The start of the road

Anne was born and reared near Glandore in West Cork. Her rich memory of her childhood surfaced in stories she told over the years of people, places and events. Every turn and feature on the road had a story. She wrote of the day they moved into the house:

“We moved house at Easter time before my second birthday, my father leaving behind his beloved family farm, his birthright, my mother with joy leaving her mother-in-law’s home for a new future in romantic ‘Wood View’. She told me how they came down from ‘The Top of the Hill’, through fields whose names are now lost but which each had its own name and story, all the way down to the bridge with me in my pram.”

Anne told of an insight she had when she was still a toddler, something that intrigued and thrilled her. Across from her house was an inlet from the sea. Just up the road from the house there was a small pier with a lane beside it going right down to the water. She already knew at this age that the world was large, with vast seas and with many roads going all over the place. How marvellous and unlikely it was, she thought, that she happened to lived in this place which was both the end of the road and the start of the sea, or the start of the road and the end of the sea.