Finding Fionnuala

Finding Fionnuala

29 August 2025, Friday

As we said a fond farewell to our lovely little troupe of animals, our beautiful but sun-scorched garden, our unusually clean and tidy old farmhouse, and the village that we had come to know as home more so than any other place that either of us had ever lived in, Priyatelkata and I couldn’t wait to climb aboard the shiny red bus that would whizz us off away from there and through the Stara Planina range of mountains to Sofia. This was a journey that would mark the first leg of our expedition to a place far beyond, where the weather wouldn’t be so painfully hot and where we wouldn’t have to stand outside watering plants for two hours every evening while aerial bloodsuckers gorged upon our tender flesh. It was exciting to be going away, especially as our destination sat on the opposite edge of our continent. Other continents were available but our favourite had always been the one on which we had existed for most of our lives, and which contained all of the things listed above in its section labelled Bulgaria.

We’d lost track of the number of times we’d visited our capital city but we’d always found it an exciting place to explore on foot with its grand squares and bustling boulevards, fascinating back streets awash with life’s eccentricities, quirky boutiques and galleries, and lazy pavement cafés perfect for whiling away an hour or so with death-black coffee, freshly baked baklava and a constant flow of passers-by to watch, judge and comment upon. The city’s architecture spans the years that have elapsed from Roman civilisation, through five centuries of Ottoman occupation and a relatively brief period of Marxist indoctrination, up to the current era of nobody really knowing what the hell’s going on or who’s in charge. The majority of the buildings we found impressive as even the more sombre or dowdy specimens had been tarted up with skilfully painted and very colourful street art. We also noticed how very twenty-first century some of the Sofia people appeared to be, none of whom were engaged in conversations about growing aubergines or treating mastitis in lactating goats, so we already felt that we were a long way from home.

Such an overwhelming treat of Balkan mystery and style followed by the filling of our bellies with succulent spicy victuals would ensure us a good night’s sleep. As regular customers we already knew that the Taj Mahal near to the building that houses the Sofia National Opera and Ballet, and St Alexander Nevski Orthodox Cathedral was by far the best of the three Indian restaurants that Bulgaria has to offer. An ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra apparently shares its name, which just goes to show how far the glowing reputation of our eastern eatery had spread.

We were about to embark upon an adventure to find secluded beaches, quaint little fishing harbours, spectacular cliffs, remote lighthouses, terrific shipwrecks, crab sandwiches, sticks of rock and kiss-me-quick hats. Various guidebooks, websites and other reliable sources of information in the form of Irish friends had told me that Ballymastocker Strand, located only an oyster shell’s throw from where we would be spending the majority of our time, was once voted the second most beautiful beach in the world by readers of the Observer newspaper. We were eager to get there to throw our socks and caution to the wind.  How strange it seemed then that we were staying a night in an apartment in the Zhenski Pazar (Женски Пазар, meaning ‘Women’s Market’) quarter of the city. It was clean and comfortable and almost as salubrious as our cats’ accommodation at home in Malki Chiflik, but nowhere near as spacious and more than 500 kilometres from the nearest stretch of coastline.

30 August 2025, Saturday

I couldn't be arsed recounting the tale of all the routine faffing about at both ends of our flight. I don’t want to be reminded of it should I ever read this again in the future, and nobody finds that sort of thing interesting anyway, and €5 was an outrageous amount to have to pay for a cup of weak non-Balkan coffee, but at least that took my mind off the fact that I’d struggled to hang on to my trousers when a member of the Sofia airport security staff made me remove my belt. It’s always the same woman. I think she has the eye for me. She said it was because of 9/11, which I thought was the worst chat up line I’d ever heard.

Our departure being delayed by one-hour gave us time to pause for thought and realise that Ryanair was a palindrome, in a phonetic sort of way. As we sat in the aerodrome discussing palindromes, we considered the possibility that the route our aircraft would follow might be an orthodrome, and that we were showing symptoms of non-voluntary repetition syndrome. Fortunately, Priyatelkata knew a doctor in Drôme, a town in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of south eastern France, who would be able to help us if our condition worsened.

As soon as all that flying about in the air nonsense was done and dusted it became apparent to us how grand it was to be back in Ireland. Hertz at Dublin airport provided us with a Fiat Panda, which we immediately nicknamed   Fionnuala the Fiat because Fionnuala is an Irish feminine name meaning ‘white shoulder’ and the car was white. The name (without the Fiat bit) is historically linked to the Irish mythological tale of the Children of Lir, where Fionnuala was transformed into a swan and cursed to wander Ireland for 900 years. We’d only booked the car for two weeks so we hoped that none of that would happen to us, but we checked the travel insurance small print anyway.

With everything in Ireland being closed at such a late hour apart from the pubs, we were relieved to discover that the late night Londis shop in the village of Collon was able to provide us with two traditional Irish microwave salmon tagliatelles.

Our pre-booked lodgings at Rathgillen Farm in the village of Nobber salved our tormented travellers’ weary minds, but we wished we'd arrived earlier to enjoy the County Meath surroundings and the refurbished old metal cabin accommodation which included a greatly appreciated kettle and a super comfy bed. A pint of Guinness would have been the cherry on the tagliatelle but a nice hot cup of Barry’s tea proved to be an acceptable alternative. One of the world’s most underrated natural phenomena is the fact that both Guinness and tea are only drinkable in Ireland. People in places like Lagos, Baltimore (the American one) and Yorkshire might tell you different but they’d be lying.

Ireland is almost as much home for us as Bulgaria is. We're always very happy to be in either of the two but getting from one to the other is always such a palaver. I’ve always felt that such a trip would have been enough to raise strong language from even Macha Mong Ruad (the beautiful High Queen of Ireland in the fourth century BCE with her gorgeous red hair and green velvet party frock) so it comes as no surprise that there’s no written record of her ever leaving the place despite her status as a sovereignty goddess and her riches. I could only assume that she loved her tea too much to risk travelling away from home and being given an insipid cuppa to drink. Such was the tedium of some aspects of our journey that you might even have heard a few mutterings from mild-mannered old me during the day and a half leading up to the moment we rolled into Nobber. The first night after arrival on any trip, with the boots off and the feet up at Camp 1, is always met with a huge feeling of relief and satisfaction.

We had found those initial few hours in Éire to be perfect but to have said so possibly wouldn’t have meant so to the local people. From the days of my childhood until some unannounced date during the last ten or fifteen years, if anything was considered to be adequate or better it would be described as grand. But then, all of a sudden, Irish people took to replacing grand with perfect. Everything these days is perfect if it isn’t shoyte. Being an old stick-in-the-mud I always find it harder to say perfect in the wrong context than I do to pronounce most of the unpronounceable words in the Irish language. But I had to try.

31 August 2025, Sunday

Having been roused from our slumbers on the stroke of ages before daybreak by cattle lowing in the field adjacent to our bathroom, and crows performing Riverdance on the metal roof of our temporary abode, we took advantage of our wakefulness and made an early start on the journey towards the Atlantic. It goes without saying that as we motored along we sang along to the old Thomas Davis song, The West’s Asleep, that we played in the car by means of the most modern digital technology. Quite incredibly, Bulgarian Spotify worked in the middle of Ireland, and Bluetooth was the same word in English and Irish as it was back at home. I couldn’t help but reminisce over family holidays during childhood days and being forced to listen to RTÉ which was still called Radio Telefis Éireann then and only had one station that broadcast fish market prices, the Angelus bells and the times that Holy Mass would be said in every parish in the country. All this on a car radio fuelled by turf from the bog, and it went on round the clock too, bearing in mind that the clock started at 7:30 a.m. and shut down at 11:50 p.m. Outside of those hours it was firmly believed that only sinners and fornicators would be awake.

Meandering down country lanes at an hour when rabbits still felt safe to venture from hedgerows, we made a vow to return to the Rathgillen Cabin on our next Irish trip and perhaps explore the green grassy slopes of the Boyne to take in some of the many impressive features of a rich Neolithic and sectarian history that there were to choose from. Planning a future adventure at a point only three days into the current one was something that Priyatelkata and I had always excelled at. Every journey we’d ever made had been a rehearsal for the next one. But all that thinking made us hungry so we stopped to have a bit of breakfast at Dooley's in the middle of nowhere in the middle of County Meath. A photograph of local boy Patrick Kavanagh, together with the words of his poem The Beech Tree, on the wall beside our table made the rashers, eggs and soda bread all the more enjoyable. We said we’d have tea when asked what we’d like to drink with our breakfast, and the waitress replied, ‘Perfect!’

When I was a kid living in the North of Ireland, on day trips to Donegal we could always tell when we’d crossed over the border into Éire by the poor condition of the roads. Today, as we drove through County Monaghan and into Tyrone in the North, the situation was completely the opposite to how it had been in the 1960s. However, we didn’t complain as the huge potholes and the road surfaces that varied across almost the whole spectrum on the road surface chart from grade twelve right over to grade four reminded us of home.  We didn't care much for County Tyrone though the imported Chinese-made Loyalist paramilitary group flags flying from lamp posts were of a much superior quality than the homemade jobs had been back in the dark days of the Troubles. Tyrone’s villages seemed altogether neglected but it was nice to drive through the Derry countryside with the Sperrin Mountains rising to the east of us, re-crossing back into European Ireland near Omagh.

Beyond the busy town of Letterkenny (Irish: Leitir Ceanainn, meaning ‘hillside of the O'Cannons’) it was an absolute joy to travel up the scenic western shore of Lough Swilly and to eventually arrive at the musty rustic cottage of our dreams near Portsalon (Irish: Port an tSalainn, meaning ‘Salt Port’).

Squally rain, excitement and exhaustion messed up our plan for an evening stroll round the local lough but we were well and truly in Ireland so we broke open a box of Barry’s teabags to celebrate and said ‘Feck it!’ because it’s quite acceptable to say the word feck in Ireland, but not to say top o’ the morning, Patty’s Day or Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

The Wild Atlantic Way (Irish: Slí an Atlantaigh Fhiáin) is a tourist trail that mostly follows Ireland’s Atlantic coast. During previous trips we’d already travelled and thoroughly enjoyed the giant’s share of the 2,500 km driving route that passes through nine counties and three provinces, stretching from County Donegal in the northwest to County Cork in the southwest of the country. Much of what we hadn’t previously seen lay in County Donegal, so we were looking forward to filling in a few gaps on our map.

Image:

The musty rustic cottage of our dreams near Portsalon. My own photograph.

Photographs:

The Donegal Dally

Click on the link for a glimpse of what was going on.

Part Two:

To the Lighthouse Café

Click on the link to read.