catherinemack – Page 27 – Ethical Traveller

Fastnet ferry from Swansea, Wales to Cork, Ireland

Fastnet1 — Fastnet ferry coming into Cork Credit: Fastnet Ferries

I was one of ten foot passengers on Fastnet Line’s new Swansea to Cork ferry three weeks ago. And three of those were my family members. Then a volcano erupted and, with it, thousands of travel plans. On our return journey we were among five hundred foot passengers, most of them wearing suits. The ferry staff were in shock, but patient, smiling, and helpful throughout.

As fellow passengers swapped ‘get me home’ stories, many were astounded at us travelling on the ferry by choice, rather than by circumstance. But I am used to that reaction now, as I reduced flying to a minimum a while back. But now everyone was getting a taster session, and experiencing a little of what it is to be a ‘green’ and ‘slow’ traveller.

Reactions were mixed, with the suits marching up and down ship corridors, as if to create a mass mantra of ‘faster, faster’. The ‘go with the flow’ types went on deck to enjoy the views of Cobh and Cork’s fine coastline, played cards with their kids, relaxed with a pint, or took out maps to see where the journey was taking them. A Clonakilty man, who had been meaning to try out the new ferry, told me that he probably would never have got round to it. He, like many I chatted with, loved his cabin, with its comfy beds, crisp white sheets, telly, and bathroom, and said he wished his kids had been there to share it with him. He was already contemplating later holiday plans to Devon and Cornwall, unaware until now how accessible they are.

There is no doubt that this period of flight-free reflection has been a positive experience for many. We have all heard stories of people embracing the ‘adventure’, and coming together to help each other get home. The website which I contribute to, www.greentraveller.com, has had a ten fold increase in traffic during the last week, with people needing urgent information on how to cross Europe overland, something we specialise in. It has been a great opportunity for us to show people the alternatives, providing all the information they need in a one-stop shop. The only downside is that many are not experiencing the real thing, with ferries and trains having to cope with exceptional circumstances. When we arrived into Swansea, for example, the suits sulked about the lack of taxis, or about the station bus waiting for all

passengers to disembark before heading to the station. Faster, faster, faster, they still chanted.

The slower the better has always been my chant when travelling. But it will take more than one cloud of ash to start a genuine sea change, I’m afraid. One woman, for example, a self-professed ‘package person’, booked trains and ferry back to UK from Marrakech when her flight was cancelled, but chickened out at the last minute, as the idea of two and a half days travel was just too terrifying. She gave her tickets to charity and waited for the next flight, beginning May. Another person I know couldn’t get back to work in London a few days into the crisis as she was ‘stuck’ in Ireland. And yet, on that very day, every single ferry company had availability. Are the Irish still in such denial that there is sea space, and not just polluted air space between the land masses?

However, like most people, I have enjoyed the cleaner blue skies, the slower pace, and grateful that I wasn’t dependent on a flight for an emergency situation. It has been fun sharing overland travel experiences via our website with people who hadn’t contemplated it before. If there is to be one silver lining to this cloud in the long term, I hope the powers that be wake up to a much needed, and long demanded by many, improvement in the infrastructure around ferry ports and trains. Such as regular buses to ports, bike spaces on trains, car hire at ferry ports, gangplanks for foot passengers as well as easy, centralised access to transport information online. And perhaps those people who always laugh when I suggest a tunnel under the sea between Ireland and UK might just start thinking about the possibilities. Or is that still blue skies thinking?

A fair way for golfers

For some people golf is the reason for getting up in the mornings. However, most are unaware that it is one of the most damaging forms of tourism. There is no sugar coating it, I’m afraid. In many parts of the world, where resorts boast eighteen heavenly holes, others campaign to stop vast amounts of herbicides, pesticides and contaminated water seeping into the natural environment. In the Far East, farmers fight for compensation after being displaced in the name of the game. And then there is the water issue.

With summer holidays approaching, glossy green golf courses are all over brochures and billboards. Yet last year, in Spain and Portugal, water was being shipped in by containers to supply local people, while sprinklers were still in action to keep the golfers coming. In Cyprus, water is shipped in from Greece, yet construction on fourteen golf courses continues. These golf courses will suck up approximately 30 million cubic metres (cmc) of water annually, compared to the population’s drinking water needs of 85cmc. The new courses will use desalination plants enabling them to use sea water, but this process requires vast amounts of energy, and still fundamentally provides water to tourists before the people who live there.

And golf tourism is growing. Worldwide it is a €12 billion industry. The International Association of Golf Tour Operators IAGTO, set up in 1997, now represents over a thousand companies. However, at a recent conference on making golf greener, they were clear about putting money first, stating that businesses “need economic success first, and can then aim for environmental sustainability”.

In Mexico there were fifty golf courses ten years ago, and two hundred today. Manuel Diaz Cabrian of the Mexican Tourist Board also talks about the power of the golf dollar, stating, “In Mexico, golf is very elitist, associated with tourism only, not sport”. In similar emerging and developing countries golf proliferates a form of tourism where tourists are viewed as neo-colonialists rather than welcome guests, creating local dissatisfaction and ensuing negative social impacts.

However, there are organisations out there trying to address these issues. The R&A, based in St.Andrew’s, Scotland, is the sport’s international governing body and has an advisory team committed to creating sustainable courses. They promote the use of grassturf suitable to a local climate, water conservation, and limited use of chemicals. Although still in embryonic stage, you can read more at bestcourseforgolf.org. And the rapidly-growing Golf Environment Organisation, or GEO, (golfenvironment.org) has created an international green golf certification scheme, working closely with the likes of The Ryder Cup and Gleneagles. Its criteria are not only environmental but also take into consideration social impacts, with clubs like La Pinetina, Italy, Ljunghusen, Sweden, Golfbaan de Rottebergen in The Netherlands, and RJ International in Ipswich, UK boasting GEO certificates in the clubhouse.

One thing that GEO is passionate about is changing the way we perceive golf. A hundred years ago courses were natural, made with heather, bracken, sand, or whatever was indigenous. In Ireland, a good example today is Highfield Golf and Country Club (highfield-golf.ie), created by the Duggan family on their farmland. It was built on natural terrain rather than sand-based greens resulting in minimal invasion of the soil, and little or no chemicals to maintain them. And any unused spaces have been left ‘wild’, allowing the local ecosystem to thrive. Now that’s what I call a ‘fair way’.

The Old Milking Parlour, County Wicklow

wicklow3 — The Old Milking Parlour, County Wicklow

Serendipity is sometimes a life saver. About ten years ago, at one of those crucial life turning points, when I didn’t know which road to take, I got a phone call from a friend, asking me to mind his cottage in the Wicklow Mountains for a few months. Within a week I, my husband and baby, had run to the hills. It was a healing, uplifting and bonding escape for all of us and, for this reason, Wicklow will always be, for me, a place to connect with life and breathe again.

A recent trip back took me further East of the Mountains this time, but the short stay was just enough to whet my Wicklow appetite once more. Only 6kms outside Wicklow Town, I stayed in one of the most stylish eco-friendly houses in Ireland, The Old Milking Parlour in Ballymurrin.

Eco-architects Delphine and Philip Geoghegan, first converted a 17^th Century Quaker Meeting House into their home, and then the adjoining stone milking parlour into adesign feat of green gorgeousness for guests. “This was my chance to show people that sustainability is not all about calico and spinach”, Delphine told me.

Bar the cows, the Geoghegans have worked scrupulously to maintain most of the original features. The four elegant wood and glass doors which open onto the daffodil-strewn rear garden fill each of the original cattle entrances. Resisting any temptation to chop the Parlour into separate buildings, they have preserved the original partitions, which provide a semi-open plan aesthetic, with one room merging smoothly into another.

The under-floor geothermal heating creates an almost ‘soft’ warm air, topped up by the roaring designer wood-burning stove, with a flue which stretches up through the pitched timber rafters. As well as this, the energy from solar panels provides the majority of hot water. The Parlour is minimally furnished with pale wood, allowing designer splashes of red or lime green to contrast perfectly with the original dry-stone wall, now painted white with lime and organic paints. Funky designer touches are plenty, from the resplendent shower heads to the energy-saving coloured halogen lights illuminating the porcelain-tiled corridor which links each carefully planned space.

The Parlour is quite simply a place of peace. I recommend leaving the car behind and chilling here for a weekend. You
can take a train to Wicklow Town and hire a bike at Wicklow Cycles from €10per day. Sadly, you can’t take your bike on commuter trains stopping at Wicklow, en route to Arklow, unless a fold up. But you can take it on certain Inter-city Services, en route to Rosslare, depending on the train in use. Better to hire one, really, as rail-bike service is still unpredictable. Or take Wicklow Bus, and put your bike in the boot, if it’s not too full.

In Wicklow Town you can stock up on the Garden of Ireland’s produce at The Dominican Farm and Ecology Centre, just beside Wicklow Gaol. Its shelves are brimming with organic meat and vegetables, most of which are sourced from the 70 acre farm set up and run by the Dominican Sisters in 1998.

It’s another six walk or cycle from Ballymurrin along country lanes to the sand dunes of Brittas Bay. So, between the train, walks, cycling, food, and the Parlour itself, I can’t think of a better place to welcome Spring, and start breathing in a bit life again.

www.ballymurrin.ie

This article, by Catherine Mack, was first published in The Irish Times

Natural Retreats, Ireland

The recession has forced many of our golden gates of tourism to open to new ideas and new visitors, indirectly creating a more responsible and accessible form of tourism. I recently visited the five star hotels of Parknasilla in Kerry and Castlemartyr in Cork which have opened their doors to us mere mortals. This is not the work of Nama either, but a company called Natural Retreats (www.naturalretreats.com) which already owns sustainable (and sumptuous) houses in the UK and has, for the last year, been moving into self-catering lodges in the grounds of Ireland’s most exclusive hotels, making them just a little more inclusive.

I wrote about this company when it first entered the Irish market , impressed by their ethos of developing sustainable tourism in areas of important cultural and natural heritage. Recently, I checked out how they were doing. First stop, Parknasilla, where we thought we might have to go through a separate interlopers’ entrance so that ‘battered old Volvo’ alarms didn’t go off. But the integration of posh and pleb was done seamlessly and without judgement. We checked in at the same desk as golfers with their Golfs, and Foxrockers with their furs, as they headed to their suites, and we to our self-catering.

park2 — The pool at Parknasilla is almost precocious in its beauty

However, it was the outdoors which beckoned at Parknasilla, and is the reason why people have been coming since 1895. There are five hundred acres of woodland and coastal walks here, with tiny islands linked to the hotel by wooden bridges. On an early morning stroll to catch the mist coming up over the many inlets, there was an eerie silence with only the oyster catchers on dawn duty. The beauty here is truly mesmeric.

Guests staying at Natural Retreats’ lodges are given full access to hotel facilities, sharing hot tubs, croquet lawns and extraordinarily beautiful swimming pools with the great washed. The Victorian ‘children should be seen and not heard’ still hovers a little at Parknasilla, being asked to leave the pool at 5pm, only served dinner at certain times, and a general air of hushed tones around the lounges. The games room is in a separate building and equipment was on last legs. But when the pool shut we just ran down to the Victorian bathing huts on the shore and dived into the Atlantic, letting our screams echo around the bay, hushed tones long forgotten. The hotel restaurant was beyond our budget anyway, so we ate in from the nearby butchers or out at O’Shea’s pub, with its fab fish pie. Both in nearby Sneem.

At Castlemartyr, the ambience was very different. Although equally luxurious, it had a younger feel to it, with bikes for everyone’s use, the kids were allowed to walk the hotel’s dogs and blind eyes were turned when ‘adult time’ kicked in at the pool when it was quiet. The games room is ‘soooo cool’ with leather sofas, a Wii, snooker table with all the balls and board games with all the bits. We cycled into the village for supplies, picnicked on the lawns and noone blinked an eye.

One disappointment, however, was the welcome hampers which had impressed me so much at Natural Retreats in
Yorkshire, brimming with local produce. Here they were more white sliced loaf and instant coffee. Natural Retreats’ Director, Ewan Kearney reassured me, “We’re working through an ongoing list of improvements at each site, including implementing local produce in the welcome hampers, improving the guest information manuals with things to do and see in the local area, eco-friendly cleaning products and see this as a gradual process that is more likely to succeed if the business is financially stable”.

These are not cheap breaks by any means, but as George Bernard Shaw said of Parknasilla, “This place does not belong to any world that you or I have ever worked in or lived in. It is part of our dream world”. Natural Retreats has brought the dream a bit closer to reality for many and, with sustainability at its core, aims to make the same possible for future generations to come.

This article, by Catherine Mack, was first published in The Irish Times 28 August 2010