Real life / On the trail of the White Lady |
As we reached the top of the hill and saw the view in front of us my heart thumped so hard I slammed my foot on the brake and declared that we had to turn back.
A wind- and sea-battered piece of terrain jutting out into the Atlantic ocean told us very loudly to go away.
I heard it in my head, as clear as a person saying it, and I pretended I hadn’t, but I had. So I stopped the car above that desolate valley and sat there, frozen, not knowing what to do or even how to turn the car in the narrow space.
Having climbed a steep hill on this grass-covered road, we balanced almost on the summit of it, with the road falling away in front of us. Into the distance ahead twisted the road through the rugged landscape but we couldn’t see the place we sought at the end.
We were looking for a ruin called Three Castle Head, famed for having a ghost called the White Lady, who is said to have appeared to the French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier in the hours before she was found murdered on the driveway of her holiday home near the village of Goleen in West Cork in December 1996.
We had driven down here after a busy summer season during which we have seen almost nothing of the renowned coastal scenery around us because we have been running the B&B. After hearing from almost all our customers of their wonderful days out near Mizen Head, we drove down the peninsula and went for a winter walk on Barleycove beach with the dogs.
It was a bright sunny day, but the vast sandy spit was desolate and whipped by fast winds.........