I Love The Smell of Peat in the Morning

Mick Sumpter and I have been riding around Ireland from Dublin to Belfast clockwise following, where we can, the Wild Atlantic Way which is a network of roads labeled as the most scenic and which push as close as possible to the ocean. We have been largely exploring as our whims take us and we found some astonishing places that we’d never heard of – like Slieve League, the highest sea cliffs in Europe – and we have barely scratched the surface of this labyrinth.

It is obviously a cliché to describe Ireland as a country where the old and the new live side by side. But that thought pops up every day traveling around this beautiful island; old, new – ancient, modern – Irish, European.

• Outside of the towns it is hardly possible to figure out whether a house is old or new construction. All the houses are neat and clean and unadorned and made from the same slate and the same stone and, apparently using the same building design regulations for the last couple of centuries.

• In a country that is very traditionally Catholic and hidebound, Ireland made same-sex marriage legal with a referendum in 2015 and just chose for its new Prime Minister Leo Varadkar; the son of an Indian immigrant who is openly gay. A lesson for many other countries and especially Trumplandia.

• There are many petrol stations in Ireland where the food available would put to shame many boulangeries and patisseries in France – seriously. Those same modern and hip petrol stations also sell home heating fuel including coal and peat – so again the 21st century meets the dark ages. The peat sold at the petrol stations is produced by a state owned company that sells peat to power stations as well as for domestic use. In addition it is common to see piles of peat that has been cut with a two-sided spade called a sleán and piled to dry.

Peat is, apparently, the most efficient carbon sink on the planet because the plants that grow on it consume the CO2 that the peat itself emits. The largest peat bog in the world is in Siberia, the size of France and Germany combined, and is, due to a warming climate, starting to thaw and release staggering amounts of climate changing methane.

So the peat fire smoke that you smell roaming Ireland is not the biggest issue facing the planet.

Good news for Ireland. Have another Guinness. Don’t mind if I do.