I’ve loved the wild, beautiful countryside and coastline of west Galway for a long time.  My mother was born there in the heart of the Connemara Gaeltacht, one of Ireland’s Gaelic-speaking communities.  I spent part of almost every summer there as a child, visiting uncles and aunts, many of whom spoke little or no English, and what seemed at the time cousins too numerous to name.  I don’t suppose I appreciated it much in those days, but over the years it has become more and more special to me.

It’s a remote place, the westernmost edge of Europe, pretty much the last stop before the Atlantic ocean.  An uncle there used to joke that even the birds didn’t go to Connemara, and even today, with fast cars and even faster technology, it’s a landscape that still speaks of its separateness.  For generations, many of those born in Connemara have left, for England, America and almost everywhere else, unable to make a life in that harsh, extraordinarily beautiful place.  In my experience, many of the emigres left with great sadness. For them, the beauty they found anywhere else was always measured against Connemara – its mountains and oceans, its peat bogs and lakes, the blue eyes and dark hair of those born there.

I was there recently on what the Irish call a “soft day”, a February day of mist and dampness. Apart from a few stray sheep, the roads were almost empty in Maam Valley, an especially lovely stretch of Connemara between Leenane and Cor na Mona. Keane’s Pub on Maam Bridge, a simple, unfussy local’s place, unchanged in all the years I’ve been visiting it, was just as quiet.  A coal fire burning in the hearth, a glass of Smithwick’s, and a sandwich were just what I needed.

Europe, so cluttered and crowded, still has its rare, wild places.  Places of harsh, breathtaking beauty, places that feel secret, remote, and unknowable.  For me, Connemara will always be the best of them, the continent’s mysterious, most westerly, most magical extremity.