On a rocky coastline on the Rinvyle Peninsula. The one lane road hugs the water here, undulating up and down over miniature headlands and by crescent pebble beaches. To the best of my first year college geology, it looks like uplifted shale forming the 30 foot high cliffs here, with sea thrift blooming and grassy meadows on top of the bluff cropped like a lawn by the sheep. The rocks poke through like the bones of the land.

There are three Whimbrel, large shorebirds with decurved beaks, that keep changing their minds about which rock they like the best. They give an aquatic, throaty sort of trill, uplifted at the end like a question. They're on their spring migration to the Arctic. This is a working coastline, and the debris of the workers is everywhere. There are lengths of rope and odd pieces of plastic and fragments of lobster traps littering the rocks and the beach. There's a curraugh turned upside down by the road, its black oiled canvas shiny against the grass. These boats have a kind of beak for a bow, sharply upturned for launching and landing in surf. A working farm is opposite across the road, there's the noise of hammers and power tools on metal inside a modern cinderblock and steel barn.

Two men are fishing, unsuccessfully, from the rocks. They have serious ocean-going rods. Their wives wait in the car.

Most of the houses are modern, one sporting with a satellite dish, but for one massive wreck of a tower castle. I count four distinct stories on it, a corner is ripped away and you can see all the arches and former roofs between floors. A flock of black rooks fly about the top, which would complete the menacing feel of the place except for the line of laundry flapping on the ground floor.

We are staying at a B&B that's going to get so well known that you'll never get in without 12 weeks advance notice. It's the Waterloo House in Clifden: http://www.joyces-waterloo.com/. Fantastic service, great rooms and view, and we feel part of the family. P.K. talks about the national stereotypes, including what he thinks of Americans. "They think they can drive from Derry to Kerry in a day, cause back home they can. They come in here all shagged from the traffic and the narrow roads. They think they can see all of Ireland in 10 days. I tell them, just watch the video, you'll see more of Ireland that way than the way you're doing it. You have to slow down if you're going to meet the people here, which is the point." These are people that, when they travel to Seattle, hang out in places like North Bend and Greenwater for days at a time, and never get to the Space Needle.

March 2000