Stepping into the limelight

“Galway is discovered, fully explored and oversold. Mayo has allowed her little sister the limelight long enough”


Country Sights and Sounds
John Shelley

When a perennial interest in the Grand Tour dropped a copy of Frank O’Connor’s book, Leinster, Munster and Connacht’, into my hand, I turned quite naturally and with some enthusiasm to the chapter on Mayo but was disappointed to find it thin and sparsely populated. Worse, O’Connor asserts, as if he had such authority, that ‘Mayo is, in every sense of the word, an extension of Galway’. I believe the man was never here, and that if he was, then he entered this corner of the country somewhere east of Cong, where there is indeed little dissimilitude between one county and another.
From the Galway side, Mayo begins just to the north of Leenane, and is introduced by some of the most striking coastal scenery in all the land. It is not just the well-known north side of Killary that makes this such a notable area. However, to enjoy the best of what is on offer, one must disembark from the car and walk.
This is real walking, too, walking that requires a measure of determination and courage not found in those who rely solely on the motor car to take them from one place to another. The engineer who built this road chose to follow the easiest route, avoiding any remotely difficult or potentially hazardous obstacles, and in doing so deprived the traveller of a journey even more wonderful than it currently is. And so, unless we are prepared to work on our own initiative and explore the true nature of the land, we might remain under the sorry misapprehension that there is little about Mayo that is truly unique.
If one chooses to potter about the smattering of small towns that have somehow sprung from the too-thin soil, disappointment should come as no surprise. I must offer profuse apologies to the residents of Claremorris, Ballina and Swinford, if I should offend them in offering the view of an outsider and say that any of these could be situated within the boundaries of another and not look out of place, and further state that Castlebar could indeed be Galway, and quaint Ballinrobe almost anywhere either inside or outside of the country.
Westport has its own charm, but also has its failing in that it is a manufactured town, built by a Frenchman for an Englishman, and lacks the feeling of natural evolvement that most towns enjoy. Westport is in fact something of a conundrum. Too far from the open sea to be a proper fishing port, it nevertheless sustained a viable herring fishery in the 18th and 19th centuries, until such time as the shoals went to swim elsewhere. As a market town it is poorly situated, although wool and butter merchants used it well in the absence of any place better.
It was established, I suspect, purely on the strength of the scenic location, a location that offered easy access to some of the finest wild sports to be found in the entire country. The local woodlands still offer world-class shooting for woodcock, and the high ground to the north and south once held an abundance of grouse. Salmon and sea trout thronged in the river pools, awaiting the attentions of the privileged angler, should he tire of chasing deer over the hills and hares over the bog. What more could a country gentleman possibly desire? Anthony Browne could hardly have chosen anywhere else to build his town, for no other location so perfectly demands such a place. It is, indeed, the heart of Mayo.
When it comes to mountains, those in the Connemara are jolly, thronged with tourist walkers who gaze in rapture upon what is only a poor copy of the north Mayo hills, where a sense of history still prevails. As any geologist knows, those Galway hills have haemorrhaged from Mayo, rather than leaked into it. Where are the oldest rocks in Connacht? Where the highest (and steepest) sea cliffs? Where the greatest trout, the prettiest streams, and, pulsing through every shade and shadow, where the friendliest people?
Galway is discovered, fully explored and oversold. Mayo has allowed her little sister the limelight long enough. Different times are falling upon us. In the days of the Grand Tour, the north-west was sorely overlooked. Even today, too many tourists turn back on themselves before they get the chance to indulge in the Mayo experience. So Mayo Tourism – no more the shy girl waiting to be approached!