The road over the Healy Pass hasn’t changed much since I was a child. The surface is smoother now, but the weight of the hills, the curve of the climb, the anticipation as you near the top - all of that remains.
As I came over the top this time, a half-forgotten memory surfaced: a battered old Ford Cortina straining up the incline, my mother muttering a prayer that we’d make it. Most times we did. Not always.
The Beara Peninsula has its own kind of gravity. You can feel the earth under your boots and the sky pressing down on you. The weather here rolls in off the Atlantic, full of salt and rain, and rises when it hits the Caha mountains.
I remember the Gaelic football, the local religion. It meant everything in rural communities hollowed by emigration, scrambling to gather enough young people to field a team each weekend. High-altitude pitches where rushes grew thick in the grass and sheep droppings scattered across the field. Sometimes the moisture-laden air would dampen the acoustics, and it sounded like kicking a heavy bag instead of a football. Other times, voices bounced off the hills like you were calling to someone miles away.
In this video, I came up the south side from Adrigole. The view from the top, on a clear day, is stunning. Glanmore Lake and the valley stretched wide below. But today wasn’t one of those days. Rain blurred the lens, soaked the road, dulled the colours. I’ll go back when the skies are clear.