Hive

While I, in my usual dreamy fashion, had forgotten precisely where the Skelligs lay, Johnny suddenly remembered how (relatively) close we were already, having come to Listowel. Like myself, he had intended to go there for decades. As soon as he mentioned the possibility, I was on, and that delectable mirage materialised into something almost solid.

I can’t remember when I caught the desire to set foot on that cowl of rock, outlandish as a berg of dark ice stationed 12 kilometres off Kerry’s Iveragh Peninsula. Its shape echoes another island monastery, Normandy’s Mont Saint Michel (founded in 800 AD). But the latter, only one kilometre off the coast, clustered with buildings and capped by an elaborate abbey, is a metropolitan hotbed by comparison. The Skellig monastery is older and far more remote. According to Wiki, 'the first definite reference to monastic activity on the island is a record of the death of "Suibhini of Skelig" dating from the 8th century, however Saint Fionán is claimed to have founded the monastery in the 6th century.' Wild, steep and precarious, it's a true outpost on the edge of the earth, rising over 700 feet in the Atlantic, a stark correction to the horizon.

We sat down for our full Irish at 8.am and were on the road well before nine. The weather wasn’t perfect, coolish and breezy with plenty of clouds shifting about, but it was far better than fogbound Saturday, which Johnny had booked for initially. The drive to Valentia reminded me of one I took over a decade earlier, to a poetry reading in Belmullet, at the other end of Ireland. That same sense of remoteness, occasional houses set against low, bald hills. After perhaps half an hour we crossed the bridge and parked at the Skellig Experience Visitor Centre, which is, to quote the website, "a custom built, stone clad, grass roofed, prize winning building located right on the waterfront beside the Valentia Island bridge at Valentia, County Kerry!"

The ferry was due to leave after 9.30, but when we stepped inside the centre the pace slowed. We were shown a 12 minute film with a broody, Gregorian soundtrack. Informative enough, but it did nothing to allay my slight but persistent fear, of the vertiginous steps and paths the monks had built, and a picture I had in mind of a kind of ledge-life, the corbelled stone ‘beehive huts’ dangerously perched on slippery, storm-petrel-swooping plunges. Would I be able for this?

The vessel was smaller than I'd expected, a little, open fishing boat with only a cramped cabin for the skipper. With ten people on board, it sat low in the water. As we chugged out of the bay, wreathed in diesel smoke, Johnny pointed to a sun-struck Cromwellian fort high on the headland to the right. I was slightly distracted. Having only occasionally been on boats, I wondered, as always, if my stomach would yet again prove resistant. It did, and I began to enjoy the swell and chop, that relentless, steady unsteadiness that is the sea's rhythm. The cabin blocked the horizon, so I tried craning out and around it, getting spattered by spray which also slopped over the sides of the boat in certain places (so I had to mind where I put the camera bag).

Eventually, sick of the reek of diesel and wanting to get some photos of what was approaching, I asked the skipper if I could squeeze into the cabin. He was fine about it, very friendly and easy-going. And there was The Great Skellig, suddenly filling the window. I braced myself as best as I could (the boat was seriously rolling and plunging by this stage) and took a few shots. Then I realised that the window on my left was falling out! Barely secured as it was in thin, rotting, wood sills, I had dislodged it with my elbow. I held onto it to stop it falling onto the narrow stern, and tumbling into the sea. Thankfully it was plastic so not in danger of breaking. The skipper sounded upset: 'What have you done? Oh Jesus, you've put out the window!' He said we might need to turn round, as everyone's safety was now compromised. I felt like a total eejit, which I suppose I was. But I'd had no idea how fragile the thing was, and neither, it turned out, did the skipper as he was only piloting the craft; he didn't own it. I asked if he wanted me to leave and he very generously told me there was no need. The panic was over; he'd get it fixed when we got to the Skellig. Luckily, although the sea was choppy, there was little danger of the cabin being flooded.

We passed the Little Skellig with its bird colony (above) but not closely enough to see it properly, and then were were there, in the mountain island's shadow. The little quay was rudimentary, just a wall with steps, but we disembarked easily enough, one by one, guided by the skipper. What had I expected? Not this elaborate Victorian walkway, securely walled or chained in, rising calmly enough above the sheer-cliffed, fractal shore echoing with seabirds. Not the helipad and solid wood & concrete buildings for staff. And not the middleaged American guide who gathered us at the bottom of the old steep steps to give us a brisk but essential talk. He told us that we'd already made the trip of a lifetime, so, if we didn't want to go any further, that was okay. Nobody should feel that had to climb the ancient stone stairway that zigzagged up the sheer mountainside. If we did want to climb it though, we should know the dangers: that being well over a millennium old, the steps were insecure in places; that there had been some fatalities; that even though the steps were well constructed and wide enough for two people to pass each other, we should always walk on the inside and stop to let others, going in the opposite direction, pass; that we should test each step for steadiness and tread only on those that didn't seem loose; that we shouldn't even dream of attempting to actually film our own ascent or decent because we'd need to keep vigilant at all times, etc. And he reminded us (excellently I thought) that whatever our age or condition, we would be the best judges of what we could or could not endure.

After all that I was braced for something hair-raising (had I any hair to raise). But what I'd imagined to be the mother of all stair-masters was only mildly taxing on my 57-year old knees. The monks, brilliant architects that they were, had designed the path and secured the steps so beautifully that I never really felt in danger. The path hugged the slopes, sheer as they were, and I felt at ease enough to notice that tough-looking, pea-green plant, sprinkled with tiny white flowers here and there (Sea Campion?) that had draped itself over much of the rock. I had heard that there had once been plans to put in supports, or some kind of security rail. There were little yellow guide-signs for tourists, but no ropes or chains. I think it was then I noticed that the weather was much warmer and less windy than it had been inland or along the coast in Kerry.

Very soon, much sooner than I'd expected, we were almost there. Another set of steps and we reached what I call the saddle, that earthy space between Skellig Michael's two natural spires. The smaller, on the left, has steps ascending and winding out over a very sheer cliff-edge, to the 'needle,' a tiny solitary cell for those monks who found the population of the monastery (around 12 apparently) a bit crowded. We took the right-hand path, initially steeper, bringing us to the highest and least protected final stretch, a short straight path whose width, in an ordinary garden, would have been generous. Up that high, with the boats below us like grains of rice, it seemed just wide enough.

Entering a stone doorway, we found ourselves in a snugly dry-stone-walled, stony, grassy terrace, about the size of a small garden. It seemed natural to pause here (watched by opportunistic gulls), lean on the wall, and gaze out at the horizon. At the back was another doorway, leading up to a higher terrace, where the six beehive huts were clustered with a small graveyard and the remains of two later, Medieval churches. Here, another guide was giving a talk to a large group, ranging in age from (mostly) young and strapping to late middleaged. There were many questions and he was patient, though getting tired, I think (how many times had he given this spiel?). He looked too young to have been working here on and off for 15 years, but I think that's what he said.

Clustered with our fellow-tourists in that elaborate sun-trapping balcony, it felt balmy and Mediterranean, a universe away from the stark colony I had imagined. Partly the weather of course; it would be very different in winter. Was this the 'Skellig Experience', or had I missed it somehow? A friend of mine, Sean Lysaght, was lucky enough to be able to spend the night. In his poem Storm Petrels he vividly describes what it felt like to climb the steps in darkness, disturbing the birds:

Pilgrims at midnight,
our flashlamps climbing the stairs,
we had a scuffle with buffetings
on the last flight
and crept up on all fours
under the lid of the wind.

I stepped into a couple of the beehive huts. A small bird was nesting in one, just inside the doorway, pointed out to me by a young tourist couple who'd been sitting there. The other one (slightly larger) was empty. I thought about what it might be like to rise and look out at that rectangular portion of sea and sky, framed just so for a millennium and a half. And of course I thought of my mother, as I would in any niche, chink or clearing such as this.

Going down was slightly harder on the knees, but still way easier than I'd imagined. We stopped to pause as the rock known as The Wailing Woman (hardly a reference to Picasso's Weeping Woman?).

Waiting on us was the same skipper in the same boat (but with the window fixed). The sea was still choppy, but the cabin wasn't in the way now and it was good to be able to lean on the back of the boat and watch that LOTR edifice gradually diminish, swaying, sinking and bobbing.

We passed close to the Little Skellig. Nothing cosy about this, no beehive huts, but the place itself was a great limned, high-rise hive, property of The Birds: puffins, gannets, gulls... wafts of sweet earthy rotteness, wild as wild, a fully occupied vacancy.