I LAUGHED, bitterly, when I read the first suggestion about How to Enjoy Springtime in the Countryside:
Hike or bike through nature’s beauty.
I live in West Cork, just under an hour’s drive from Cork city.
Let me tell you what it’s like to hike or bike through nature’s beauty in scenic West Cork these days.
Cars, vans, lorries and motorbikes barrel along at terrifying speeds through the smallest, narrowest and most winding country roads, whether it’s the network of rural roads that surround our local villages or on the ribbon-thin roadways through the beautiful Mizen or Sheep’s Head peninsulas.
As there are few garda traffic patrols on rural roads (or indeed on the larger roads either, but let’s not go there), driving at anything up to 160 kilometres per hour (about 100 miles per hour) in the countryside seems to be the norm.
I’ve driven behind furiously irate, honking motorists trying to bully local farmers on tractors to drive faster.
I’ve witnessed an impatient driver lose control of his car at a pedestrian crossing in the middle of a rural village after irritably driving around another car paused at the zebra lines to allow a pedestrian in a high-vis jacket to cross.
That idiot narrowly missed the pedestrian and nearly crashed into the local post office.
I’ve personally experienced the rage-filled response of two motorists flying on the severely narrow, winding country road where I live after I unwisely signalled at them to slow down. Both proceeded to drive straight at me, screaming abuse.
As a cyclist, I narrowly avoided being hit by lorries and cars on country roads and village streets so often that I gave up cycling.
So yeah, that’s the first thing about Ireland’s country roads you can’t help noticing.
The second thing is the endless, unremitting rubbish. The hedgerows and ditches are full of trash. Plastic bottles and bags, paper cups, plastic food containers, polystyrene dinner plates; the demoralising contents of black plastic bags full of domestic garbage chucked out of cars and torn apart by starving wildlife.
Tidy Towns organisations look after the villages and towns, but who in their right mind would dare walk along Ireland’s rural race-tracks picking up rubbish?
The roadsides from the West Cork village of Drimoleague to the outskirts of Ballineen and Enniskeane and beyond are an example of the sheer optical awfulness of travelling through the region.
Meanwhile, the casual littering in beauty spots - discarded baby-wipes, tissues, plastic salad containers and plastic bottles - by walkers and hikers is disgusting.
Here’s the thing about us Irish. Per head of population, we are among the highest waste producers in Europe. That’s according to AskAboutIreland.ie, an online information initiative of public libraries together with local museums and archives.
We have a really massive problem with littering and illegal dumping. Statistics show that pedestrians cause the highest level of litter pollution (41%) with passing motorists the next highest offenders of litter pollution nationally, at around 23%.
Personally, as a rural dweller, I believe motorists must constitute 99.9% the highest litter offenders on rural roads.
First, they’ve scared off most pedestrians and cyclists, bar the most determined, so it can’t be down to walkers or bikers.
Secondly, the sheer amount of rubbish you see on country roadsides, in ditches, clogging streams and in the entrances to forested areas and isolated lanes, could not physically be carried and dumped by any hiker or cyclist anyway
The next suggestion for Enjoying Springtime in the Countryside was to go out and see the spring wild-flowers. Daffodils, bluebells, primroses; buttercups….
Oh yeah, where have they gone?
Once upon a time, Ireland’s roadsides, laneways, hedges, woodlands and bogs were chaotic with an idyllic springtime cascade of colourful flowers - daffodils, bluebells, primroses; buttercups. Along with them came a great diversity of insects and birds which depended on the flowers for survival and on which, in turn, the flowers depended. That hum of insects in the air - remember it? That’s gone.
There’s been a devastating decline in the number of native Irish plants, according to a study by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland published in April, 2023. The cause? A decline in natural habitats, particularly species-rich grasslands and wetlands, along with changes in farming practices in the past 50 years, and modern gardening trends which have huge implications for the domestic insects, fungi and microbes that have evolved alongside them.
Add to that the utterly remorseless, non-stop strimming and pruning-back and spraying of hedgerows year-round by farmers, householders and land-owners.
Why? Is it because they’re terrified of being sued by the same motorists who tear along the roads.?
If you want to see wildflowers these days, you have to grow them yourself. Sowing your seeds in early April will give the annual species in your mix the time they need to grow roots and strong stems and start to blossom by the beginning of the summer, according to the Society.
So, anyway yeah, forget that one.
The countryside these days is a pretty homogenous mix of grass and rubbish.
The next suggestion. Canoe or kayak along your local river. Oh my God.
Well, there’s an experience. You get to float past algal blooms, black bags of trash, and lots more empty plastic water bottles. There may well be foam, which indicates high levels of phosphorus resulting from detergent pollution or run-off from animal manure.
You’re literally afraid to dip your hand into the river because it could be so severely polluted by wastewater.
About 50% of our rivers are now deemed to have less than good water quality and nearly a fifth are severely polluted - and that’s only the monitored rivers.
Plus, according to the EPA, there’s been a decline of one per cent in the ecological health of monitored rivers since 2018.
So that’s what springtime in the Irish countryside is like now, thanks to people casually making a lie of the image of a high quality, competitive tourism destination that Fáilte Ireland tries to promote.
It all brings to mind the native American saying that, only when the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, will we realise we cannot eat money.
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