Europe 2019 : Day 4 Discovering Cooldorragha

Monday 12^th August

Cannaway House, where we stayed overnight, was a fine place. A tad isolated but not too bad. The owners had bought it about 12 years ago when it was a derelict and had done it up very nicely. We were checking out when we had one of those awkward conversations that pop up from time to time, and which you really seem not to be able to avoid. We were talking to the owner as we were heading out, saying how much we liked it, when she told us about the purchase and renovation.

Cannaway House

Either Robyn or I muttered something about it being a possible wedding venue and received the reply that she, the owner, had been married here. “Hope you went on a honeymoon somewhere else”, I joked. “No,” she said. “My father died on the wedding night.” Which put a bit of a dampener on things. It seems he'd really enjoyed the wedding – there were framed photos up on the mantels – went and sat down I an armchair, had a whisky and a cigar. And when someone went to check on him an hour or so later he'd gone.

You try to be both sympathetic and thoughtful but you're uncomfortable whatever you say, so we said out goodbyes and headed off to Macroom, hoping this didn't affect our whole day.

Luckily it didn't.

Macroom castle facade

We stopped in Macroom for a bit of a wander around, checked out the Tourist Office, took a few photos of the castle facade and a nearby river and bridge. (Later that night I found out that someone I knew from New Zealand, Simon Litten, passed over the bridge as we were standing on it taking photos. An odd coincidence.) 

Macroom castle ruin and mural

It was a nice little town but we were on another family history excursion for Robyn that day so we didn't linger but headed off to Inchigeelagh, about 15km away.

Robyn's Riordon ancestors on her father's side originated around here. Some from this small town and others from a place called Cooldorragha. We'd asked about this small place in Macroom but no-one could identify it for us, and none of Google or the printed maps made any reference to it.

And yet, when we stopped in Inchigeelagh for a look around, we found a map in the street with Cooldorragha marked as being just outside Kilmichael, another 10 km down the road. 

A brief wander around the small village of Inchigeelagh, including a wander through an old derelict church and adjacent graveyard gave us no further clues about anything, so we headed off to our next destination, the even smaller town of Kilmichael.

Cemetery instructions

The day was excellent, the temperature mild and the roads of the twisty-windy type so prevalent in rural Ireland. It was great just pottering along these tiny roads with their overhanging trees and hedgerows right up to the road verge. Classic holiday touring. Scary as all hell.

We made it to Kilmichael which consisted of one house and a pub. Well, one house we could see. There were probably a whole lot more down the side roads behind the trees, but they weren't much evident. A small sign pointed up a hill to a church so we decided that as it would be a Catholic church it would be on the highest point around so we headed up the road, found the church, looked around and headed back down. Didn't seem to be too much about the place and we couldn't find any signs pointing to or mentioning Cooldorragha.

Deciding that it was better to just move on rather than waste any more time we headed off down the road about 5 km to the site of the Michael Collins Ambush. This occurred on 22 August 1922 and resulted in the death of Collins, the Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State at the time. The site has a monument and a few signs indicating what happened that August night. Oddly enough about 15 kilometres away is the actual Michael Collins Monument – no idea why it is there rather than at the true ambush site.

Ambush monument

Ambush scene

While we were there and Robyn was wandering around I had another look at the Inchigeelagh map I'd photographed and realised that the road out of Kilmichael up to the church at the top of the hill was probably where Cooldorragha was located. So it was back to Kilmichael, and back up the hill to the spot that corresponded to the map.

This may well seem like a lot of messing about but we weren't in a rush to get anywhere, and it was better that we made sure rather than just driving off and never really knowing. I'm not sure we could say, hand on heart, that we had found the right place. But it was near enough for us.

By this stage Robyn was in desperate need of relief so I decided to take one for the team and have a half pint of Guinness in the local so she could use the facilities. Naturally our accent caused some comment – the publican had daughter living in Perth – and then Robyn got into a discussion of where the Riordons lived in the area. Well, that was fun. Got directions that consisted of where a certain person's house was and which turns to take delivered in an accent that was a little difficult to follow. We did actually attempt it, though I'm not sure why.

Kilmichael pub

After that it was back through Macroom, on to Kilkarney, and then to Abbeyfeale where we had booked a room in a small country hotel.

It had been a great day, excellent weather and unexpected discoveries. The stuff of a good holiday.

Later that night Robyn was to say that she'd had one of the best holiday days ever. She'd seen the family bogs, and had found stuff she hadn't expected to find. She couldn't ask for more than that.