Connemara Rain

During the recent hot spell I would, between a few leisurely lengths of our Hockneyesque pool, retreat through the sliding doors and return to my latest painting on rain and gloom. No better way to cool down. Well, there are some, but there’s only so much one’s allowed.

The road has risen from Killary Harbour behind us and cresting the pass the jagged profile of the Twelve Bens spreads along the horizon. We’re heading for Letterfrack and an assault on Diamond Hill, a standalone peak, or Marilyn, on the western edge of the Bens. We’re on a switchback road through the stark paradise of Connemara. It’s low noon in midwinter and the sky is striped with sudden storms. Raindrops spatter the widscreen and the radio plays.

Someone told me long ago, there’s a calm before the storm,

I know – it’s been coming for sometime.

When it’s over so they say, it will rain a sunny day,

I know – shining down like water.

This painting is acrylic on board, a harder surface than is usual for me. Which seems appropriate given its atmosphere. Off to our left is Lough Inagh. I stayed at the Lodge there over ten years ago, on a midweek course in Spring for watercolour painting. The few days, the fine tutelage and setting rekindled my enthusiasm for landscape painting. Most renowned landscape painter of Connemara would be Paul Henry. Belfast born in 1877, Henry lived in Achill for a decade up until 1919. His bleached landscapes have lodged in the collective view of how the west should look. He was colour blind, and lost his sight completely in 1945. He died at Sidmonton Square in Bray, in 1958.

Imagine the song on the stereo. The song that most sums up the feeling of rain, both positive and negative, was written in 1970 by John Fogerty, and included on the album Pendulum, released in December of that year. Fogerty was looking on the negative side, alluding to the growing disaffection within Creedence Clearwater Revival, despite enjoying success beyond their wildest dreams. But the lyrics and jangling guitar encourage a more consoling take on precipitation. There’s a peculiar exhaltation in sunshowers. Mind, our Connemara trip was midwinter, so the sun was slanting and cool, the rain sharp and hard. Beautiful though, within the bubble of a speeding car. 

Yesterday and days before, sun is hard and rain is cold, 

I know – been that way for all my time.

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain.

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain

coming down on a sunny day.

Winter on the Western Way

Last winter we visited Connemara, way out west. Yippee Yi O Ty Aye! We stayed in the Leenane Lodge on the shores of Killary Harbour. Killary, a rare fjord etched into the Connaught coast, is on the Wild Atlantic Way, a 2,600K road connecting Malin Head in Donegal with the Old Head of Kinsale in County Cork. Ireland’s Atlantic coast is truly spectacular and there are plenty of places to explore on foot with lakeland, dramatic cliffs and rugged mountains creating a paradise for the landscape lover. 

Right past our hotel door winds the Western Way. The Western Way is a long distance walking trail through Mayo and Galway. It starts up past Ballina and shimmies on down through the mountains of Mayo, through Newport and Westport, past the Leenane Lodge and on down to Oughterard, by the shores of Lough Corrib in Galway.

We picked up a part of it just west of Leenane on a cool, bright morning after a hearty Irish breakfast. The full route of this particular section skirts the northern slopes of the Maumturk Mountains, rising above Killary Harbour, then turning south through Glen Inagh with Lough Inagh and the Twelve Bens away to the west. It is thirty kilometres long, about six hours in all, but we’re only planning two hours or so.

The walk is along an old coach road so the climb is relatively easy, and very rewarding. M precedes me up the hill. Cresting it, the majestic beauty of the twelve Bens are sketched along the horizon, sweeping down to where Killary fjord makes for the Atlantic. Mweelrea, mightiest mountain in Mayo, presides over the northern shore.

We are on the threshold of paradise, but it turns out we don’t we don’t get much further than this. The sky around here is prone to vertiginous mood swings and a storm has sprung up over the Twelve Bens. We turn and hurry downhill, reaching the road as the first sprinkles of rain hit. We are laughing in the lobby as the storm sweeps over, and just as quickly passes, leaving behind the cool and sunny landscape of the morning.

I finished off this piece in the bloom of early Summer, back East in Dublin 4, sitting in the sunshine on the veranda of a bar at the corner of Shelbourne Road and Bath Avenue. This song came on the radio and I felt the singer was looking over my shoulder.  

My love, I’m in paradise whenever I’m with you

My time, we’ll be out whatever the weather

If it feels like paradise running through your bloody veins

You know it’s love heading your way!

The sung is Paradise by George Evra and taken from his 2018 album, Staying at Tamara’s. Coincidentally, again, I find he studied music at Bristol BIMM. I’m off to Bristol soon, and hope to revisit Bath. So, with connections abounding, what better lines to quote?