A Year and a Day
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This post, and the one that will follow it on Thursday, are two more that were not in the original schedule. They were inspired by a recent weekend in Dingle where we were celebrating a wedding. As sometimes happens, memories from previous visits to Dingle, the first being in the 1960s were triggered.
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The Beetle was white. It held my parents, three children and a fortnight’s luggage, with the AA Gazetteer open on my mother’s knee. The summer of 1966, or 1967. I was seven or eight, and we were going to Dingle.
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The holiday began in January, at the kitchen table. My mother deciding what sites we would visit, writing detailed notes in her tiny precise handwriting explaining the history, the myths and legends.
My father worked from a map; the Bord Fáilte Guest Book Guide decided where we would stay, and where we would eat.
Each day had a destination, and each destination was a B&B, booked by post in February; arrival around six; dinner in the house. A picnic at lunch. The letters were written because long distance phone calls were only for emergencies such as serious illness or death.
Some years my father drove part of the route with us over the Whit weekend and came home with amendments.
We left the day after the schools closed.
There was reading to be done before we went. Every place had a story, and we were expected to know the basics of it.
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I do not remember the drive down. Possibly a picnic near Tarbert; power stations were a fascination of my father. We may have stopped a night on the way; Tralee maybe.
I remember the morning up Conor Pass: the car edging up the ledge, and the drop on my side, all the way down to Coomeanycorraun. I remember the river at Abhainn an Ghleanna, which from the back seat was a torrent, and my father taking it at a crawl. The tension electric. When safely through we stopped, climbed out and peered over the wall on the left-hand side of the road marveling at how close we had come to death.
I remember the B&B in Ballydavid, and the pudding after dinner, made from seaweed. I remember it as dilisk. It was more likely carrageen. The taste has stayed the same either way.
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The next morning we stood above Ventry.
My mother told it from the Gazetteer and from memory. Dáire Donn, the King of the World, had come with a fleet out of France, Spain, Greece, India, Norway and the Saxon lands to take Ireland, the one country he did not hold. Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fianna met him on the strand below, with the Tuatha Dé Danann on their side. The battle lasted a year and a day. It ended in single combat, and Dáire Donn died on the sand. It was my mother explained, when Ireland established its sovereignty in the world.
The story is old. A scribe set it down in the fifteenth century as Cath Finntrágha, the Battle of Ventry. Kuno Meyer, a German who gave his working life to Irish, translated it in 1885.
My mother had the better version, brooking no doubt, as only a stern secondary school teacher who had studied classics and Celtic history can.
I heard and retained every word of it.
But, I was looking at and more interested in the beach.
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There were children on it. Swimming, splashing in the shallows, running at the waves and back up the sand. Families behind windbreaks with picnics. Small rings of stones containing fires; Kelly-kettles with steam; the smell of burnt sausages. I wanted to be down there more than I have wanted most things since.
The beach was not on the schedule. If we finished early there might be an hour at the end of the day, but that did not happen often.
Some days we finished early and managed to get ahead of ourselves, which required phone calls in coin boxes to amend the schedule.
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It was not neglect. My parents were giving us the country they knew, as much of the island as a Beetle and a fortnight could reach, over several years. They worked at it over several winters.
They taught me well.
I could not see then what it was for. Preparation, perhaps. I am still not sure.
I have been back to the peninsula more times than I can count, for the walking and climbing, the nature, the music, the food, the sea. I went my own way each time, and never with a Gazetteer.
The first trip came with me every time. I left it where it was: a boy sulking at a viewpoint, a little embarrassing, fixed. I did not look at it for decades.
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Two weekends ago we were in Dingle for a wedding. The daughter of close friends from Kerry.
We had watched her grow up on a different beach, Barley Cove in West Cork. There were clouds, the weather was co-operating and the ceremony was outdoors. Just as they were about to exchange their vows there was a downpour, we moved inside. Ten minutes later we were out again; steam rising from the flagstones.
The evening ran into the night and the night ran on.
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The following morning the party restarted on Ventry Beach; swimming and saunas. It was another glorious day. I had checked the story before we set out for Ventry. I had most of it right, give or take an armada.
We stopped above the strand, about where the Beetle had stopped. There were children in the shallows. The fleet was in the bay.
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We went down. There was not a cloud in the sky; the water was still; the glare of the sun off the water was blinding.
We swam, and sat in the sauna, swam again, sat in the sauna again until early afternoon. The wedding party had a date in a pub in Dingle, company, food, music which would run late.
We were settled in Curran’s by six, which in 1966 or 1967 was when the B&B expected us.
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26th October 2026
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© 2026 Paul Duggan
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104