From that one point there was a story that was hundreds of millions of years old. Another sight told a sixth century tale. Here there are folk memories of great sadnesses. All around there is a living, pulsating sight.
We were walking Slí Sleibhe/the Mountain Path in Gougane Barra in a part of the Forest Park where the trees have been cleared. Starting from the highest carpark we walked up through conifer woods along a newly surfaced path, over new wooden bridges, by the course of a rushing mountain stream.
At its highest point the path runs between wood and bare mountain that was formed hundreds of millions of years ago.
The tailor Timothy Buckley told stories of secluded places in these hills where Mass was celebrated from the late 17th to the late 18th centuries. He also had tales of fast disappearing outlines of fields that are a ghostly memory of the Great Famine of the 1840s.
These mountains were worn down by several million years of ice, which also gouged out the horseshoe shaped valley. Now along the floor of the valley and climbing up its sides a rich, living cover of great trees.
After a descent the path levels. Watch carefully for a green track that runs straight ahead from the newly gravelled way.
If you miss the path you miss this spectacular view of Gougane Barra lake. It is said that the wooded peninsula in the middle of the lake was the hermitage of St Finbarr who 1400 years ago built a monastery that in time became the city of Cork.
Might that peninsula originally have been a man-made island joined to the mainland by a curving underwater path that guaranteed the seclusion and perhaps security of Finbarr’s monastery – or, perhaps, earlier inhabitants.
Dragging ourselves away we walked down to the park road, turned left and after a little while left the road on the right to join Sli na Laoi/the River Lee Path.
Now under tall conifers we walked upstream along these earliest stages of the stream that as a great river flows into the sea beyond Cork city.
After two hours we were back at the car. Just outside the forest park we visited Finbarr’s oratory on the lake. After that photo of the church the camera ran out of battery. A future visit will show photos of the stone head of a bishop over the door, of the fine stained glass representations of Finbarr and his contemporaries Saints Ita/Ide, Brendan, Colman, Fachtna, Eltin, Gobnait and of the 17th century re-creation of the hermitage.
– Frank Lewis
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