In the hedges there were puffs of whitethorn, and the sun warmed the gorse bushes so that the blossoms gave out their mothball scent. On a bicycle you catch a new smell every few yards, and along the Ilen seaweed, mud, gorse, fresh earth and manure succeeded each other.

The Ilen-Eibhlie or "sparkling stream"-rises west of Dunman away and is tidal from Skibbereen. It used to be famous for its salmon and six boats are licensed for netting. They are too efficient. "They come up by river and go down by road," people say of the fish.

Three miles from Abbeystrowry a curious brick arch stands beside the roadway. There used to be another on the far side of the road, but a lorry knocked it down some years ago. These arches were copies of the watergates at Hampton Court, built by Lord Riversdale to embellish the entrance to his estate of Newcourt. He added other decorative details, like little Gothic towers on the house, and crenellations in the outside wall that can still be seen. The house itself was pulled down to make room for a modern farmhouse; the surrounding woods were felled. Among the members of the Fleming family who lived here during the nineteenth century were my grandmother and her sisters, who waited, like characters out of Chekov, for someone to take them away. Marriage to a curate provided the best chance. Young clergy men, arriving to assist at lonely parishes in West Cork, found them selves liable to be pursued by restless Protestant spinsters. A curate was less likely to be a near relation; he was a change from cousins and second cousins and less prone, perhaps, to exhibit signs of eccentricity. If he married a lucky girl, she would be able to escape the chilly monotony of her existence and go with him on to his next parish -in Cork or Dublin, possibly, or even in England.

Further west Aughadown House is also in ruins, its deer park divided up into fields. Donovan described it as "a strong castellated mansion, entered by a drawbridge, surrounded by beautiful grounds and having a gazebo on one of the heights behind". This gazebo was approached by a ramp along which the quality used to drive their carriages in order to enjoy the magnificent view out over Roaring Water Bay to the islands and the Fastnet in the distance. I found the ramp running above a field of winter wheat. The substantial ruins of the house lie in a hollow behind, probably on an older site; Aughadown means the Field of the Fortress. It was built in the early seventeenth century by a member of the Becher family. There were Bechers all over West Cork; according to tradition you could walk on Becher land from Castlehaven all the way to Cork city.

The last Becher at Aughadown left the house early in the nineteenth century in a fit of grief and remorse after he had killed his son in a shooting accident. A monument to this young man survives in St Matthew's, Augahdown (..."accomplished, friendly, intelligent, sincere..."). This tablet was taken from the older church at Aughadown, now an ivy-covered shell poised on the edge of the Ilen. The weedy graveyard, dotted with the square stone monuments to successive Bechers, is used by both Protestants and Catholics, united at last. Such mixed burial places are described by some older people as "pre Patrick". Years ago a salmon fisherman returning at night took a short cut across the graveyard. To his astonishment he heard a bell ring. A piece of ivy, blown by the wind, was scratching against an old bell whose existence had long been forgotten.

In 1854, Judith Fleming from Newcourt was married here, her wedding being probably one of the last to take place before the church fell into disuse. "I am quite mad with the girls for not having given you a proper account, of the I4th September," she wrote later to a friend. "Weddings are generally held to be very stupid and dismal things, but really to judge from the merriment, laughter, words and looks of the party assembled at mine, I should think they were decidedly the reverse. Though of course I was (or ought to have been) in a state of somnambulance as the bride, I preserved my faculties to observe my six bridesmaids, Henrietta, the two little Barkers, your two girls and Lili, blooming and floating about like ethereal clouds of muslin and lace- then packed into carriages and setting o~ for the church-an empty jingle, that had brought Elizabeth Somerville from Ross tearing away on its own account, the jingle man being determined not to lose any share of the fun, then arriving at the church which is rather confined, and my standing and being married to something that had feet and hands (I could not add anything more, except a tongue, I heard it plain enough), and then driving home with the same members with little boys shouting at every crossroad, and all the schoolchildren with Mrs Young crying like anything, standing at the gate...."

From the Appletree Press title: The Coast of West Cork.