a shallow black pot in which a soda bread was made. The dough would be put in and the pot would be put in the fire and hot pieces of turf placed on top of the lid. The resulting bread tasted delicious. I see a flat round gridle too which was used in the making of gridle bread using rough flour, some maise flour, sour milk, bread soda and an egg. Here I found a video showing how: https://youtu.be/PpoTNWOKWtY There was always a large pot to boil the potatoes which were always popular in rural Ireland.
The upstairs in Molly’s cottage actually has two bedrooms and a bed also on the landing. The windows are tiny. There is a rustic cradle. I spot a small spinning wheel in the corner of one of the bedrooms. Electricity came to these areas only in the 1960ies. Her sewing machine would have been worked by hand, same as the spinning wheel and the loom. It was a simple life, but it cannot have been easy always.
We had a lovely cup of tea when we stopped by there during my sister’s visit. And of course we sampled the homemade scones. We also visited the shop area with the lovely selection of Irish woollen items and other Irish goods.
The cottage seen from the N71. Also some of the out-houses one of which is probably where Molly made her illegal “Poitin”, her mountain dew as it was called. The original cottage was only one story part of which can still be seen here in the photo.
I hope you enjoyed learning a little about Molly Gallivan’s life and her cottage. She must have been a great woman!
The cottage is found in Bonane in County Kerry. Bonane is situated in a valley between the Caha and the Shehy mountains and the sea. The cottage overlooks some of this valley. Bonane is know for its many ancient historical sites. Among the sites are pre-famine house ruins and field systems, bronze age copper mines and much more, fascinating stuff. Today Molly’s cottage and traditional farm depicts the lifestyle in the valley as it was during the early 1900s.
This photo shows the road over the Caha Pass going down into Bonane with a beautiful view of the Macgillycuddy Reeks in Killarney in the distance, among them is Carrantuohill, the highest mountain in Ireland at 1038m. It gets climbed often, recently my sister, brother and other members of the family enjoyed getting to the top. I took this photo and had waited all summer for the right moment to get a clear view of those mountains, it was already deep into September when I got the right conditions, it shows how the land had already started to get a rusty colour, beautiful!
The landscape has been sometimes dark and mysterious lately, this photo I took the day after a large storm sent torrents of rain down the mountains. It made for a most beautiful journey.
Because of the large amount of rain that fell Barley lake (situated in the Caha mountains) could be seen from the tunnel road quite clearly, while I was literally driving through the clouds. Lots of waterfalls everywhere. Beautiful!
The sky is often quite spectacular to watch. In Ireland neither the rain, nor the sun are ever far away and the clouds are ever present in fascinating forms.
On better days, a roadside picnic with a lovely view over the valley below is a must stop for me. The quietness, even if this is a main mountain road, is so very peaceful.
Some more photos of last months journeys to Kenmare. The landscape is changing its colours fast. I often climb up some of the rocks and find all sorts of interest. The flora is mainly brown sedges now and some of the young gorse plants that were still flowering, and the end of the heathers, also the beautiful seedheads of the bog asphodel, a lovely bright orange!
There are plenty of places where I can stop and look at the views or whatever else I want to find. Lower down in the valleys there is a lot more plant growth. Higher up the rocks are a huge fascination of mine.
On this journey there are, in their natural environment, still a lot of old barns and cottages, these are still in use and have been beautifully restored, though some are left as interesting ruins. The traditional cottage of this area of Ireland is a small stone-built house, two windows with a door in the middle, I think two up and two down they call it in vernacular architecture. Here in this photo gallery is one of those traditional cottages, well restored and used, it’s on the road down into the valley of Bonane on the way to Kenmare. It’s very nice to have a stop there and my sister Josephine and I had tea and traditional scones there last summer, but about this place which by the way is called Molly Gallivan’s cottage (after the original owner) I will tell in another blog to come. Visiting places like this goes back a long way in our family.
And as you can see from my photos there is so much a journey of a mere 71km can provide, even on a weekly basis. There is never ending interest, what with the changing seasons. And the sheer amount of interesting facets one comes across on such a journey make it certainly very enjoyable. Wow!
What a most beautiful autumn sunshine at the moment here in West Cork. After an incredible display of the Aurora Borealis last night, we woke up to a little bit white frost, nature has had a lot to offer this morning which I discovered during a much desired walk on the path to Russagh Mill. It’s one of my favourite walks, this path overlooks a long valley, still lush and green in the distance. Closer by I especially noticed the sunlight on the blackberry leaves lighting up their earthy colourings.
This walk also has many shaded areas with lots of ferns. The shade is created by the trees, mainly ash, willow, hawthorn, and other species too. In fact I discovered a new tree which had escaped my notice in the past. When I looked it up on my phone it turned out to be a White Willow (Salix alba), one of its common names is Golden Willow, I like that! A fact I’d like to share about this tree is that “Its inner bark – raw or cooked can be dried, ground into a powder and added to cereal flour, then used in making bread etc. It has a very bitter flavour, especially when fresh, and it is used as famine food when all else fails. The leaves and young shoots are not very palatable and used only in times of scarcity. The leaves can also be used as a tea substitute.” My Flora Incognita got this information from Wikipedia as far as I know, so that is my source of my information I want to acknowledge. I wonder if this tree was every used during the potato famine here in Ireland. Below is a photo of the said tree.
Below are the seedhead of Willow Herb, Hawthorn berries, Fern, and a late flower in the hedgerow.
Blue sky during these autumn months is very welcome.
This last photo is on another part of my walk. The farmer here was growing a plant of the legume family with lilac flowers and thick looking seed pods, there is a whole field of it here, and further along there grows a lot of Dock, now in seed. What caught my attention here was the several dozen of birds fluttering and flying around all at the same time, and definitely looking as if they had a mission in common. I whipped out my phone and checked the evolving picture before me with my Merlin app and to my delight these birds came up as Eurasian Linnets (Linaria cannabina) I was so impressed as I had not seen those before here, and so many of them together. They belong to the Finch family. Apparently they are fond of flax seeds, hence their name. The male’s colouring is beautiful during the breeding season, lots of red.
Well, that walk was so nice, and finally I’ve taken the time to write about it. I’ve missed my blog writing very much and I want to be back to it regularly. So much to research and write about. I’m still driving to Kenmare every week to see Ian, I travel through the Caha mountains and I love it, the beauty of that journey is a weekly joy. Every week something new and interesting to notice and discover. And after seeing Ian, enjoying a nice cup of tea and chat together, the journey back, very often I stop to look at a view or a rock or plant. It’s so dead quiet up in those mountains, even when I’m on a main road there are whole period of quiet. I’ll tell you more about that soon. Meanwhile, much love.
These days I enjoy a weekly journey through the Caha mountains on my way to see my husband Ian in Kenmare. It is a most beautiful journey, not only along the Bantry Bay towards sub-tropic Glengarriff where at the moment the rhododendrons are still in full flower, but following the N71 up to and through the tunnel separating county Cork and county Kerry.
Looking into a most beautiful glacial valley.Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance. Rododendrons alongside the road.Looking back towards the bay.Bonane which I come to once through the tunnels. This is in Co Kerry now.The interesting rock formations along the road.The Glenn valley.
It is such a lovely journey. I do it once a week. My dear husband Ian is now resident in a nursing home in Kenmare. It’s about 74km from here. It’s a different way of life for us both, but we are adjusting and making the best of what life offers.
In our wild garden, and wild it is at the moment, I’m finding that everything is green, beautiful shades of green, but yet there are some colours to be seen too. I haven’t had much time, and less inclination to garden in the past few months and now everything has overgrown. But it’s beautiful, and there has been a lovely crop of very yellow buttercups in what is now a small meadow rather than a small lawn, I’ve really enjoyed that sight. The Californian lilac has also flowered in a pale blue. And the wild foxgloves that self-seed every year are in full bloom, a beautiful shade of pink.
I like the garden to be lush, and to have secluded spaces where I can sit on the old bench, or totally in the back under the oak tree and surrounded by nettles and foliage of montbretia foliage not yet flowering, protected by the sheds from the cooling wind. I often pick this spot for breakfast on fine days, the sun is only just hitting that spot then and it’s a lovely light. The old bench under the hawthorn tree is another one of my favourites, but I have to watch it as it is the domain of the sparrows and there are often droppings from above, not so nice in my tea.
I am not seeing many pollinators in the garden this year yet, probably because the weather has been rather unpredictable, I’m hoping they’ll come soon. I’ve seldom seen the garden so lush, or else my memory is failing me (which I doubt}. The month of May is of course the most beautiful month in Ireland, and often one of the warmest, not so this May, in fact I’ve had to light the stove today. Probably June will be better.
I’ll let you have a stroll through our garden for now. Enjoy!
Bright beauty of buttercups (Ranunculus)
Foxgloves (digitalis purpurea)
Californian lilac (Ceanonthus)
I hope to be back to my regular blog contributions, there is a lot of material which I can develop and plenty of photos to go with it. As I get used to the changes in my life I’ll get inspired again to share some of the beauty of Ireland, and of my past and future travels. And I look forward to interacting again with the blogs of all my friends and followers.
Nice walk along the N71 surrounding Skibbereen town. River Illen flows through the town and has many different faces, this time a faint reflexion of the blue sky and some light white clouds.
In the Uillinn Gallery I had a preview of Majella O’Neill Collins’ paintings which I think quite interesting, this time her paintings imagine the journey of the MV Alta, a merchant ship that was abandoned at sea in 2018, it washed ashore in West Cork during a storm in 2020. The wreckage is still there. I did get the distinct feeling that ships or a ship and the sea were her theme. Enjoyed some of her vibrant work. Her exhibition opens next Saturday.
I was lucky enough to see a heron!
Love these pines against the blue winter sky. Birds have started singing!
Taking time out will be snippets of my walks and indeed of my time out
agoyvaerts 