If you know the culture, you will understand that in this case, the traveller is not me, but my hostess, who declined to have her picture taken, “due to security reasons”. She told me it was okay to take these images, however.
Originally from the Isle of Wight, K moved to the Sheepshead Peninsula about five years ago to escape an abusive husband.
She grew up in a circus family, which is where her love for horses began.
This is her herd. Several were free rescues from the meat market and she now teaches classes and leads rides across the hills when the weather permits. It had poured all day so in this case, the weather did not.
In K’s herd there is a Connemara pony and a Gypsy Vanner, plus a trotter. She loves her horses, which is a good thing, because she lives alone way out along the Atlantic Way with only her horses and two dogs for company.
She doesn’t get many guests. I was her first air bnb tenant in over a year. Gortnakilly is not on the tourist trail.
This is Gortnakilly Pier. K told me that it was used as a base for smuggling drugs for quite some time but “ya can’t git a 30 foot boat in there so, no more”.
K doesn’t have a car. Instead, she rides her horse or takes a modest little horse trap she owns up and over the 13 steep and windy kilometers into the village once a week, where she sells creams and potions, plus soap, which she makes in her kitchen using locally sourced plants she gathers.
She and I took a walk in the rain and I helped her with the gathering.
This is the view we were blessed with when the rain let up for an hour or so.
Back in her cottage, K cooked us a simple supper of mashed potatoes with mustard and garlic. I helped oil some of her bridle leathers in return, and we talked.
She told me that her grandfather had sexually abused both her and her daughter, who is now in an institution, having attempted to starve herself to death. K hates her grandfather and her mother, who she feels “gave us up like some kind of fucking offering because she stopped sleeping with the bastard herself while we were stayin with them.”
She believes her nearest neighbor over the road spies on her with his camera and the police arrived one night to sack her home, looking for the drugs it had been reported she was selling. So maybe they do.
“Wankers! How fucking stupid do they think I am? I want my daughter back so I don’t truck with that shite no more”.
She does, however, hitchhike off to festivals to join her fellow Travellers, where she dances and serves as a psychic. “I love my people. They accept everyone exactly as they are. No judgements.”
At this, she smiled broadly, showing several missing teeth in a face that was once beautiful in a traditional way and is now beautiful through strength of character and endurance.
The wind came up and it was a howler of a night. K can’t afford oil for her furnace so we huddled under blankets until an early bedtime.
I let myself out quietly this morning so as not to wake her. The woman is a hardworking and weary soul. She deserves her rest.
I think that’s what they call one of “the ends of the earth”.
Love.