A visit to Cobh, County Cork

We travelled from Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin, formerly known as Kingstown, to Cobh, County Cork, formerly known as Queenstown. I’ve heard of sister cities and twin towns. Perhaps we could stage a town royal wedding between these two.

Cobh is my kind of town. A seaside town of course, and what a location! It’s on the south side of Great Island in Cork Harbour, supposedly the second largest natural harbour in the world. Whether or not this is true is open to debate, but with a surface area of over 180 km², it certainly is a huge harbour by anybody’s standards. I could sit here and watch the traffic all day. Cruise ships, freighters, pleasure boats, tug boats … Yes, Cobh is my kind of town and this is my kind of traffic!

Of course, no visit to Cobh would be complete without a stroll, or rather a strenuous hike, up ‘the Deck of Cards’, a brightly painted terrace of houses on West View. There may not be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but you could be forgiven for thinking that the colours have seeped into the houses around here.

High up here on the hill, with its 90 m high steeple piercing the skyline, St. Colman’s Cathedral certainly stands out. Not just visually, but audibly too. Its 49 bell carillon, one of the biggest in Europe, is loud but most musical. The cathedral itself is wonderful. At 100 years old, it is practically a baby – in comparison to other cathedrals we have visited on our travels. As such, it is still in great condition and it is beautiful inside. I particularly liked the mosaic tiled floor with its pattern of Celtic knots and shamrocks. A nice Irish touch.

This is also typically Irish – the map of the world ‘To remember your loved ones abroad’, with names of parishioners’ relatives marking where in the world they now live. I couldn’t get over the number of names marked on the map. And this is just one parish out of hundreds throughout the country.

In fact, I learned that this small coastal town has bid farewell to literally millions of people over the centuries. Tens of thousands of convicts were sent to penal colonies in Australia and the Americas from nearby Spike Island. Known as ‘Ireland’s Alcatraz’, the island was once the largest prison in the world. Furthermore, over 2.5 million of the 6 million who left Ireland between 1848 and 1950 departed from Cobh as emigrants on ‘coffin ships’ during the famine in the 1850’s and later on steamers and ocean liners.

Here’s another eerie reminder of the not so ‘good old days’: from this pier, on 11^th April 1912, 123 people boarded a tender which brought them out to the Titanic. Cobh was the last port of call of the ill-fated liner and of these 123 passengers, only 44 survived. I wonder if those gulls sensed the ghosts of the past. Humans who feel inclined to step back into this particular chapter in Cobh’s history can do so in the Titanic Experience in the former White Star Line Offices at this pier.

Me? I think I’d just stay with the gulls, staring out at the harbour…

Cobh locals, both gulls and humans, are very friendly. One elderly gentleman took the time to give the Oldies a potted history of the town. Pointing at the Haulbowline Island Recreational Park, he told them that this new amenity was built on a site that used to be ‘covered in sh*te’. The Oldies, amused and intrigued, later read that the site was used by the former Irish Steel works as a dumping ground for hazardous waste. No wonder the bill for cleaning up the sh*ite, I mean site, and building the park came to over €60m.

In spite of the grey January weather, our outing along the coast to East Ferry Marina yielded plenty of colour. Although the trees were bare, the nearby Marlogue Woods were emerald green thanks to a deep bed of moss. Lovely and cosy too!

And who would have thought that a stony beach could be so colourful? Some claim that the local red sandstone and white limestone are what gave Cork its county colours – the colours worn by the Gaelic football and hurling teams.

I spotted yet more red and white across the bay – in the shape of the hoops on the chimney at Whitegate Power Station. My second power station in a week. I’m all charged up!