Via Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1: Recently returned from a writing residency in Brittany, novelist Neil Hegarty is struck by the closeness and similarities to Ireland of 'the other' Irish Sea...
'La mer d'Iroise,’ say my companions. ‘The other Irish Sea,’ they say, and they gesture out of the ferry window.
We are in Brittany, on the early-morning boat that sails west across the ocean from Brest. It’s the long Pentecost weekend in France, and the boat is full of holidaymakers: we are all of us sailing for the isle of Ouessant, just there on the horizon. The westernmost point in France, and the largest island in la mer d’Iroise; and my destination – for a month’s writers’ residency – is a semaphor beside a lighthouse with the most powerful beam in Europe. This is a time for superlatives.
But first, la mer d’Iroise: the other Irish Sea. My Breton companions organise the summer writers’ festival on Ouessant, and the residency which I have been awarded: and they are accompanying me – to see me settled in, to introduce me to the people of Ouessant, to make sure I have everything I need, a bike, a torch, a handle on bakeries and fish shops – and as the ferry leaves the harbour, they speak of the archipelago of skerries and just a few inhabited islands that lie sprinkled across this sea between Brest and Ouessant.
These are swirling waters, filled with the tell-tale white lines of currents, and of rocks that have claimed many lives over many centuries. The age-old story of fishing communities: the men of Ouessant went to sea, and the women stayed at home, worked the land, raised the children, kept the houses in repair, and watched the horizon – scanning the treacherous seas which all too often took the lives of their loved ones...
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
