Wild Atlantic Women: Walking Ireland's West Coast [Paperback]

A journey along the Irish coast with powerful Irish woman beside you.At a crossroads in her life, Gr?inne Lyons set out to travel Irelands west coast on foot. She set a simple intention: to walk in the footsteps of eleven pioneering Irish women deeply rooted in this coastal landscape and explore their lives and work along the way. As a Londoner born to Irish parents, she also sought answers in her own identity.As Gr?inne heads north from Cape Clear Island where her great-grandmother was a lacemaker, she considers Ellen Hutchins, Maude Delap, Edna OBrien, Granuaile and Queen Maeve among others from her unique perspective. Their homes  in places that are famously wild and remote  are transformed into sites of hope, purpose, opportunity and inspiration. Walking through this history, her journey reveals unexpected insight into emigrant identity, travelling alone, femininity and the trappings of an ideal life.Against the backdrop and power of this great ocean, Wild Atlantic Women will inspire the twenty-first-century reader and walker to keep going, regardless of the path.A second-generation London Irishwoman walks the Wild Atlantic Way in the footsteps of eleven pioneering women, beginning with her great-grandmother, a lacemaker on Cape Clear Island, and including Ellen Hutchins, Edna O'Brien, Granuaile, Queen Meabh and Easkey Britton.Wild Atlantic Women is a different, deeper narrative that gradually soaks into your consciousness, like soft rain soaks into way onto your skin in the remote coastal locations that Lyons visits. Lyons understated, luminous writing does justice to these diverse women who all shared this wild coastline.Although Lyons concentrates on her subjects, many of whom were from remote communities, like the best travel narratives there is an inner and outer journey as she reaches a crossroads in her own life.Prologue: Banbas CrownMalin Head, County Donegal1. South HarbourEllen Cotter: Cape Clear Island, County Cork2. A Remote CountryEllen Hutc