(📩 Irish travel, lots of photos, 1000 words. A good cup of coffee…)

We all need a place of tranquility, a haven where we can take a retreat from a busy or even mad world. It may be a room in our house where we keep objects that mean something special to us. We may meditate there, or read books that have become special friends; perhaps even paint or write our blog…

Or it may be a place… Welcome to ours … Kinsale.

If we’re able to travel, we might like (and need) a week in the sun as winter grinds to its dreadful end through March… and often into April.

Last year, we managed a March week in the Canary Islands – Gran Canaria. That bit of sun did us the power of good, though the return journey’s walk through the car park at Leeds-Bradford Airport in the frozen darkness was an icy ordeal; and a reminder that, though the plane had taken off from Gran Canaria in ‘summer’, we were back in England in the middle of winter.

This year, we decided to forego the sun and revisit a place that became special to us over twenty years ago – the seaside town of Kinsale, on the south coast of Ireland, not far from Cobh (pronounced Cove), where the Titanic began its last and fateful voyage.

In the years that followed our first trip, it became at least an annual – and sometimes twice annual – trip to ‘calm the soul’, but we hadn’t been back for twelve years.

It was time to fix that…

We arranged to travel by car ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. Our first visit was to Waterford, also on the Irish south coast and covered here in last week’s post.

And then we’d make the two hour drive along the south coast to be reunited with our special place of tranquility: Kinsale.

That first wander through the uneven and winding streets felt like we’d never been away. We drank in the old faces, shops, bars and restaurants – not to mention a harbour full of boats. Few things had changed. Once more we took in the individuality of the small shops; the emphasis on Irish fabrics and designs, and of course, the many pubs and bars with a simple and welcoming approach to travellers.

Kinsale is a prosperous place, but not overly expensive. It boasts at least five well-known restaurants. We had eaten at three of these in previous visits.

Perhaps best of all is the quality of these restaurants. When we were first here, a small corner plot that had once been a fish shop, was booming under a new name: ‘The Fishy Fishy Cafe’ (now the Cosy Cafe, above).

Twenty years on, Fishy Fishy is internationally famous (yet has remained good value) and has moved to a location between the children’s park and the quayside.

As we were touring around several locations in Ireland, (see post on Waterford, here) we had only three nights in Kinsale; barely time to scratch the surface of what the place has to offer.

Kinsale is close to Cobh – pronounced ‘cove’ – from where Titanic departed on its ill-fated voyage across the Atlantic.

My wife and I discovered Kinsale on a chance ‘winter getaway’ break twenty ago. We read a review, packed a rucksack each, and drove to Manchester airport to board a cheap flight to Cork – Southern Ireland’s second city after Dublin.

Cork is well worth visiting. It’s southern Ireland’s second city, and bustles with life. If you go, make sure you walk the length of Oliver Plunkett Street, with its hundreds of individual shops – and the historic English Market – see below.

The harbour in Cork is a working place. To our knowledge, it’s not visitor oriented. The main shopping streets more than make up for that.

(Above/ Montage above: the many faces of Cork. The ornate and period roof belongs to the English Market, on which I will be doing a dedicated blog)

Our focus was on re-absorbing the peace and friendliness of Kinsale, but the day in Cork – via the bus – was well spent. I think I slept part of the way back…

(Above: lots of history. Generations of people – and cultures have loved Kinsale)

Did it make us peaceful? Yes. We had remade our contact with this special seaside town.

We didn’t want to leave – we never do. But our final two nights before getting the ferry back to Holyhead, were to be spent in Dalkey, just south of Dublin. Like many visitors, we had always driven through and on to somewhere else in Ireland. This would be our chance to sample a piece of Irish history that is busily reinventing itself as one of the Dublin metropolis’ favourite neighbours.

See next week’s post.

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©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an exciting journey of the soul guided by lessons, inner experience and outer companionship.

There are two blog streams:

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

http://www.suningemini.blog

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)