So I’ve spent the last five weeks kind of bumming around Ireland, traveling-but-not-really¹ to some of the places I missed the last time I went on walkabout. Obviously, there’s still a pandemic on, and while I’m doing my best to stay in compliance with all of the governmental guidelines it’s also fair to say at times I’ve not been entirely comfortable with the restrictions in place; I think they’ve way too lax in many of the particulars.

At the same time, I’ve been trying to ward off loneliness and depression. So while the safest thing is (and remains) locking yourself alone in a room and surviving on contactless delivery food, I’ve been trying to triangulate something between that, the official guidelines, and what I feel comfortable doing.

The biggest thing, for me, is staying in Ireland as much and as long as possible. At this point I’ve almost spent longer in Ireland² than anywhere else since I started traveling.³ And while I’ve hopped the border between Ireland⁴ and the United Kingdom a few times, I’m hoping not to go anywhere else until the pandemic is actually under control.

I’ve also greatly slowed the pace of travel I’m engaging in. I’m spending weeks places I used to spend days, and months places I used to spend weeks. I’d probably be traveling even less if I hadn’t been planning month-to-month; the Irish government had been extending permission to stay a month at a time, which made it difficult to block off more than 30 days. So when I left Galway, I planned a total of two weeks in the south and two weeks in the north, and a final day or so to head to an airport if I needed to leave. And off I went.

My first stop was in and around Cork, with a week in Kinsale then a week in downtown Cork. Kinsale is a charming little town on the southern coast of Ireland, with a pretty little harbor and a number of restaurants catering to tourists. It’s historic — Spain actually invaded and occupied the town for about 100 days in 1601 in an attempt to wrest Ireland from the English, culminating in the Battle of Kinsale⁵ — and most of the cargo traffic left for the more expansive Cork Harbor centuries ago, which has left a lot of the character of the town intact.

All that said, a lot of the museums and tours weren’t running due to COVID, and I booked a room in a B&B in what turned out to be an hour’s walk outside of town.⁶ So I made it in to town a couple times to poke around a grab a bite,⁷ and otherwise stayed in the hotel and kept to myself.

I did discover, to my delight, the Kinsale Mead Company was open and conducting tours. It’s a family-run meadery founded by a husband and wife in 2016⁸ as the first meadery in Ireland in 200 years. It’s small — you can walk around the space in about 10 minutes — but the proprietors are friendly and love what they’re doing, and it’s great to see independent businesses doing well. The styles of mead they produce aren’t as sweet as I’m used to; they’re closer to gin or red wine⁹ than dessert wine. I happily bought a few bottles to send to friends.¹⁰

After Kinsale I headed to downtown Cork for a week. And for someone who’s been scraping by mostly on takeout food, I was amazed and relieved to discover Cork was known for its food culture. The famous English Market was open with its cheesemongers and greengrocers and gourmet shops,¹¹ and many of the restaurants were as well.¹²

Restaurants during COVID are tricky. Most of these had obviously made accommodations by moving tables further apart and strictly limiting guests. And they were mostly fastidious in cleaning surfaces and enforcing the rules. But there’s still that tension there — the pubs remained closed — and I don’t know if I would have felt safe eating out if Cork were getting hit as hard as Dublin was.¹³

I stayed there for the week, and on the last weekend I hopped the train down to Cobh,¹⁴ a tiny seaside¹⁵ town primarily known for being the last stop of the RMS Titanic. It was also one of the major ports for those emigrating from Ireland through much of the past few centuries; if your ancestors were Irish Catholic, there’s a good chance they boarded a ship leaving from Cobh. There’s a lovely little Titanic museum there,¹⁶ but it was mostly an excuse to get out of town for a bit and wander around the waterfront.

After my time in Cork I headed up for a week in Derry. Derry is mostly known, these days, for its role during The Troubles.¹⁷ In a lot of ways, it better exemplifies the heart of that conflict than Belfast does.¹⁸

Belfast was majority Protestant. Derry wasn’t. There was a large Catholic migration that settled in and around the city from rural Donegal. When Northern Ireland was partitioned most people assumed Derry would join the Republic, only to be shocked when it didn’t happen. But Derry is a kind of touchstone in Protestant folklore. It was extensively built up by English and Scots colonizers during the Plantation of Ulster in the early 1600’s.¹⁹ The recently deposed James II arrived in 1689 near the start of the Williamite War and demanded surrender; in response the city shut its gates and endured a horrific siege as the Catholic army tried, and ultimately failed, to starve Derry out.

But ever since, Derry has been a symbol of Protestant resistance against Catholic rule — No Surrender! — and while I hesitate to read too much into it, I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest if your identity is tied up in a historical event where you won by being obstinate and refusing to negotiate, suffering horrifically while literally stonewalling the opposition, it’s not likely to put you in mind of negotiation and compromise. Derry was the site of Bloody Sunday, as well as Free Derry²⁰ and the Battle of the Bogside.

So there’s a history there, and not a pleasant one. You can visit the memorials and the murals and the history museums, and you should; Derry’s small enough that you can do that in an afternoon. But I was surprised how much I enjoyed the town, beyond that. It’s a pleasant hour walking around the city center atop the 400-year-old town walls, and there’s a nice mix of parks and riverfront and restaurants.²¹ It felt new. It felt like it was looking towards the future.

In 2011, they opened a Peace Bridge across the River Foyle, connecting the traditionally Protestant neighborhood in the east with the traditionally Catholic neighborhood in the west. It was coordinated by the EU as part of the “Peace III” initiative, which tries to foster greater ties and cooperation between the various factions in Northern Ireland.²² The bridge itself is a lovely pedestrian walkway, which curves one way and then back, supported by two cantilevered columns which look like they’re falling away from each other until you find the right angle, at which point they’re both gently tilting towards each other. It was busy when I crossed it, at sunset, with people walking and biking or just hanging out by the river. I hope it’s always busy.

After Derry I headed to Donegal, and my timing was impeccable. When I first made plans, Donegal was one of the lowest hit areas for COVID-19. A few weeks later, it’s the site of one of the biggest outbreaks in Ireland, and went into a fresh lockdown just as I arrived.

I’m kind of amazed there’s even enough people for an outbreak; there’s only 160,000 people in the county. And I didn’t feel at risk, since I interacted with a grand total of thirteen people face-to-face²³ in the two weeks I spent there.²⁴ I had rented an AirBnB for a week, just a short drive from Slieve League, a mountain that rises along the coast of Donegal to reach three times the heights of the Cliffs of Moher. They’re also a bit more lackadaisical about fencing — the most famous walking trail up the peaks is the “One Man’s Path” which takes scrambling up and across a set of rocks barely wide enough to walk single file, and inches from a sheer drop into the sea.²⁵ I didn’t hike that²⁶ although I did spend a couple hours wandering around some of the other trails a few times that week.

Otherwise, I stayed in. The lockdown closed all the pubs and all the restaurants, and I was deep enough in the countryside that nobody delivered, so I loaded up on groceries and tried to kinda, sorta cook for the week. The big problem — and the reason it didn’t go as well as when I was crashing with friends — is that there were virtually no ingredients in the house. No olive oil, no bread, no soy sauce, no herbs, no spices, no rice or nuts or onions or honey or tomato sauce or garlic or mustard.²⁷ So although I had a surprisingly great kitchen — double oven, oversized sink, dozens of pots and pans²⁸ — I’d have had to invest a massive amount in a bunch of kitchen staples and tossed them out at the end of the week. It’d have been different if I were cooking for a bunch of people, and had a shot of getting through some of the ingredients before we left.²⁹ But I didn’t. So it was a fairly dismal set of canned pasta sauces and frozen Quorn nuggets for the week.

And after that it’s just been staying locked in hotel rooms. I had expected to spend the three days in Donegal Town poking around the city and stopping in a pub or two³⁰ but with all the shops and restaurants closed the only times I left the B&B was when I was fetching takeaway food. And I had a lovely stay booked in a spa for a couple days, but they closed entirely; I rather hastily rebooked in what turned out to be a fancy wedding venue in Letterkenny³¹ instead. That place at least had their bar still open.³²

I’ve spent the last three days in Derry³³ which is also in lockdown. I didn’t leave the hotel. And I guess that’s my life for the foreseeable future. It looks like we’re firmly in the second wave, so I’m currently seated on a bus³⁴ heading to a hotel in Dublin. I’m expecting to spend the next four to eight weeks there. I’m hoping they get the outbreaks back under control, and I’ll feel comfortable going back to some modest traveling. As autumn turns into winter, we’ll see how optimistic that is.

Shortly after I started traveling around three weeks ago the Irish government announced they were extending everyone’s permission to be in the country all the way until late January. It’s uncommonly generous; it means I don’t need to worry about international travel until 2021. That means I’m very, very likely to be staying put until after the US elections, after Christmas, and after the New Year.

I had hoped, way back when I arrived in Ireland in June, that within a couple months some countries would have figured out the right mix of restrictions and testing and contact tracing to cautiously but safely reopen. But it just doesn’t look like that’s possible.³⁵ We haven’t been able to keep the lockdowns going long enough to get a handle on everything else, and the choice seems to be between keeping safe but closed off and opening up and seeing your numbers spike. Most places are kind of vacillating between the two.

But it is what it is. I’m resigned to staying put and waiting it out, if that’s what it takes. I’ve got three months to see what the world looks like. And if this time it really, truly seems like the last time we’ll see an extension from the Irish government, well, maybe by then the world will be just sane enough to think about heading someplace new.

Next: Thanksgiving, 2020, Galway
Prev: Galway to Kinsale

Footnotes

¹ At least, not the kind of traveling I’m used to

² Both the republic and the island

³ The exception being the United Kingdom, with the obvious weird caveat that Northern Ireland is both in Ireland (the island) and the United Kingdom.

⁴ Both the republic and the island

⁵ And prompting one of the many waves of the “Wild Geese,” Irish rebel troops fleeing to Europe to serve in armies on the continent. The name Wild Geese apparently comes from how the smuggled soldiers would be labeled on ship manifests, with geese being hidden away and locked up given how noisy they were when disturbed.

My favorite historical curiosity is how many Irish ended up in France and involved in the wine trade as a result of all this immigration. Château Haut-Brion, one of only five Premier Grand Cru Classé wineries in France, apparently derives its name from the inability of the French to pronounce O’Brien.

⁶ Given how twisty most of the roads are in Ireland, something that looks like a short hike on a map can easily turn into two or three times the distance on the ground.

⁷ I wouldn’t call the outskirts of Kinsale rural, but there was only one restaurant delivering food out to the B&B, so if I wasn’t going into town I’d mostly eat a huge breakfast fairly late in the morning and have snacks the rest of the day.

Kinsale had some great restaurants. Unfortunately, they all turned out to book solid all the time and if you hadn’t made a reservation several days in advance you were likely to get stuck with the chipper.

⁸ Denis runs the tours, as well

⁹ One of their styles is even aged in Merlot barrels

¹⁰ Free shipping in the UK and Ireland at the moment!

¹¹ Tricky without a refrigerator in my B&B. But great for snacks or sandwiches to grab and eat in the park.

I also discovered a vegan shop selling a bunch of vaguely Tex Mex dishes to go — I say vaguely because their nachos included both kimchi pico de gallo and fermented curtido which strikes me as slightly inauthentic — and if the end result ended up being kind of a gloppy mess of the pico de gallo and curtido and chili and rice and sour cream on a base of crunchy chips I just resigned myself to a fork and managed anyway.

¹² I had a friend recommend Paradiso as one of the best vegetarian meals they’d ever had, and I was so happy they did. It was excellent, and exactly the sort of quirky and fancy without being pretentious I like.

I had the cais na tire and knockalara cappelloni with sweetcorn, jalapeño, and lime butter, which should give you a sense of the kind of food they serve. The service really stood out, though. I was having such a good meal I decided to splurge on a dessert wine, and rather than decide between the black or the orange Muscat the server suggested having a half glass of both. It is hard to get on my bad side by offering me more to drink than I would otherwise get to try.

¹³ Perhaps predictably, as the restrictions have eased up Ireland has seen a number of frightening COVID outbreaks and there’s been corresponding lockdowns with rumors of more. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been increasingly isolating myself as the numbers have come out. On the other hand, the numbers corresponding to a scary outbreak in Ireland seem to be running about a third what the numbers for “business as usual” are for the United States, so there’s that at least.

¹⁴ The name is pronounced “Cove” and that is, in fact, the original name of the town. It was renamed Queenstown following a visit by Queen Victoria in one of the odd fits of royal mania the Irish seem to periodically have for the British Monarchy, then renamed again during the Irish War of Independence.

It’s one of the few places to have an English name that’s been transliterated into Irish, rather than the reverse. The Irish name (An Cóbh) is meaningless — it’s literally just the Gaelicisation of the pronunciation of “Cove” in English.

¹⁵ Well, islandside. It’s smack in the middle of Cork Harbor.

¹⁶ Guided tours only during the pandemic, so reserve your spot early

¹⁷ Well, these days it’s probably mostly known outside of Ireland for Derry Girls. As I recall my tour guide in Sligo delightedly pointed out places it was filmed in the area.

¹⁸ I’m using the name Derry rather than Londonderry. Legally it’s Londonderry, but the majority of people, Catholic and Protestant, casually call it Derry.

Of course, it’s never that simple. The city council changed its name to the “Derry City Council” in 1984, and has been trying various legal routes to officially change the name of the city. This is supported by the (majority) Catholic population and opposed by the (minority) Protestant population.

My sense is most locals don’t particularly care what name you use, as long as you don’t seem to care what name you use. Much like “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” in the United States, people are only likely to take offense if they think there’s a political motive behind your choice of wording.

¹⁹ The merchant guilds of London who underwrote the costs were responsible for renaming it Londonderry, in what is basically an early form of corporate rebranding.

²⁰ A self-declared autonomous Irish nationalist area, which lasted for three years from 1969 to 1972

²¹ Currently for takeaway, natch

²² If you need yet another reason to resent Brexit, consider the European Union, through the “Peace III” program, has committed to funding over 333 million euro towards these kinds of infrastructure projects in and around Northern Ireland

²³ Well, mask-to-mask

²⁴ Five cashiers in supermarkets, two hostesses at restaurants offering take away, one B&B owner, one hotel employee, two waiters at the hotel bar, one pizza delivery guy, and one AirBnB owner who came over halfway through my stay to literally make sure I wasn’t dead.

²⁵ You can look up videos online, they’re … uh … something

²⁶ It was raining and walking the whole thing takes four hours. Plus, the whole vertigo thing. I did consider it.

²⁷ There was a tiny bit of flour and sugar, about five different kinds of stale cereal, and about eight cans of Heinz Baked Beans.

²⁸ A double boiler, even!

²⁹ Not to mention the ability to get through the leftovers

³⁰ Permitted, if there’s outdoor seating

³¹ Not surprisingly, there’s some great deals on hotel rooms if you’re stuck needing one.

³² Hotels appear to still permitted to run their restaurants provided they don’t serve people who aren’t staying on the premises. Which, given how few people are actually staying there, feels pretty safe.

³³ I had to return the rental car, or I would have stayed put for longer. I did stop by the Grianán of Aileach on the drive, a 1,500 year old stone fort. The site is ancient — it’s possibly noted by Ptolemy on his map of Ireland — and if the site ended up being inexplicably closed because of COVID-19 at least I set eyes on the thing, which is more than Ptolemy ever did.

³⁴ Total passengers: 3

³⁵ At least not for Western countries. Korea still looks pretty great, and I’ve heard good things about Japan and China.