Ulster (Northern Ireland and Ireland) -- Description and travel
Golf, which for the present is even a greater attraction than
sport, does not extend into the wilder parts of the country; though,
indeed, twenty years ago Port Salon and Rosapenna, where the most
famous links are, were outlandish enough: it is golf that has brought
them well into the pale of civilization--over-civilization, some of us
grumble, when we see smart frocks among the sandhills by Downings Bay.
Yet anyone who goes to Rosapenna, and has curiosity enough to enquire,
can learn the whole history of a great industry's development within
a score of years--for Downings is the centre of a most prosperous
herring fishery, and the girls and boys from that outlying region are
fetched at high wages to do skilled work in curing herring wherever
herring are being caught, as far south as Dublin Bay, and very likely
beyond.
And if I had any choice of all the fine places in Ireland to spend
a holiday in, I would choose the one which makes the centre of Mr.
Williams's sketch from Rosapenna--the low headland of Ards, jutting
into Sheephaven, with wood of oak, and fir, and beech, and ash, so
exquisitely blended, spread for a covering over ground so beautifully
diversified; with little bays and creeks of blue water over the
cleanest and tawniest sand running up into the heart of wooded or
heathery slopes. Nowhere else is the scent of the brine so clean and
strong across the other pungencies of heath, and bog-myrtle, of oak,
and of bracken; nowhere else that I know does a perfect day give such
fulfilment of desire.
Rosapenna shore and the village of Carrigart are too much dominated
by the hotel and by foreign ways for my liking; but on the opposite
shore, where Portnablah gives a harbour (not safe, alas!) to the boats
of my friends, is the place of all my affections. This rocky little
townland is set thick with whitewashed cottages, and here it has been
an old custom for Irish folk from Derry and Letterkenny to come to
the salt water and find homely quarters. The "bathers", as they are
called, have of late years grown to be a multitude: if you want rooms
in a farmhouse there you must bespeak them far in advance, and no
wonder. If my ghost haunts any place it will be there, where the white
road to Dunfanaghy (white, for this is a limestone tract), leaving the
wall of Ards demesne, rises to a crest with a few houses (filled with
bathers) on the right; and on your left is Sessiagh Lake, prosperously
stocked with trout, and watched over by an old herring fisher, still
able to pull a stout oar when the strong gale catches that high-lying
water, but for the most part happy to drift contentedly and spin yarns
about the men and the things and the fish that he has known. Quick
with his tongue, too, in a leisurely way. "I suppose people very
seldom die here," said a stranger, commenting on the healthiness of
the situation. "Never more nor once," said old Tom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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