Nora Roberts's Travelogue of Ireland:
Gorteennaguppege—September 1, 2004
Overcast, but not raining this morning, and fairly warm as well. I join BW toward the end of his full Irish breakfast and have a bit of bacon and a cup of tea before we set out to see our land. It's been four years since we did the deal, four since we've seen it. We know it's not far from Tulla, on a lake in the area known as Gorteennaguppege--garden of the buttercups.
We could go to Ennis, and shoot out from there, but BW says that's the easy way, so we take tiny, winding roads and use the Clare map I have the devil of a time reading. We go wrong, and wrong again, but somehow manage to make it right. We see the ruin a a friary in Quinn, and decide we'll come back to it.
The roads, most of them we take, are no wider than most driveways, if that. And there's flashes of those orange flowers with what I see now isn't gay feather, but purple loosestrife. Just a gorgeous combination along the side of the roads, with red fuchsia dripping down.
The sun goes in and out, mostly in, and we come to Tulla, and begin to feel our way. Things begin to look familiar, and we recognize the sign for Cloondanagh Lough, and that's ours.
We turn up the road where we shook hands on the deal four years back, by the street of a nice little white house. Our gate's been replaced with a new one by the farmer we lease to, and I see horses, on the field nearest the lake.
We park a ways down where we can pull over a bit on the shoulder where our farmer had trimmed the hedgerows to nubs, and walk back. He's tied the gate with a rope, so we climb over. There are six horses grazing by the lake, and the water's calm and steely under layered clouds. There's someone far below, on another plot of land, fishing off a pier.
The ground is rough and uneven, thickly green, and there's evidence of the horses everywhere, so watch your step! The fields are crossed with lines of juniper and black raspberry, and one is bordered by an electric fence. It looks like this patch has been plowed and worked, and whatever was planted already harvested.
The horses are mildly interested in us, and meander over, but don't like to be touched. Even when I hold out my hand so they can see it empty, they shy back from being petted. Yet them come straight up, look right at me, even circle me for a while. Friendly, but cautious. And so pretty. Still there are more of them than me, and they outweigh me by considerable. So if they don't want to be petted, I won't try it.
We walk the land awhile, and it's so lovely rolling up from the water with its lines of shrubs sectioning the fields and the horses grazing lazy down near the lake.
When we go to leave, and climb over the gate again, a couple of the horses start up our way. It's obvious they think we're going to let them out, or maybe we've got a bucket of grain handy. We stand and watch them, are watched by them awhile, then one turns, gallops to the water, kicking up his hind legs high as if to say hell with you then.
It's been just wonderful to see and walk on the land again, and the horses were a bonus. I wonder what the farmer does with them. Rents them out for riding, breeds them, races them. Maybe someone can let us know.
We fumble back to way we fumbled there, and find Quinn and the friary again. They're doing some landscaping and road works just there, so there are men with jackhammers and picks who seem to be enlarging the curbs.
This friary was originally the castle of a de Clare, and the Irish sacked it. Then it eventually became a friary which was sacked by someone else. There's a burial ground outside it, and dead buried all through it with headstones marking them, and those long stones that lay right on the ground. Raised tombs as well.
It's a big structure and beautifully preserved. As we walk in we see a mound of gravel, grave-sized. There's an overseer, and BW asks him what's going on here. Well, he says, people keep dying, don't they?
So we walk around the recent dead and wander among the old.
We climb up narrow pie-wedge steps to little chambers and courtyard, and recognize the ledge and pitch that was the loo. The sun comes out while we're there to slant over grass and stone. The views from the slotted openings are gorgeous
Down below is an area with one raised tomb I took at first for an altar. But it's the grave of Hester O'Donnell, only daughter of McHenry, who died at 28, and lords it over an area fit for Buffy, the Vampire Slayer with rough little stone markers and dim light.
We toddle back in warm sun. The light's gleaming off the lake, and the golfers are out. There are big patches of blue overhead as we go in. I've picked one of those orange flowers to have on hand to ask someone to identify. Tom the porter has no clue, and the girls at reception are no better. But they ask me to wait just a moment, as John the porter will know.
Indeed he does. The minute I show him, he says it's a mumbreeshia. Which I've very likely spelled incorrectly. I'll look it up when we get home. But he's pleased I'm interested, and tells me it's wild here in Clare, and is indeed, as I suspected, a kind of lily. I tell him I've seen in it rivers here, and down in Kerry, and found it beautiful. We exchange words and smiles as gardeners do. Then it's up to have a drink in our room, relax and change for our scheduled swim and 90 minute massages.
The pool here is wonderful, warm and we have it to ourselves. A nice swim to work out the muscles cramped from the drive, then a few minutes in the Jacuzzi that's a tiled jut beside the pool.
Massage time. Ahhh. She asked if I wanted relaxed or deep tissue and I went for the gold. I think she worked most of the 90 minutes on my neck and shoulders, challenged by the rocks I carry there. I swear I haven't been this loose in five years.
Rain pours in, later than promised. We're lucky Tom the porter was dropping someone off in his little covered cart, so he hauls us back home.
Time to change for dinner, which we decide to have in the pub. Nothing too fancy tonight. We have a drink in the pub, then our simple dinner in front of the fire in the lounge just outside. We may go back down for music shortly.
It was a long, lovely day, and it looks like we'll sleep to the sound of rain.
Nora
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