Wild Romantic Way – Frank McNally on Christy Moore, Mad Sweeney, and extreme Irish tourism

It was never a plan, exactly. But as of last week, I have now ticked off four of the five destinations on one of the world’s lesser-known tourism bucket-lists. I refer to the itinerary detailed in the intro of Christy Moore’s 1984 classic, Lisdoonvarna: “How’s it going there everybody/From Cork, New York, Dundalk, Gortahork, and Glenamaddy?”

Gortahork had somehow escaped me all these years until a stopover there the night before taking a ferry to Tory Island over the August holiday weekend.

That leaves only Glenamaddy, the small town in East Galway. Which, as widely advertised by the late Big Tom, has no fewer than four roads leading to it. Strange to say, I’ve never found reason to take even one of them. But I’ll get there yet.

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‘The trial of the century’ – Frank McNally on a notorious child murder of 100 years ago

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Liberal outlook — Brian Maye on Sheelagh Murnaghan, an indomitable presence in NI politics

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Change of tune – Alison Healy on not being a songbird

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‘Worst morning of my life’ – Alison Healy on tricky tourists

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Brief as my stay in Gortahork was, it included an accidental encounter with a man on a far greater itinerary. As I exited Marian Sweeney’s B&B after breakfast that morning, I met one Gerry O’Boyle, who rather than a full Irish, had just polished off the 5k Parkrun in Falcarragh.

That, however, was a mere sprint compared with a project he began some six or seven years ago.

Once or twice a month since, in large instalments, he has been running the entire Irish coastline, or as close as he can get to it.

A Galwegian by birth, O’Boyle now lives in Bangor, Co Down. And the whole thing began as a fundraiser for the local Clifton Special School there, where students include his youngest son Brian (19).

The Falcarragh 5K wasn’t even part of it. Having started in Newry, proceeding in an anti-clockwise direction with the sea always to his right, O’Boyle finished Ulster long ago. In fact, he has already written a book about that, modestly titled Ulster Coastal Run. He has now seen off most of Connacht too and another book is imminent.

Although I met him in Donegal, his coastal run had by then reached Galway City, a journey that, thanks to Ireland’s great wealth of inlets, islands, and other detours, had taken over 2,000 miles, or 3,234 km.

He was about to complete the Galway to Kinvara leg – that was last week – and to finish Connacht in September before a winter break.

O’Boyle is now also raising funds for a Galway special school, Rosedale.

If anyone feels like donating, or indeed just sharing the pain of his runs anywhere, they can do so via cliftoncoastalrun.blogspot.com.

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I hesitate to compare Gerry O’Boyle with the mythological Mad King Sweeney –no relation to the Gortahork B & B owner either, by the way – who undertook a famous tour of Ireland in the seventh century. Even so, as I was reminded at a packed National Concert Hall (NCH) on Tuesday, there are striking parallels between their respective sagas.

As part of its Summer Lunchtime series, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra was presenting Neil Martin’s song cycle Sweeney, based on the Gaelic epic Buile Shuibhne and more particularly on Seamus Heaney’s modern translation, Sweeney Astray.

All versions agree that the king’s tribulations began at the Battle of Mag Rath in 637. Which is generally assumed to have happened at modern-day Moira, also in Co Down, although some historians think it was nearer Newry, where O’Boyle’s epic run began.

Sweeney was no mere runner, of course. Transformed into a bird by a saint’s curse, he spent seven years flying around Ireland – and bits of Scotland and England – instead.

He landed in Antrim, Donegal, Derry, Cavan, Sligo, Roscommon, Meath, and Clare, among other places, before arriving at his last destination, Carlow, where a spear permanently grounded him. The NCH concert about his ordeal was a sold-out triumph. But mark my words, there’ll be an ultra-marathon based on the route yet.

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At the bar of Tory Island’s “An Club” one night, I fell into conversation with yet another man embarked on an exhaustive tour of Ireland. His was neither an extreme athletic event nor the result of a spell cast by a holy man. Or maybe it was a bit of both.

His name was Gottfried and he was from Chemnitz in eastern Germany. Back during communism, he was a uranium miner there. After unification, he became an electrician. But now retired, he is pursuing a love affair with Ireland, the seeds of which were sown – as for many Germans of his age – by Heinrich Böll’s 1957 book Irish Journal.

That was mainly set on Achill Island. Gottfried, though, loves Irish islands in general. I first mistook his T-shirt as that of a veteran rock roadie on some European concert tour. On closer inspection, it listed his month-long holiday to a dozen islands off Galway, Mayo, and Donegal.

I forgot to ask the former uranium miner if he had been to Oppenheimer yet. Probably not.

But having seen out the Cold War, meanwhile, the half-life of Böll’s diary continues.