Archive News
Wild West could be eco-tourism ‘goldmine’
Date Published: 14-Jun-2012
The West is sitting on a goldmine,” says walker, writer and environmental biologist Kevin Corcoran whose latest edition of West of Ireland Walks has just been published by Dublin’s O’Brien Press.
The wilderness that lies west of Galway City has the potential to generate revenue through eco tourism, according to a man who spends his life enjoying the great outdoors in all weather condition.
West of Ireland Walks gives details on 14 walks in the West, which range from the easy to the challenging. These include Mount Gable, Killary Harbour and the Maumturk Mountains in Galway, Cong in Mayo and Black Head in Clare.
The guide is designed to introduce people to walking in the West of Ireland’s wilderness in as safe a manner as possible, explains the author, who has had a long-time ‘grá’ for Galway.
“I’ve been travelling up to the West of Ireland all my life and it’s like my second home,” says Kevin, who lives in Cork and whose other books in the series include West Cork Walks and Kerry Walks.
His passion for the West started as a teenager “when we’d go to Doolin and the Burren. Gradually we expanded our horizons, when we saw mountains further away and wanted to explore them”.
Kevin spent a period in Galway 20 years ago when he was researching the first edition of this book, which was published in 1993.
“I eventually knew Galway better than I knew Cork City and it was a beautiful city – the heart of it still is,” he says.
And for him, the walks to the west of Galway city are unsurpassable.
“In a city like Cork you go west, but Galway is even greater for wilderness.”
In his books, which Kevin has also illustrated, he set out to explain about nature in a way that hadn’t been done before. History and politics traditionally had been well documented, but the flora and fauna of Ireland’s wild areas weren’t as extensively covered, he points out.
“Sharing that information is what makes walking more enjoyable,” he says of his work. And the more people know about their environment when walking, the more they will enjoy it.
Kevin describes walking in Ireland’s wild places as “an all-encompassing experience – physical, mental, personal and emotional”, but says this country has an advantage because most of our mountains are accessible to people who are reasonably fit.
Hillwalking in Ireland is not a complicated pastime, he says.
“There are no serious mountains that are beyond the ability of fit people.”
While there are several challenging walks in the book, he has also included a few simple trails on the basis that, if people are able to cope with them, they could advance to the more difficult ones, right up to the ones where “you really need to know what you are doing”.
The simple ones are ideal for families and are designed “to make it possible for strangers or people with small kids to start off”.
Each of the three books in the series has taken a year and a half of intensive work to complete.
“That would be seven days a week, researching, climbing and going back checking things. And I’d ask my friends to be guinea pigs, letting them off on their own to see how they got on with the books.”
Not surprisingly, given the amount of work he puts into researching, illustrating and writing the books, Kevin says the reward for him is not just about money.
“It’s about getting out and getting an opportunity to share the knowledge. If you are into the environment, the more people you get into it, the more people will protect it. The more people who are interested, the less environmental problems we will have.”
Regular walkers don’t leave a mess behind them, he says, and that’s because they are aware of the value of the environment. And if there’s one thing the West of Ireland environment has plenty of, it’s rain! But Kevin doesn’t buy into the belief that there’s too much rain in the West.
“You go off hiking all over the world in all kinds of weather. Other places get rain too. You just get the gear for it. I remember when I started off, it was really hard to get good gear and good boots. Now the gear is really effective.”
Many of his friends and colleagues who are regular hillwalkers spend up of €1,000 a year on the pastime, he says, and that kind of spend is important for tourism.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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