It is two years since we have eaten at Manning’s Emporium but yet again we have come away thinking we should go more often. We went there for lunch today following a walk through the hills in the small forest park up the valley from Gougane Barra.

We decided on the walk following a wet evening when a combination of high tide and storm wind had driven an angry sea high up the bay so the water was high enough to wash over the top of the pier and bring waves crashing against the pier patch and throw seaweed onto the grass. As best we could tell the weather forecast for today was not much better so a walk through some hills seemed like the best option for the day.

It is ten years since we have made the drive to Gougane Barra. It is only 45 minutes away but the place seemed a whole world away from the Cottage and its raging sea. We spent five minutes walking around the lake and then took the car into the forest trail. There were a number of walks laid and as were under some time constraints we decided on what appeared to be a good short walk. Unfortunately we had not looked at the estimated length of walk and so were disappointed to find ourselves back where we had started ten minutes later. Fortified we set out on a more ambitious walk that was described as strenuous.

This took us on a steep climb through woods and past waterfalls until we got close to the lip of the valley and could look clear across to the other side. It was then a steep clamber back down to the car and we were done in just over an hour.

On the drive back we stopped in Ballylickey (which the adolescent son took great enjoyment in mispronouncing) and managed to find ourselves somewhere to park outside Manning’s Emporium and nine of us the squeezed round a narrow table. We ate plates of ham and cheese, crab claws in chilli, beetroot tortilla, confit of duck legs, molten croquets and a beef and beetroot pie washed down with Fino sherry.

I came away with a bag of pappardelle, some smoked salmon and a bottle of the Fino sherry. Apart from the sherry I am fairly sure I came away with the same things last time we were there with a view to making the same thing for supper.

We stopped off in Bantry to pick up some feta cheese and cream and cherry tomatoes and I cooked them with the pappardelle and smoked salmon.

We spoke very briefly about food as we ate and I was asked if there was a recipe that I had made up for myself. I pointed out that I hadn’t followed any recipe to make what we were eating. There was no doubt a recipe for it but all I had done was fry some garlic in oil, add the halved cherry tomatoes and allowed them heat through and then stirred in the cream and brought it to a slow boil before adding the smoked salmon, which had been cut into thin strips, and the crumbled feta and some chopped parsley and tarragon. All the while the pappardelle had been cooking.

Once the pappardelle was done, it was drained and put in a dish and the creamy salmon sauce was poured on top.

The only shame was that I had forgotten to put the sherry in the fridge so we had to put off having a glass of that until another day.

The evening became most exciting whenever one of the questions took on a religious theme as this provided our famous neighbour, the host of the Pub Quiz, with an opportunity to pit the wits of the two members of the clergy who were sat with their teams to the front – Protestant one side, Catholic the other. They were each required to put up their hand if they knew the answer to the question be it the name of the shortest of the four gospels or the number of chapters to be found in the New Testament.

The evening took on such a consistency that looking back the following day it was difficult to recall who had won.

It is no great secret that the famous neighbour is Graham Norton and this was the third year running he has hosted the Ahakista Pub Quiz and the second time we have attended. Calling it a pub quiz does not quite do the occasion justice. There were more than three hundred contestants squeezed round small tables in a large marquee on the flat land to the back of Arundel’s Pub. Each table was tastefully decorated with a pineapple and a note with suggested uses.

Facilities had been laid on including posh loos from Cork although walking past it was difficult to explain the picture of David Niven on the wall in the ladies. I never made it to the gents and am still trying to guess what pictures they had on the wall in there.

Our host was resplendent in a sky blue jacket and a mysteriously bandaged finger. The colour of the jacket was the nearest thing to blue sky that we have had over the weekend. There was a steady queue of eager contestants to have their photo taken with him and as someone said the following day – he never had a smile off his face.

The quiz started at about 8.30 and went on for about three hours. We were disadvantaged from the start in being over twenty and coming from Birkenhead, although it was reassuring when our host confessed that even he could not remember the name of the winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Needless to say we did not win the competition – we did not even come in the top three but then we also failed to make into the bottom three. We were just somewhere in the middle.

We celebrated by losing our pineapple in The Tin Pub.

The following day was a grey limpid day with the sun trying to find its way out from behind a thin veil of cloud. We took out the boat late in the afternoon to go fishing for mackerel more in hope than any great expectation.

We spent a fruitless 45 minutes drifting off the point near Owen Island and did not even manage to get a snagged line. This was despite the bright new feathers I had rigged that morning. The only excitement was a visit from a seal and the brief glimpse of a fin through the water a few hundred yards away.

There was little wind and I had heard that mackerel had been caught off Carberry Island so we decided to motor out there to see if we could get some better luck the other side of the bay.

Halfway across we saw another fin break the surface of the water a few hundred yards in front of the boat. It broke again as we got closer and then the whole animal hauled itself out of the water and suddenly we were slowly motoring through a school of about twenty porpoises (or maybe they were dolphins – there was some debate over the issue). They were a dark blue black on top with pale underbellies and a clearly defined snout. We slowed to a dead crawl and could see them barrelling under the boat and then breaking through the water in front of us. One of them smacked its snout in the water just next to the boat as if it was telling us to move away. And then as suddenly as we had found ourselves amongst them they were gone and we were back by ourselves in the middle of the bay with a weak sun trying to break through the thin veil of grey cloud above us.

Ten minutes later we were amongst them again and they stayed with the boat for three or for minutes before moving up down the bay.

We stopped the boat there for a while and tried fishing again but still with no luck.

As a final throw at it we motored back to Owen Island and threw in the lines for the final time that afternoon. The sea was calm now with there being almost no wind. Almost immediately all calm was shattered as mackerel were caught on two lines and the third line tangled around the second and having caught just the four fish over the previous week we suddenly had six good sized ones in the green bucket. The lines went in again and after fifteen minutes we had another dozen mackerel.

We took them back to shore and I gutted them down on the slipway. We gave some of them away and we ate four of them that evening.

I cooked them in a hot oven with a splash of olive oil, garlic and lemon juice. They weren’t too big and the small fillets pulled away easily from the bones. They were very good and I was left to thinking what had been more exciting the three hours of the quiz night with Graham Norton or the five minutes or so spent in the company of school of porpoises (or dolphins) out in the bay. I suppose there is no real answer to that except to say Ahakista is probably the only place in the world you might experience both things in the space of twenty four hours.