And Now For Something Completely Different

With apologies to Monty Python, we bring you the view from Rathmullan Beach, by the inimitable Patrick Cooper, as he muses country life in an election year for Ireland

Imagine the horror of it. The Flat season is almost upon us and you wake up one morning and realise you have misplaced your jockey. You know the routine. Car keys.. I know I just had them in my hand…Raybans…I know I left them beside the keys…cap, raincoat and shoes, I know I left them inside the back door. Ever growing frustration, swearing, stomping, retracing steps, back upstairs, what did I come up here for? Outside for a look in the car and finally relief when all are gathered together and you can leave the building. But no jockey. 

You know he will turn up, but after a day or two and still no sign there comes the growing realisation that you need a replacement. Now these teak tough and talented little lads and lassies are hard to come about. Where to start? You could ask Kia the way to the shop or you could look at the jockeys' table, but either way you know you can't afford the one you want. How about narrowing it down geographically?

Number one criterion is of course size. That rules out South Sea Islanders, shopping malls, and the Dutch, who are supposedly the tallest race on earth. We need to find a lasting solution and too many these days are undone at their height by their height. So small folk it is. 

I've got it: Lilliput. Published in 1726, Gulliver's Travels was written anonymously by Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin and one of the great political satirists of any age. He once published a perfectly serious article on how Irish peasants might sell their children to the rich as food, even going so far as to give their optimum age to be eaten for nutritional purposes. 

Upon landing in Lilliput, Gulliver is first restrained, but then taken into their hearts by the little Lilliputians. Everything goes swimmingly until he refuses them world domination and they turn nasty. Probably best avoid them. 

Actually, I'm going to let you into a little secret. I know exactly where to go: Rathmullan, Co Donegal. Where? Are you mad?

Rathmullan is a small seaside village in North Donegal on the shores of Lough Swilly, which is a sea fjord separating the Inishowen peninsula from Fanad Head. Rathmullan Pier sits at the southern end of a two- or three-mile beach, depending on the tide. It has acted as a local training centre for as long as I have been going there. 

Four of Ireland's current crop of jockeys learnt their trade on Rathmullan Beach. Twice Champion apprentice and Richard Fahey's number one Oisin Orr; his brother Conor, who plies his trade over jumps; Luke McAteer, who rides for Jim Bolger, and another dual champion apprentice and probably Ireland's next superstar, Dylan Browne McMonagle. Go on to YouTube and look at Five Stone of Lead. It's worth five minutes of anyone's time. 

Dylan Browne McMonagle, age 15 at the Dingle Derby | Racingfotos

So how do you get there and where to stay? The latter is easy. Rathmullan House Hotel, which sits a hundred yards from the beach, has been in my wife's family since the early 1960s. It is a haven of tranquility where a couple of Bangladeshi brothers make magic with the produce of the cold waters of the North Atlantic. 

How to get there? It is exactly three hours from Dublin Airport. By car you head north on the N1 following the signs for Derry. Donegal was cast adrift when the island of Ireland was partitioned in 1920. It has no railway and had pretty much no infrastructure of any sort until relatively recently, and it's still fairly rudimentary. You will cross the border at Aughnacloy in to 'The Occupied Territories'. At that point Derry ceases to exist and you must follow the signs to Londonderry which is apparently the same place. 

You have now exported yourself from the EU in to the utopian land of milk and honey that is post-Brexit Britain. You re-enter the 'Free State' at Lifford. Without the Northern Irish Protocol, if you had brought a horse with you and were intending to bring it back, you would have had to physically produce 44 separate pieces of paper at the borders.

Northern Ireland has two racecourses Downpatrick and Down Royal. Although both are situated in a foreign country with a separate currency they are run under the auspices of the Irish Regulatory Authorities and prize-money, which is provided by the government in Dublin, is paid in euros not the local currency sterling. Gaelic games know no border. We have an all-island rugby team, but two separate soccer teams. There is a lot to Northern Ireland that defies logic. 

Rathmullan has its own little place in Irish history. As a country we have never fought a war or won a rebellion. However, we do glorious defeats well. After all, they produce a better class of ballad. Now I am going to tell you a story of a dastardly deed and a plan so cunning that you will understand at last how the small wet island of Britain conquered the world.

In 1597 Red Hugh O'Donnell, the 16-year-old son of a rebellious chieftain, was having a drink in the local hostelry in Rathmullan when he was joined by a couple of strangers. After numerous gregarious gargles he was asked if he would like a couple more free pints on their ship anchored in the Swilly. Upon boarding the vessel, he was promptly kidnapped and imprisoned in Dublin Castle. How did the English figure out an Irish teenager would fall for such a devious plot?

Red Hugh escaped four years later and headed off to Spain to try and garner support for another rebellion. Unfortunately he died in Valladolid in 1602. To this day the locals still parade an empty coffin through the streets on the anniversary of his death. A couple of years ago with huge excitement, à la Richard III in his Leicester car park, a skeleton was found in a city street which was proclaimed to be the remains of Red Hugh. A little like being told your finding of a two-armed skeleton was probably not the authentic Lord Nelson, it was pointed out the real Red Hugh had lost two toes during his escape and this poor soul was fully endowed with all ten. Bubble burst and the search goes on. 

Rathmullan House Hotel

However, it was the Flight of the Earls in 1607 that has given Rathmullan its lasting 15 minutes of fame. Another glorious defeat (cue ballads) resulted in Red Hugh's brother Rory and Hugh O'Neill, the two great Earls of Ulster, fleeing to continental Europe with 90 followers to bring their grievances to the Pope and the King of Spain and raise yet another army for yet another rebellion. Their luck went from bad to worse in the Alps when the donkey that was carrying all their money fell down a ravine and was lost. They never returned to Ireland.

During the Napoleonic wars three Martello towers were built on the Swilly to deter invading French. The one beside the pier in Rathmullan now serves as a lovely little museum to the 12th century Abbey as well as being the Flight of the Earls centre. 

A 'correction' is a long way from a crash. Barefoot and pregnant, we fled from London to Rathmullan in 1991 after the financial meltdown and bloodstock bloodbath of the late 1980s. Isolated but never backward, village life rocked to a different rhythm. 

Owned by Luke McAteer's grandparents, the White Harte was central. Gerry and Mary kept Philip Morris profits at an artificial high for many a year. They also sold the papers, but not much before 10am which is when they arrived on the bus from Letterkenny.  There was only ever one copy of the Racing Post which local fish broker Michael Boyce allowed me to read in return for which I was expected to find him a suitable horse for the Dingle Derby every year. Angela ran the post office and along with taxi driver John Kelly knew all that was needed to be known. 

A third in a handicap hurdle in Sligo was celebrated wildly in the White Harte, while future Don Quixote-like forays against the bookies were never dimmed by reality.

Straight out of Leprechaun central casting, Francie was the barman in the Cellar Bar in the hotel. He would sit on his hunkers behind the bar puffing on his pipe and, provided you were prepared to listen to the one about Delhi and Londondelhi, could pull a mean pint.

Pat Patton sold the finest spring lamb in the county and Jim Morrison was both the bin man and local sulky-driving champion. His wife Betty was in charge of breakfast at the restaurant in Rathmullan House pursuant to which Jim's champions developed a taste for left over stale bread. Wednesday was the dreaded May Day because on Thursday my mother-in-law's cleaner May would come and it was deemed unacceptable for an Irish country lady to have the house anything but spotless upon the arrival of their cleaning lady.

Tom McLaughlin was the local trainer and the other of Luke's grandfathers. A scallywag would be an apt description. He also provided hirelings for those wishing to go for a more leisurely ride on the beach. Thoroughbreds or battys, you were as likely to end up atop one as the other. A third in a handicap hurdle in Sligo was celebrated wildly in the White Harte, while future Don Quixote-like forays against the bookies were never dimmed by reality. 

Not much has changed. The wonderful Trish McAteer runs the White Harte. Tom is gone, but his brother sells the finest chips on Rathmullan Pier. Emily still bosses the hotel and the mighty Maurice, whom I am assured speaks English, keeps the gardens immaculate. Jim Barker's petrol pump has been made redundant by the ubiquitous service station, but he still runs the bus to the 'Sectarian Derby' which would be a more appropriate moniker for the Old Firm clash between Rangers and Celtic in Glasgow.

Regatta week in August is the social highlight of the year. 'No problem' is the answer to all requests. 'Donegal Time' pays only passing lip service to Greenwich Mean Time and the car park at the pier is still a hive of activity in the not-so-early mornings as local trainers unload their charges and leg up the next youngsters aiming to emulate those four young men who have made it. 

Fifty per cent of the five million people who live in the Republic now live in the Greater Dublin catchment area. The rest of the country is empty and emptying. Yet here we have a small seaside village producing four professional sportsmen. Four professional sportsmen earning themselves a living in one of the toughest professions of them all. 

Down in Moone, Jessica Harrington employs 60 or 70 people and through the drip system keeps the local economy oiled. The next biggest employer in Moone outside of Church and State (school) is the charity shop which employs no one. Who knows how many the O'Brien family employ in Piltown, or the Mullins family in Bagenalstown, or indeed the Magnier family in Fethard. But you can be sure that if the Industrial Development Agency, which is Ireland's state body in charge of procuring foreign investment, had found these kind of jobs they would be shouting from the rooftops. 

We are badly in need of voices with gravitas inside Dáil Éireann (Irish government). We have an increasingly Dublin-centric press with little understanding of racing and a political class for whom the countryside is but for two weeks a year. In this year of elections we need to remind them that there is a wonderful way of life outside the M50 and it needs looking after.