The Cliffs of Moher or less

The Cliffs of Moher are on Ireland’s west coast, where greener-than-green fields meet the fierce north Atlantic ocean.

Depending on whether you are consulting the local tour brochure, Lonely Planet or the helpful girl at the hotel’s heated pool, they are either  220 metres, 203 metres, or ‘feckin huge’. In close encounter, pool girl nails it.

I hate heights. Since I have had children, they panick me. My mother used to tell a story about my brother and me on a visit to the Blue Mountains as children. Emerging from the car, probably the back of Uncle Al’s volkswagen, Richard and I had cleared a low retaining wall and were inches away from the edge. Mum says she ‘nearly had kittens’. Well, I nearly have kittens around heights now too.

For that reason, pool girl’s suggestion that we view the cliffs by boat appeals greatly. About a million people visit the cliffs each year and on this improbably warm, sunny and still day, we will join them afloat.

 We are staying in Ennistimon, a picturesque town of a thousand (therefore twelve pubs), safely back from the cliffs. A wide waterfall runs through its middle. We are staying at the aptly named Falls Hotel, a large,  friendly old place, full of people on this bank holiday long weekend. It has rambling grounds and tame donkeys. It is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Blue Mountains and the Hydro Majestic.

The Falls used to be a manor house and Caitlin MacNamara, wife of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas lived there. It has a Dylan Thomas bar and photos of Dylan, pudgy, insolent, drinking, adorn the walls. I love this bar and resolve to drink Guinness there tonight. It’s closer than Laugharne.

In  Australia, towns are a day’s horse ride apart, more or less – the transport unit of the day. Dubbo, Narromine, Trangie, Nevertire, Nyngan, a gallop a gallop. Here the medieval layout is a day’s walk, or perhaps a very slow donkey cart. So the short drive to the coast takes us through  Killenora and Elsdoonvatna and on to Doolin and its tiny harbour. The roads are very narrow. We have a largish car and we and the wide-eyed oncoming tourists inhale involuntarily as we pass, millimeters to spare.

The boat is large, white and late. It is called ‘Tranquility’, an Irish joke in these wild  waters. Fortunately, it is also a forecast today. The Irish are good queuers and there is a queue on the dock, although the boat is not in sight. We join the line. Eventually the boat arrives, disgorges 124 passengers (Caity counts them) and we board.  It is a cheery crowd, apart from one woman who I suspect hates the sea and is going out to scatter her husband’s ashes. The lilt of Gaelic catches my ear after the friendly throat-clearing of Holland.

The skipper is a bored looking young man who casts off, then sits in his cabin reading the sports pages of a tabloid as the boat steams towards the cliffs.

The cliffs are grand, high beyond all but Hughie’s  'they’re not that big' expectation. We get scale only from the tinyness of the boat against them and by spotting itty-bitty people peering over the top. The fools! I fear for them, fully expect one to fall screaming into the water beside us.

The boat does gentle pirouettes, momentarily distracting the skipper from the hurling report, so all can see and photograph the cliffs. Then we steam for Doolin. All bar Hughie and the woman with the ashes seem happy with the experience.  It was feckin good, I reflected later, over a Guinness. 

At the top, O'Briens Tower. Along the edge, people