In my latest novel A Mother’s Secret, one of the main characters Helena O’Herlihy makes a shocking discovery about her husband and needs to take a little time out from her problems so she leaves Dublin and escapes to Ballycladdagh in the west of Ireland which is the village of her birth.
Although Ballycladdagh is a fictional place, it would roughly translate to ‘place of the shore’, or ‘town of the shore’, which is the perfect name for how I imagined the seaside village where Helena grew up. Ballycladdagh was inspired by several villages like Spiddal and Ballyconneely which are in Connemara, a region in Co. Galway which is situated along the Atlantic. Its coastline is dotted with tiny white-sanded coves, bays and fishing villages. It also has some pockets of Gaeltacht areas where the Irish language is spoken in daily life. On her journey towards the coast, Helena travels across the mountainous roads of Connemara National Park with the softened peaks of The Twelve Bens in the distance, passing horned sheep standing idly in the middle of the road and crumbling stone walls which cut seams through the lumpy fields.
I’ve always loved any opportunity to spend time on the west coast of Ireland. The colours are more vivid here, like in a saturated photograph, with emerald green grass, white Caribbean-esque sands and turquoise waters that look straight out of Castaway. You also feel the extremities in a way you don’t see on the east coast and realise just how at the mercy of the elements being on the edge of the Atlantic is; one minute the sky can be azure blue with wispy clouds like stretched cotton wool above you but then the weather can quickly turn, with a leaden sky threatening to spill.
This has turned into a love letter to Connemara but if you ever get a chance to visit the region, you will see why. As Helena says as she stands on a cliff-top looking out over the Atlantic, ‘it feels like you are on the very edge of the world’. Here are some photos to give you a feel for the place.
Rolling Green Fields
Connemara National Park
Renvyle Beach
Roundstone
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