Lakes of Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath is a beautiful part of Ireland that is all too often neglected by visitors who rush off to the better-publicised coastline of Co. Cork and Co. Kerry. Why not include a visit to the Westmeath Lakes next time you come here?

Near to Castlepollard in Co. Westmeath is a gental hill well worth exploring with Turgesius's fort, a rocky outcrop with a huge prehistoric ring fort about two miles walk from the village. (Turgesius was a Viking tyrant king somewhere in the 6th century; the locals got rid of him by luring him to an island in Lough Lene down below where they told him there were fifteen beautiful virgins waiting. The virgins turned out to be muscular young warriors in drag and cut him to pieces). A little further away to the north is the Hill of Meal, another easy climb, but with a dizzy rock face on its southern side, usually inhabited by wild goats. A little steeper and higher is Knock Ion to the south of us, a beautiful conical hill dominating Lough Derravaragh. It has a holy well halfway up it and in the old days was a famous place of pilgrimage, the locals ascending it on their knees as penance and then, wrote Sir Henry Piers a 17th century local historian, falling immediately to "lewd dancing and revelry" as if to make up new sins. Then to the east there is the Ben of Fore from whose summit you can see eleven lakes - on a clear day. It looks down on Fore Abbey, founded by St. Fiechin, one of St. Patrick's disciples in 600 A.D. Or still further east there are the beautiful hills of Lough Crew, capped with a string of passage graves which make up (notes the Shell Guide to Ireland) the "largest Bronze Age necropolis in Europe."

The reason I begin by writing about some of these hills is to refute the mistaken impression given by most popular guidebooks - that Ireland is like a saucer with all the exciting scenery round the rim and a flat dull middle consisting mostly of bogs. In the part of the midlands where I live, we have plenty of bogs - there is a huge and splendid one just to the west of us, the colour and consistency of rich chocolate cake - but we also have an extraordinary variety of landscape: Limestone crags, granite outcrops, gravel hills left by melting glaciers, and sparkling limestone lakes.

The lakes, if you are hardy, are wonderful to swim in as they are fed mostly by springs and the water is very clear. Our local bank manager who spends all his weekends and summer evenings scuba-diving in his wetsuit tells me that their aquatic life is remarkably rich. I myself have only tried a little surface snorkelling chasing shoals of trout fry.

If you would rather remain on top of the water, the local Tourist Board and the Inland Fisheries Trust who stock most of the 30 odd local lakes, have a long list of where to hire boats and what and where to fish. Lough Derravaragh for instance, our nearest lake, has pink-fleshed trout as succulent as salmon, but they are hard to catch except in the Mayfly season (end of May).

Considering all the opportunities open to them, most Westmeath locals are still very casual about their lakes. Westmeath is 'strong-farming' country with a tradition of strong silent cattlemen who don't hold with too much messing about in boats, and certainly don't swim. But nowadays things are changing - you might see a smart cabin-cruiser tied up in someone's front garden waiting for sunshine; and there are far more amenities all round to be enjoyed by everyone. More pubs and roadhouses where you can get good well-cooked food (steak is still the local standby); For the intrepid explorer, however, the visitor who has come to our area because it is largely free of tourists, the essential standby is still a picnic - the local supermarkets now have excellent delicatessen food and wine - which will allow you to enjoy the real luxuries of Westmeath: a lake shore where the only sound is the swans flying back overhead or the putt-putt of a solitary fishingboat going out after the evening rise; or the ruined cloister of Fore Abbey guarded by silent hills. Or you might like to venture on my own favourite brand of exploration - into the lost scandals and lost demesnes of the old Anglo-Irish Ascendancy who planted themselves so thickly in these parts. Planted literally too; most of the old woods and forests around the lakes are relics of their estates. And some of them have been preserved and developed as magnificent forest parks; Lough Key on the Shannon for instance, or Dun na Ri and Killykeen in nearby Co. Cavan. A few big houes survive intact; ours is one of them, a long rambling gothic revival castle, though how long we will be able to patch up its acres of roof is another matter. But most are ruins, splendid ruins, a good deal more cheerful to visit, I suspect than when they had their roofs. And as for their owners, they were an enjoyable scandalous lot. There was Lord Belvedere for instance living beside Lough Ennell who (quite unjustly) suspected that his brother was carrying on with his wife and locked her up for 30 years. He built a huge battlemented wall - still t here - between their two houses. Or there is Sir John Piers of Tristenagh Abbey on Lough Iron - now all in ruins. He seduced his friend's wife, Lady Cloncurry, for a bet, was sued for 'crim con' criminal conversation - by Lord Cloncurry and had to flee to the Isle of Man. John Betjeman wrote a splendid ballad about him. And then, perhaps most splendid of all, there is Killua Castle, home of the Chapman family, a great gothic ruin just outside Delvin. The last baronet, Sir Thomas Chapman father of four daughters, ran away with their governess a Miss Lawrence sometime in the 1890s. They set up house together in North Oxford in England and had four clever sons, one of whom became Lawrence of Arabia.

When I first came to live here thirty years ago, the scandal was still very much alive among the local gentry, and so was the last of Lawrence's half-sisters, Miss Chapman, a delightful old lady. I confessed to an elderly colonel that I had very much enjoyed the film Lawrence of Arabia. He drew himself up. "That film," he told me sternly, "was an insult to Miss Chapman."