Pam the Jam's Piccalilli

 

I used to get Haywards Piccalilli but find it really difficult to get anymore - tastes change. I now make this a few times a year and it is superb. It is a complete faff to make and it won't be ready for more than a month. But I love it and I will be the God of sandwiches.

There are lots of recipes out there but I like the one from Pam the Jam in River Cottage. Remember to cut the vegetables into tiny pieces - about the size of a baby finger nail.



Inredients

1kg washed, peeled vegetables –  cauliflower; green beans; cucumbers; carrots; small silver-skinned onions or shallots; peppers. You can substitute if you like. BTW - I scoop the watery 'core' out of the centre of the cucumber as it gets a bit mushy.

50g fine salt

30g cornflour

10g ground turmeric

10g English mustard powder

15g yellow mustard seeds

1 tsp crushed cumin seeds

1 tsp crushed coriander seeds

600ml cider vinegar

150g granulated sugar

50g honey

Place chopped vegetables in a large bowl and sprinkle with the salt. Mix well, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave in a cool place for 24 hours, then rinse the veg with ice-cold water and drain thoroughly.

Blend the cornflour, turmeric, mustard powder, mustard seeds, cumin and coriander to a smooth paste with a little of the vinegar. Put the rest of the vinegar into a saucepan with the sugar and honey and bring to the boil.

Pour a little of the hot vinegar over the blended spice paste, stir well and return to the pan. Bring gently to the boil. Boil for 3–4 minutes to allow the spices to release their flavours into the thickening sauce.

Remove the pan from the heat and carefully fold the well-drained vegetables into the hot, spicy sauce. Pack the pickle into warm, sterilised jars and seal immediately with vinegar-proof lids. Leave (if you can) for 4–6 weeks before opening. Use within a year.

Oranges make a landscape look more beautiful.

Each day I would walk North along the old Roman roadways, the stone, humpbacked bridges, and forest paths that have brought pilgrims from Porto for thousands of years. Limestone flags have been worn down by legions of feet before me. The road has changed little. Through the vineyards and eucalyptus forests, through the farmyards and bucolic peace, through the North of Portugal in the water-colour, wintry, sunshine. The land was devoid of young people – they have left for Brazil and the hope of prosperity – they have left a land melancholy, bordering on Gothic. Black, arthritic, vines twist behind ornate, wrought iron, rusting gates. Decaying protection for valuables long gone.

In the evening I would eat baked pike or tench or the ubiquitous salt cod bacalao, drinking bottles of Super Bock and cold sweet glasses of Porto Brancho. I would be packed and on the road before seven each morning and be moving well before the grey light of dawn showed my first yellow arrow.

There is a Portuguese word, Saudade, for which there is no direct translation but it broadly means the love that remains after someone has gone. This was melancholia with knobs on. I am tempted to tell Portugal to stop socializing with other depressed countries.

After five days on the road I walked down the hill in Valenca in Portugal, across the big metal Eiffel
Bridge and into Tui in Galician Spain. Bridges had become an important aspect of my journey and they resonated with the historic importance they would once have had. Crossing a bridge normally meant a change in landscape, a change of people and this time a change in language. And, as bridges over water are at the lowest point in the vicinity, the road that leads out is invariably uphill.

And so I walked into Spain in early December and Spain was beautiful in the tourist free winter. There is a man roasting chestnuts and the smoky, wintry smell is carried along with the strains of a busker playing a set of Galician pipes. Evocatively named towns like Pontevedra, Redondela and Padron signpost good times ahead. There is a big copper, bas relief, commemorating members of the Quinta Brigada slain in Tui and, skateboarding past the symbols of their recent history, tanned boys in white t shirts leap in a timeless dance before pretty young girls. 

Incongruously, there are orange trees along the street, I bend to pick a fallen fruit from the grass verge. I peel it, going down the street and marvel at the different plump sections packed together in one orange nation. I steal off Galicia and taste it – it is both bitter and sweet and irrepressibly fresh.

For the day that's in it . . .

 

Hot Cross Buns made today for Spy Wednesday. Are we the only country to call it Spy Wednesday? I'm not even sure why we call it that. Anyway HCB's are traditionally made at this time of the year - normally Ash Wednesday, Spy Wednesday and Good Friday. I'm not at all religious but there is a Faustian element that brings me back to childhood.

There are lots of recipes out there, this one has evolved for me.

Ingredients

500g strong bread flour

1 tsp salt

75g caster sugar

300ml milk 

50g butter, soft

7g sachet fast-action or easy-blend yeast

1 egg , beaten

100g mixed fruit

zest 1/2 orange

1 apple , peeled grated

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Make a dough with everything but the fruit. Cover in bowl  with cling film and allow to double in size - An hour-ish. Then stretch and fold a few times, Repeat this a few times then cover in the fridge overnight.

2. The following morning add the fruit and knead in well. Some bits may fall out but stick with it. Separate into about 15 pieces and do your best to get them into tight 'rounds. Place them on a line baking tray and cover to allow to double.

3. Crosses - 75g flour and some water. In a small bowl mix flour and water until you have a paste like a thickish paint. Pipe crosses.

4. Bake at 200 degrees for less than 20 minutes.

5. Make a stock syrup (100g sugar, 50g water, boiled and cooled). Paint this on the buns as soon as they come out of the oven. Enjoy.

Y Blew

 1967 was the Summer of Love.  It was born and nurtured in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco but spread nationwide and internationally as the hot summer progressed.  Originally it was a musical phenomenon but it quickly grew to include drug use, anti-war movements and a general free-love counter-culture.  It expanded and it spread but music was always at its core.

That summer Bob Dylan released Blonde on Blonde, the first Rock double album, blending blues, country, rock and folk into a unique dense sound.  Hendrix released Are You Experienced and The Velvet Underground released an eponymous album and although they only sold 10,000 copies, it was said that everyone who bought it formed a band.

Meanwhile, in London, The Beatles released ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’.  It came out on the first of June and remained at Number One in the charts, for the rest of the year.  Probably one of the greatest albums ever, it is seen by many as a cultural turning point.

The world was changing, culture and attitudes were changing, and music was at the core.

 

In Aberystwyth, South Wales, Maldwyn Pate decided to give music one more go.  The previous summer he had formed a band with some fellow students but their first public performance in Aberafan saw them booed off stage. They were known as the Branches and their musical adventure was short-lived. In 1967 Pate found a new friend in Dafydd Evans and they formed a band called the Hairs, or Y Blew in Welsh.

1960s music in the Welsh language was still largely influenced by male voice choirs, chapel and traditional singing.  Pate and Evans set out to change all that and to create the first Welsh speaking pop group. They were both native speakers but their motive wasn’t political or educational. They simply wanted to sing in their own language and they thought there was a market for it.

There was a mixed response from those who felt Welsh children wanted to listen to pop music so they might as well do it in Welsh versus the musical purists who felt electronic instruments and amplification had no place in Welsh music.  Pate and Evans and their new band cared for neither view and just wanted to play music.

Pate was the wordsmith and he penned a few of his own songs but the majority of their set was translations of popular hits. The band would start by shouting ‘Mae eisiau i bobol sgrechian mewn Cymraeg sâl - We need to get people to scream in bad Welsh’, before going straight into a Welsh cover of ‘Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’. They played ‘os ydych chi'n mynd i San Francisco’, some songs by Cream and some by Jimi Hendrix and timeless classics of their own like “Come with me to see the fairies and hear the town clock strike thirteen”.

Y Blew met with spectacular local success that summer and completed three tours of South Wales.  There were accusations of a lack of ambition and a fear of crossing the A470, to hotspots like Barmouth and Wrexham.  But Pate and Evans said they were earning their stripes.

Later that summer, on the 8^th of August, Y Blew played their first serious gig at the National  Eisteddfod which was held that year in Bala.  The Eisteddfod was a big cultural gathering celebrating Welsh literature, music and performance. Dafydd Evans had tried for months to arrange a gig but had failed, then almost at the last minute they were offered a slot at a session that would be held at the Literature Tent. It was uncertain how Y Blew would be received but to many peoples surprise it was met with some praise as well as criticism.

On Saturday 30th September, they went into the BBC studios in Swansea to record a single. Most of Y Blew’s repertoire were translations of current chart records, but ‘Maes B’, the A side of the single, was an original Welsh composition by Dave Williams and Maldwyn Pate that they had composed only the day before the recording.

This is how Dafydd describes the recording session at Swansea:

            ‘We went through the new song once. It was so new that we had to read the chords from scraps of paper in front of us. To a great extent, then, the song was an improvisation on the part of everyone. We then went through the song once more and that was the recording.’

            ‘The second side was quickly recorded as we had a dance in Aber’ and we had to be back by eight o’clock.’

The record was released in early November and sold shockingly few copies.  Their one air play on the BBC was described by the DJ as ‘A bit of a gimmick record’.

In his 1968 diary for 1st January Dafydd wrote, ‘It’s obvious by the way, that Y Blew are now over. We’ve decided to sell all the equipment. The van is on the road outside. There’s a ticket on it as the tax has expired. I wonder how much the fine will be…’

The Summer of Love was over for Y Blew, their moment gone, the village clock had struck thirteen.

 

 

Beware the ides of March.

 I wrote a piece two years ago for Sunday Miscellany about the first Black man I saw playing rugby for England. Chris Oti came out of nowhere, scored three tries and decimated a confidant Ireland in Twickenham.

That was the first day the crowd sang 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot' in his honour and to see 65,000 White men in sheepskin coats sing a slavery anthem to the only Black guy there was quite something.

It was a good story and nicely written (ahem), but 12 hours before broadcast (9.30 Saturday night) I got an email saying the producer lost her nerve and had taken out one single line. The line was 'He was the first Black man I saw playing rugby for England'. 

The entire point of the story was lost and all over the country people must have been staring at the radio saying 'what the fuck was that about?'

Here is a link to the Sunday Miscellany

Ghraybeh - Arabic Cookies

I was writing a story recently based in Libya and I did a lot of research into the food eaten there. One of the ubiquitous Arabic cookies is the Ghraybeh (Pronounced “gry-bey,” but it is said like you have a moth in your throat. Ghraybeh means “to swoon” or “faint” in Arabic so make what you will from that.)

They are pretty much a variety of shortbread with the addition of pistachios or apricot jam. I made the jam version and sprinked some chopped pistacios over.

They are the simplest thing on earth to make and have more of an adult taste than a kids taste.

Ingredients 

1 cup butter softened

1 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon rose water

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

Apricot jam for topping

Preheat the oven to 350°F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl of a stand mixer or using an electric hand mixer, cream together the softened butter and powdered sugar. Add the rose water and beat until dissolved.

Add the flour, one cup at a time, and use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to mix until well combined. You may want to use your hands because the dough can feel crumbly. Chill the dough in the fridge for one hour.

Divide the dough into 1 ½ tablespoon-sized balls using a spring-loaded scoop or your hands. Makes 20-24 balls.

Place the balls on the prepared baking sheet, arranging them so they’re about 2 inches apart.

Use your thumb to make an indent in the center of the cookie and add about half a teaspoon of the jam inside.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until cookies are firm, slightly expanded and the bottoms are lightly golden.

Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

 

• ▢

Strictly Cuba

It is hard to convey just how fascinating Cuba is. You are expecting the Caribbean heat and the salsa beat, the big cigars and murals of Che, icy mojitos and Ernest Hemingway. That’s a gimme. You love to see the pristine 1955 Chevy Bel Air in its original art-deco green, the boot steps of conquistadors echoing down narrow streets, transport you back through the centuries. It is an astonishing place to see, but then, you knew that before you came.

A few days later though, and the mask starts to drop and you start to see the reality behind the make-up. Here are a few facts you did not know. The monthly salary is $25 (if you are a doctor or a bin-man). Cuba has 0% illiteracy and the highest percentage of doctors in the world. You cannot buy Coca Cola and a pint of milk is given to school children every day but is virtually unavailable to anyone else. There is no private internet here and mobile phones are close to useless. Boats and marinas are guarded by razor wire and soldiers as Miami is only 90 miles north and the temptation is huge. There are no shops you will recognise and no international restaurant chains. Don’t even think of a McDonalds.

The politics are complicated here. Those whose family members have ‘escaped’ to America are seen, at some level, to be traitors. And yet, if those escapees send back $100 a month to their family in Havana, these traitors are now quite wealthy. This causes division. If you work in the tourist industry you will get tipped in dollars. A good tour guide will earn more in tips in a day than an engineer earns in a month. This causes division. There is a split currency, where a local pays 5 pesos for a beer and you pay 5 dollars for the same beer. There are 100 pesos to the dollar. This causes division.

It was a relief to get out of Havana, get a bit of space to process all we have seen. We are on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline when we are approached by a group of soldiers. They are a rag-tag bunch of teenagers with ill-fitting uniforms, but the Kalashnikovs casually over the shoulder guarantee they have our attention.  “Where are you going?” one asks with a heavy accent. “West,” I said “To Pinar del Rio”. 

Transport in Cuba is limited. There are very few cars on the road, in fact, fewer than in 1940’s Great Britain. There is very little public transport and to have a half empty car is considered sinful. It is against the law for a state owned vehicle to pass a hitch-hiker. And so we end up with 4 armed child-soldiers accompanying us on our trip west. You can smell the oil on the guns, the socks and the old cigar smoke. You can smell what they had for lunch. It is quite a heady mix and, in the tropical midday heat, it proves too much for my wife and she gets quite sick out the passengers window. The remainder of the journey is very unpleasant.

We arrive in Aguas Claras, a state run resort in the tobacco mountains, that promises mud baths, saunas, massage and relaxation. Our bags are taken by a young man, Rodrigo, and he guarantees fantastic times as he brings us to our cabin in the woods. Rodrigo is the barman as well that night and also the chef, although, as he explains, the lorry has not come from Havana this week so the only option on the menu is pork and beans, Maybe chicken next week?

The following morning, before the sulphur baths, we are required to see the doctor to ensure we are fit enough. Like a low budget play, Dr. Rodrigo enters complete with this morning’s costume of a white coat, stethoscope and broad smile. He tells us disrobe for our physical and just as I start to object I realise my wife is already togging off in the corner. And all to lie in a clammy bath off eggy, sewagey, mud.

That evening we had booked Tango lessons up in the bandstand but my wife still had a tummy bug and was confined to bunk. Undeterred, I went alone (our hut was stinking), although when I say alone, I mean no one apart from me and the instructor turned up.  I was a bit freaked out, but Rodrigo was committed and not at all uncomfortable with a bit of man-on-man dancin’.   As the lesson progressed an electric storm broke low over the Caribbean beneath us. There was fork lightning, religious in its theatre, and thunder like the roll of an immense and remote drum beating the charge of the gale. Palm trees swayed and gyrated giving background drama as we danced La Cumparsita.  

Was it the worst place I have been to? No, of course not, I’ve been to Birmingham. I’ve been to Lanzarote. But it was challenging and bewildering and truly foreign. I also think that, with a bit of practice, Rodrigo and I could have really gone places.

Getting There: You can fly Dublin to Havana for a little more than €600 return with Air France. Go from Cork via Paris for a little more.

Don’t Forget To Pack : Outside of Havana food can be scarce and scary. You will always get bread so pack some tins of tuna/salmon/crab and when times get tough at least you can have a sandwich you recognise. Bring a good guide book and some maps. Phones are useless. Credit Cards are rarely accepted. There are a few ATMs but carry cash. Remember cash? 

My Alternative : Trinidad & Tobago at the other end of the Caribbean archipelago has a similar unique atmosphere with a little less communism and a language you can understand.

¡Hasta la victoria siempre baby! 

A pink car-nation

Our Man in Havana

Last Tango in Cuba

Nether NetherLand

 Set the Mood ‘Tulip Mania’ was an economic frenzy in 17thC Holland that resulted in the world’s  first great financial bubble bursting. Think Bitcoin with flowers, notional values versus actual. All crazy, until you stand here in Keukenhof gardens amongst 7m tulips and then it doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous. There are 79 acres of bulb fields, tulip mosaics, pavilions and orangeries and every Spring they put on the most outrageous, colourful, camp performance that shakes away the winter blues and trumpets the rites of Spring. 

We have climbed to the top of a working windmill and, looking over the gardens, the landscape shimmies and dances like a Van Gogh painting. A spring weekend in the flower capital of the world is food and drink for the soul.

Guilty Pleasure There are 100 Royal flower providers that donate bulbs every year to keep the Keukenhof  stocked and, as you pass their displays, you can scan a code with your smart phone and order bulbs to be delivered to your home next week. Create your own pride flag of colour in the luxury of your own home. They can be expensive, but to hammer our financial metaphor, you are investing in futures.

Oh, and lest you think the only thing to do at Keukenhof is gawk at the tulips, I’d be remiss for not mentioning the excellent snacking possibilities, namely a plate of piping-hot poffertjes, mini pancakes made with buckwheat flour served with powdered sugar and a splash of Advocaat. Heavenly.

Insider Intel’ Just outside the main gates of the Keukenhof you can rent traditional Dutch bikes and  disappear for the afternoon into the flower farms and canal paths and dykes of South Haarlem. Three hours of healthy fun costs €15. If your budget is more fulsome you can cover the same ground in a ten minute helicopter ride costing €130. (vandam5001.cyclerent.com/ )

Glitches The Anne Frank House gets 3,500 visitors a day. The Rijksmuseum gets 6,000 a day. Keukenhof gets a whopping 26,000 a day. That is a lot of tourists and, with the age profile on the older side, nothing moves fast. Try to get there by 8 in the morning and down to the windmill before lunch and you will be ahead of the posse.  

Get me there Just 35 minutes from Schiphol Airport to Keukenhof on the 858 express coach. Flights from Cork/Dublin to Amsterdam €45 each way via aerlingus.com  

Top tip If you have had your fill of tourists it may be a bit of a schlep back to an expensive Amsterdam hotel. Instead head to Bloemendaal aan Zee, between Haarlem and Amsterdam, a stretch of sandy coastline with an especially vibrant local atmosphere. You can rent luxury beach huts, close to funky bars and restaurants, for half the price of a city hotel. (www.qurios.com/parks/park-bloemendaal-aan-zee )

The World is Amazing and Nobody is Happy

 

“We have tested and tasted too much, lover-

Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.

But here in the Advent-darkened room

Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea

Of penance will charm back the luxury

Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom

The knowledge we stole but could not use.”

Patrick Kavanagh, Advent

The last flight I took was from Dublin to Boston, about eighteen months ago. There was new, superfast, broadband on the plane so you could use your laptop or tablet throughout the flight without interruption. Such luxury. Somewhere over Nova Scotia the wifiWi-Fi hit some kind of a glitch and died for almost five minutes. The guy beside me was inconsolable.

“For God’s sake, just get it right. It’s not that bleedin’ difficult.” That was the moment.

That was the moment the world seemed so ridiculous. We were hurtling across the sky at 500mph, strapped to an armchair watching TV shows, and complaining that the signal we were getting from outer space wasn’t fast enough. For less than a week’s wages we were taking five hours to cross the Atlantic, a journey that would have taken our forebears three weeks. And many of them wouldn’t have made it. We were drinking Chablis at 35,000 feet and acting like we were on the Dunbrody. “We had tested and tasted too much.”

So, the pandemic hit. And God or Allah or Vishnu said “Oi, grab a hold of yourself, and stop being complete dicks.” We took the penance meted out and pretended to enjoy our 5K walks each day. But we didn’t. It was the Atkins Diet of travel. The protein was boring and we missed the carb’s of luxury. A year later and we have spiritually (if not physically) pared back and are preparing to go again. Will we savour each delicate morsel of travel, each fragment of culture, or will we head back to the breakfast buffet of bland cuisine?

There is a geeky law called Amara's Law that states "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run" and I think that the lockdown will be the travel equivalent. We might overestimate the impact of lockdown in the short run but underestimate it in the long run. There is a widely held belief that there is a huge pent-up demand for this ‘revenge travel’, a squadron of Ryanair jets, braced to return us to Santa Ponsa and Maspalomas. And, lest you think I am being snooty, there will be queues for Venice and Florence too.  There may well be a hedonistic re-run of the Roaring Twenties this Autumn but that will pass and what is more interesting is what will remain.

National Geographic is a bit woolly in it’s post-Covid predicitions. They speak of ‘sustainability’ and ‘inclusion’ without any real examples. The Lonely Planet is suggesting more Road Trips and a cabal of countries that will allow vaccinated travel only. Forbes, a bit more business-like and statistical, predicts “eight in ten travellers do not intend to resume usual traveling habits once the pandemic is over. What’s more, 41% of people who took part in a global survey expect to travel much less.” But hey, what do all these big companies know – you want to know what I predict. Don’t you? Don’t you? Well here we go.

• Airports are finished. Long queues, invasive security and an anxious jog to find Gate 52 in the middle of a shopping centre are just so last century. I will happily pay twice the price to enjoy the journey. Otherwise, I really like trains.

• Crowds are finished. So what if the Uffizi has works by da Vinci, Caravaggio and  Michelangelo. The price of visiting is too high. You will find me sipping a Corretto in the Mercato Centrale with the cheese makers of Tuscany.

• Bucket List travel will be big.  People will save for the big adventures and happily trade four packet holidays for a trip to the Galapagos.

• The journey is the destination. Road trips, train journeys and boat trips will all be big. An overnight train ride to Lisbon sounds like a plan. A drive to Copenhagen sounds fantastic.

• There will be a renewed role for specialised travel consultants to advise, plan and book specialist holidays.

Whatever the changes that may come post-pandemic, there is an opportunity to take a closer look at the costs and benefits of travel and tourism both on a personal and a societal level. I’m not saying it will be entirely possible to “charm back the luxury of a child's soul”, to return to innocence but maybe, just maybe, we can return to Doom, the knowledge we stole but could not use.

Bandon 2.0

President George W. Bush is often quoted as having said, “The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.” In 1986 in Cork we had a word, and that word was chancer. My plan was simple, to produce a calendar. The calendar would show the huge impact Cork had had on the rest of the world, particularly the USA, by illustrating foreign towns with Cork names. Each month would have two pictures, one of the original Cork town and the second of the town it inspired far away. For example, a photograph of Baltimore West Cork on one side, and one of Maryland on the other.

In those pre-internet days I went to the library and found a Gazetteer and set to work, searching from Adrigole to Youghal. I finalised my list and wrote to each of the towns asking for a photograph of their main street and any information on the town’s origins. 

It was almost a month before my first parcel arrived from Bantry, North Dakota, from a woman wildly excited to be corresponding with a 16 year old boy in Cork. I got packages of caps and t-shirts and sweat-shirts and almanacs from people I never met but who clearly loved Ireland. And, from that moment, I loved America too.

35 years later and I find myself in Gary’s Diner, and, in Bandon Oregon, ‘there ain’t no finer diner’. As our American friends would say “I am super hungry” having spent the day hiking the coastal path from Waves Song beach, over Black Rock and down into Bandon Jetty Park. The walk was beautiful, less than 5 miles, but it took me most of the day. Through windswept beaches, wild clifftops and small artists’ collectives, it was a “best of”, the edited version, of the Pacific coast. In the late winter and early spring there is a migration of tens of thousands of whales passing right by this trail but today I had to do with a family of sea-lions, some black tail deer and a dozen brown pelicans soaring over the surf on Whiskey Run Beach.

Pacific Oregon is one of America’s secret gems.  It is, at once, an unspoilt wilderness and an uber-cool artistic haven. This is where Twin Peaks was filmed, this is Portlandia, the counter-culture coffee south of Seattle. It’s a little bit hipster, a little bit Cedar Cove. Young men have impressive beards and silver nose rings and older men smell vaguely of pot. There are lobster fishermen and cranberry farmers and painted wooden beach houses. There are art galleries and espresso bars and pop-up theatres. Tonight in Tony’s Bait Shop down on the boardwalk there is a poetry reading and chowder evening. It’s that kind of a place and I like it. 

You can eat well here, and for small money. Last night I had a smoked steelhead trout sandwich with a clam chowder, for a little more than €10. Local fish is everywhere, lobster, clams, crabs and oysters, harvested from the Pacific into soups and salads and tacos. There are vegan restaurants and pescatarian restaurants and restaurants where you can eat your own body weight in rib-eye steak.

Bandon is both a perfect harbour town and a great base for hiking or cycling. Two national wildlife refuges, Oregon Islands and Bandon Marsh, are within the town limits, and a drive along Beach Loop Road, just southwest of downtown, affords mesmerizing views of awesome coastal rock formations, especially around Coquille Point and Face Rock. A little further out are surfing beaches and marine reserves and a coast littered with boulders, monoliths, and haystack rocks that seem to have been strewn by some giant hand. And because you are always facing west, sunsets are stunning.

Bandon is indeed an unexpected delight, but what makes the visit unforgettable is the people you meet and the welcome they give. They are kind and interested and intrigued by the accent but, when you tell them you live 10 miles from the original Bandon, it is like you are a blood relative. I have become the ambassador for Bandon and, while I try to ‘big up’ the original town, now that I have seen what Bandon 2.0 has to offer, it’s hard.

It’s our last day today in Bandon. We were rock pooling on Bullards beach this morning before climbing up to see Coquille River Lighthouse at the mouth of the harbour. The air is briny and fresh and the ocean stretches forever and we are eating fresh crab sandwiches from Wilsons market. Yes it’s Americana, it’s picket fences and lobster rolls, it’s plaid shirts and flag bandanas, it’s John Prine on the car radio. But I love it and, as my new friends would say, ‘I’m super-glad I came’. 

***

Getting There: Fly KLM or Aer Lingus to Southwest Oregon Regional Airport for about €450 each way. Get into the spirit of the West by renting a Pick-up truck, Budget do a Ford Ranger for $160 a week. Or a Jeep Wrangler for $200 a week.

Staying There : Slightly inland from Bandon is a mesmerizing little tepee in a meadow beside the Coquille River. Two queen beds sit simplistically within the authentic tent, or you could doze off by the fire pit while gazing at the bright burning stars. Guests get to shower outside, and even the private three-sided toilet platform faces toward the spanning views, turning even the most unpleasant things beautiful moments. High season only $100 a night.

Don’t Forget To Pack : Bring a jacket, the climate here is on a par with the original Bandon!

Rock and Rollers, Bandon Beach.

Your own lookout. Coquille River Lighthouse

A lobster roll, and make it snappy.

 

Hipsters, drinking coffee long before it was cool.

Loitering within tent.

πr2 , where r is 5, in P17

 

I was born and reared a city boy and, up to recently, spent little time in the country. Three years ago we moved, lock, stock and two screaming bairns, to the heart of the country. We live at the end of a farm track, off a country lane, off the old road to Kinsale, seven kilometres from the town.

Ezra Pound’s mistress, Olga Rudge, used to say ‘I was brought up on mean street, and the further down you go the meaner it gets. I lived in the last house on the left.’ I live in the bucolic equivalent. The further down the lane, the more country it gets and I live in the last house on the left.

So, a few months ago, I sat down with my compass and map and drew my five kilometre lockdown circle. The circle I can play in for the foreseeable future. My school maths calculates the area to be πr², where r is five, or seventy nine square kilometres. It sounds like an awful lot, and yet, did I mention bucolic?

So I started walking and, although the town of Kinsale is not even a tangent to my circle, I discovered I live in the gourmet capital of the world. In the summer and autumn there is a buffet of apples, blackberries and wild rosehips. There are mushrooms and wild garlic, and baby nettles for soup. There are elderflowers for wine, damsons for jam and sloes for gin to be picked after the first frost. And if killing is your game there are pheasant to be roasted, hares to be jugged and ducks to be a-la-oranged.

But, all year round, you have the honesty boxes. Farmers who take great pride in what they produce and sell at the farm gate.

According to Google Maps, it is 2.7km from me to Horizon Farm but, If you are not a crow, it is more than twice that. But the walk is great, following farm tracks that once linked village to village and winding roads following landscape and land ownership. There is a stream to navigate that is in spate as I cross, a stream that ran red for three days with Irish blood after the battle of Kinsale. A vertical hill slows you as you reach Puckane but the view is spectacular, overlooking a plain where Don Juan Del Aquilla and the two Hughs  confronted the old enemy with the intention of banishing them from Ireland for once and for all.  This was no little skirmish on the edge of Europe.  This was full on, heavy weight, eyeball to eyeball stuff with all of Europe on the brink of war. And in the cold mid-winter, now, the ghosts are never far away.

Horizon Farm sells eggs. It sells jam sometimes, salad sometimes and Puddings at Christmas. But it is mostly eggs. Free range eggs from the hens you can see running around the farm. Some brown eggs some white, some big, some small, and all laid out on square trays like cobblestones on an old farmyard. Taste these once and you will never again eat a battery egg. A couple of eggs lightly poached on buttered toast is simplicity and perfection itself.

Heading south from Horizon Farm over the hill of Puckane and down through another battle site to the loamy soil of Ballymona and Kielys potato farm. A sign says ‘British Queens for Sale’ and I pray they get the geographical irony. Again, a shed stands at the farm gate but his one is tall and narrow like a sentry hut, filled to the rafters with 5kg bags of potatoes.

The French rely on the word Terroir to convey a sense of place and environment but it is more than that. It includes culture and history and tradition. The same applies here and it is difficult to convey the beautiful simplicity of freshly boiled baby potatoes from the farm around the corner.

We head west now and across the river to Horsehill Farm outside Ballinadee. Again, Horsehill sells a variety of fresh vegetables and fruit in season but it is the raw milk in bottles that I have come for. The milk changes quite a lot with the seasons and the creamy yellow of the pasture fed summer fades to white with the silage diet of winter. Coffee and wine manufacturers all use the concept of single estate to sell. There is no mixing of products, no homogenisation, everything is produced here.

I’m back home now and looking at my lockdown map again. The broad river Bandon cuts through the land from North West to South East and looking at it I think, if I could learn to fish, I might never leave here.