The Beara Way

The N71, after leaving Kenmare, crosses the Kenmare river and climbs up the slopes of the Caha Mountains, before passing through a tunnel hewn out of the solid rock, entering County Cork, and descending to Glengarriff. I have always had an odd feeling driving along it from Kenmare, although I had a friendlier attitude to it after I read Maura's Uncle John's acccount of how he and Maura's dad, Eugene, laboured building it.It never seemed to be a very friendly road, I suspect because there are not many dwellings along it, so unusual for an Irish country road.



Maura and I visited Kenmare recently and we drove out to visit John O'Sullivan, Big John, Katie's nephew, and his wife Mary, at Coolnagoppoge, which is off to the left as you drive up the N71. Afterwards I glanced at my Ordnance Survey map, and my conundrum was answered.

The road on which John and Mary live is quite busy: I think we met two little Post Office vans delivering mail, and a variety of other vehicles, including farm tractors, which was a little unnerving, since the road appeared never to have been graded and we were continually cresting little hills, wondering what we would meet coming the other way. There were lots of houses, the road did have a paved surface, and it was clearly a thriving community. The problem was that this community, and road was hundreds of years old, and progress had passed it by. The clue was in its name on the map: the Beara Way.

Donal O'Sullivan Beara travelled this way at the beginning of January, 1602 with his clan of a thousand people after his defeat by Queen Elizabeth's forces at his Castle of Dunboy. It must have been just a track where they crossed the Caha Mountains, since the road begins only when you reach the Esk Farm, where I met Mikey Mike Dan so many years ago; another of Maura's uncles. Others might feel they needed new roads, but the old ways are fine for the people of the Beara Way.