Monthly Archives: August 2012

Walking to Bantry Market

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Fifty years I ago I don’t think it would have been unusual to have walked to Bantry Market on a Friday. I didn’t quite walk the whole way from Ahakista but I did walk it from Durrus. Leo had to be picked up the airport at 10.30 and that needed the car which meant that we might have to give the market a miss that week. So I suggested that I could be dropped off in Durrus and I would walk to the market and there would be sufficient time for me to get there and get in the shopping and to be picked up by the car as it came back.
So I was dropped off around 9.00am by the bridge behind St James’ Church to start on the walk up the hill to Coomkeen. The rain was a constant persistent drizzle soaking into the pockets of my coat and down the back of my neck. Despite the grey rain and the wind I soon felt hot as the road started up on the gentle incline to the top of the hill.




The ditches on either side of the road were flush with water and the sound of it percolated the air. The only other sound was the birds in the hedges on either side, the angry disturbed song of the blackbird surprised off its perch, the twittering of wrens and gold crests.
The walking was for the most part easygoing and not too steep. I soon past over the line where there were green fields on either side and the ground turned rough and peaty occasionally breaking into a small oasis of green and trees where a turn in the road created a kink that allowed warmth and sufficient soil to gather so that more would grow other than heather and gorse.


The sides of the road were alive with montbretia and it spilt over the tarmac its bright orange flowers bright and clear amidst the drizzle



Two third of the way up I was distracted by signs for Durrus Cheese and failed to look at the map. It turns out that the farmhouse where they make the cheese is at the end of a cul de sac and I had to turn about and retrace my steps for quarter of a mile to get back to the main road.
Only one car passed me on the way up. The driver slowed down as I stood back to allow him to pass, rolled down his window and asked if I was okay. I reassured him that all was fine and that I did not in the least mind getting wet and that I was on my way to Bantry. He offered me a lift but having determined to walk I thanked him and said no.
At one point I was surprised by a sheep in the hedge. It was almost as frightened as I was by the noise that it made to get away from me and back into its field. Further on a ram with black horns blocked the road.  Only a few days before I had been told a story of a walker who found himself being charged down by a ram when he got between him and his ewes. This one paused for a few moments then ambled back off the track.



At the top the world was covered in grey. I have been there before and you can see the whole sweep of Bantry and Dunmannus Bays laid out in front on either side of the spine of the Sheep’s Head, but today they were all covered in cloud pressing down on the ground. There was no sound of water as it had nowhere to run down and all I could hear was the wind and air coming in off the sea.
The walk down was easier and should have been a gentle amble into Bantry. Part way down I came across six guilty looking bullocks that appeared to have just escaped from their field. They eyed me balefully as I approached and then as one turned to scramble around the loose gate they had just come from like so many school boys caught out of bounds.


At the bottom there was a choice of routes towards Bantry. The first took you on a road close the sea; the second was across country and took in a Holy Well and Mass Stone. I took the second option not knowing when I might be that way again.



I met the only person I would come across on the walk. I could see on the road ahead a horse standing quietly next to a tumbled down stone shed. As I got closer I could see the horse was tied to a cart on which there appeared to be a rusted gate. An old man come from behind the shed and put an ancient fork on to the cart. We both said good morning and I think that was the last we understood of each other. He must have been in his seventies, with a well-creased weather beaten face and very few teeth and eyes that were ringed with red. His words came in a confused jumble of sound as I told him I was on my way to Bantry having walked from Durrus. I think he said I had about two miles to go as he pointed over a nearby field. He probably thought I was mad. We wished each other good day.
The signs for the Sheep’s Head took me over the field he had pointed over.  The rain had turned the grass to thick mud, which, unless I was careful, came up over my boots. To avoid the mud I had to walk through tall sedge that soaked through my trousers. Some while back I had passed a Beware of the Bull sign and I eyed the fresh droppings and the hooves that obviously been churning the mud warily.


The Mass Stone was behind a newly painted grey gate and down a slippery steep staircase. As my feet skidded on the wet stones and visions of myself falling and cracking my head and being rescued by the farmer with no teeth.




The Mass Stone was crowned with a life size statue of the Virgin Mary and fresh flowers had been laid on the rocks amongst statues of the saints.
There was more thick mud before I made it to the main road into Bantry. It was then a mile long slog along the tarmac cars and lorries rushing past. Not surprisingly the walk had taken longer than expected, about 2 ½ hours. I paid back the man on the Gubbeen stall from the previous week when I had forgotten my money and bought more cheese, sausage and a 5Euro bag of haddock for lunch and supper that evening.



I made fish fingers with the haddock. Cutting the fish into slices about an inch thick. The breadcrumbs took a while to make, cutting up the stale bread in the tin, toasting it in a low oven for half an hour (whilst I went up to the pub for a pint), once is was crisp and hard grinding it down to a crumb in a bowl with a piece of wood, sieving it to make sure it was fine. I seasoned the breadcrumbs with smoked paprika, salt and pepper.
I then lined up three bowls, the first with flour, the second with two eggs lightly forked and the third with the breadcrumbs.  I then floured the slices of fish, dipped them in the egg and covered them with the breadcrumbs.  Once they were all done I heated an inch of sunflower oil in a pan until it made a pinch of the breadcrumbs sizzle and I fried them all off.

20 minutes and a kilo of shrimp

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If you have 20 minutes to spare and a bowl full of cooked shrimp in the fridge you could do worse than use that time to peel the shrimps and pot them with melted butter.
The shrimps had come from Tommy on Monday. The season for them has just started.  Over the weekend his boat had been criss-crossing Kitchen Cove laying the pots edging gently close to the rocks at low tide. Orange buoys now dot the water and the bottom of must be dense with the blacks pots and line.
The cove is fed by a number of streams that come down from the hills including Akakista stream that runs between Arundel’s Pub and the big house. The fresh water, particularly if there has been heavy rain, makes the shallow waters of the cove brackish and brown.  In August the waters warm up and create a bloom of the tiny organisms on which the shrimp feast and grow.
Tommy’s boat came in at around 3.00pm and I wandered down the pier to see what he had. He was putting four blacks trays of shrimp into the back of his van. He sold me a kilo for 10Euro shoveling them into a plastic shopping bag with his hands.  Plastic bags have become an important currency on the pier now that they have been banned. It is a good idea to keep one in your pocket so it is to hand if a fisherman comes in with boxes of something he is willing to sell.


I put the bag of shrimp on the side in the kitchen and took a metal pan down to the rock pools to fill it with salt water. This only took a few minutes to come to a rolling boil. I put the shrimp into the sieve and from that poured them into the pan of boiling water.



Some of them twitched to get away and fell onto either the oven or the floor and had to be picked up quickly and thrown into the pan.  Thirty seconds later they were done to subtle pink and I drained them in the same sieve they had just come from and left them to cool.



We had some that evening with homemade garlic mayonnaise sat round the table on Curly’s Corner the sun going down peeling off the hard shells to the small nibble of pink flesh underneath.
The next day most of the shrimps were still in their bowl in the fridge. Late in the afternoon there was a cool edge to the wind although the sun was still out. I took the bowl of shrimp outside and spent 20 minutes peeling them



Back in the kitchen I packed the peeled shrimp into two small glass bowls and melted a pat of butter in a small metal pan. I ground up half a teaspoon of coriander seeds with a clove of garlic, sea salt and a few shakes of smoked paprika all wetted with a drop out of a bottle Pernod and plenty of ground black pepper. This was all poured equally over the two bowls of shrimp and they were all put in the fridge to cool.



An hour or so later I made some toast with some of the old bread from the bread tin and smeared them with the potted shrimps, the butter melting into the hot toast.
We ate them around the fire on the beach

Lunch at Hackett’s

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Hackett’s is one of those pubs you walk into and you know that there will be an hour during the course of any given Saturday night that it will be the best bar in the world. The bar is tight with a door that opens out onto the Main Street in Schull. Three or four bar stools and behind those two tables with benches against the wall and on the wall pictures by whichever local artist they are helping to promote that summer.  Round the corner two other tables including one with a window that opens out to the back of the bar.



My eye was caught by the place years ago as we walked past and I saw the blackboard menu outside with a Gubbeen Bacon BLT marked clearly in white chalk. We didn’t go that year but I was determined we should do so.


It was the next year we went for the first time and sat at one the tables in the backroom. There was some complaining from the kids that they should be going here rather than fish and chips on the pier but the weather was grey and inside a pub was better.  I had the Gubbeen BLT and there was enough from the rest on the menu, particularly with the Red Soup and garlic bread to keep the kids happy.
Vaguely cool music came from the bar and we sat and I had a three pint lunch enjoying the very feel of the place, the black wood and the pictures on the wall and the taste of Gubbeen bacon.
We have not been back every year since but I do always try and pull the family in and there has been a slow acknowledgement that it is quite good.
We went back today although there was a squeal of protest and a demand that we should all be eating at the tapas place that has opened where Annie’s cake shop used to be. The squeals were eventually muffled with a promise that pudding would be got from Gwen’s Chocolates’.
We settled at the table by the window at the back of the bar and the kids squabbled over their order although most settled on a bowl of Red Soup and those that didn’t wished that they had. This year the BLT came in a wrap. I was slightly worried by this as I ordered it but it was very good. Three thick chunks of Gubbeen bacon with mayonnaise and tomato and a plateful of salad.  The kids even recognized some of the music that was playing.




There was a man at the bar with a 5 day stubble and ginger moustache finishing off another pint of lager. He asked me how I was and I said I was fine. He told me that he was happy but that he could talk about the serious stuff too about the Civil war and all but people did not want to hear about that. We agreed that we were both happy and he showed me how to dance to the slightly disco like music playing from the bar. I agreed that we were having a good holiday and he told be that he lived in Goleen. He wished me well as I took my pint back to the table.
As I sat down the barman put his head through the window to apologise for the man with a ginger moustache – he spent his day moving from pub to pub along the Main Street and no one could clear a bar faster with his Elvis impressions. I wished I had taken the time for a longer talk.




After lunch the kids bought lumps of chocolate from Gwen’s which has now expanded into a café across the street.
For supper I bought the remaining prawns from the fish shop and we walked down to look at the speedboats and nets by the pier.




That evening we went for a walk before supper up along the low hills that lead to the farmhouse where Curly O’Brien used to live. The weather was grey and spits of rain came in from the bay.


We ate the prawns listening to Shelby Lynne.


40 Mackerel

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Dan must have caught almost 40 mackerel yesterday.  We motored out on Montbretia having waited until late afternoon and given time for the grey clouds and squalls of rain to blow away. It was still windy and sea was bouncy as we passed the line of Owen Island and moved out to the middle of the bay.
We could see gannets circling the air a few hundred yards ahead of us, occasionally pulling up short and plummeting into the sea a fierce splash of white water before rising again. One of them passed over the boat and we could pick out the dirty yellow of its head and the black feathers of its angled wings tipping at the faint fluctuations and nuances of breeze. There were terns as well cresting the waves and white-horses.




The previous day we had been told that three porpoises had been seen in the bay following the other Drascombe Lugger but the sea was so rough we would be lucky to pick them out.
We had two lines with us. I had brought with me some black feathers and tied them to one of the orange lines that morning. I wasn’t sure that they would present the right flash of colour in the dark waters but they looked good. The other line was strung with six silver and pink plastic sheaves wrapped around each hook.




I took the black feathers and Dan took the imitation fish.  Once we stopped the engine the boat settled into the rhythm of the swell coming in off the sea and we threw our lines over the side.  The fish started biting almost as soon as the lines were in the water. I had one but Dan hauled in four.  He and Galen took to them with a heavy stick and the side of the boat was soon spattered with blood as they took the blow to the back of the head and were delivered in the bucket. My fish was too small to keep and went back over the side and the lines went back into the water.
Dan soon had another lineful and for 10 minutes or so it became difficult to keep up with the activity. The fish tumbling into the bottom of the boat, the smack of the stick and the bucket filling up with fish that still twitched and trembled.
Someone shouted that we were close to the rocks. The boat had drifted quickly and we were only twenty five yards off Owen Island.  So the lines were hauled in and the motor turned back on and we headed to where the terns and gannets owned the wind. The lines went out again and before his line had unravelled into the deep Dan was pulling it back again with another 6 fish on his hooks. 
We now had more than enough fish for supper so the motor went back on and we drove back through the sea, heading into the wind and the swell, trying to angle into the waves so we weren’t caught with too much swell.
The fish were not big.  There was only one that was about 12 inches and felt heavy in the hand. The others were about 9 – 10 inches long but the small ones often taste better.


Back at the Cottage I gutted then down on the beach. The gulls were not as insistent as they can sometimes be. Other fishermen had come in that afternoon and there had been a glut of guts and heads for them to feast on.  My hands were soon mired in their black blood. I kept there heads on to help them hold their shape on the barbecue.


I had to beg a lemon from behind the bar in Arundel’s whilst buying the evenings first pint of Murphy’s. I tried to explain that it was for the mackerel but the girl told me that she knew we were up to tequila slammers.


I put half the mackerel in a bowl in the fridge. The rest were cut with the gutting knife and left to rest for a while in the juice of the lemon and some paprika whilst we relit the barbecue.


They were delicious.  The skins blackened and charred but the meat was light and sweet underneath.  The smaller fish were better. The bigger fish can sometimes taste too much of mackerel the meat sitting heavy in the mouth. 



Listening to the easy Canadian folk of Doug Paisley.