A few days after having Sunday lunch at the hotel where Michael Collins ate his last meal, we found ourselves on the road to Beal na Bla.
We had gone to get hay and the hayman was out to lunch, so we followed the heritage signs to the site of the ambush where Collins was shot dead.
The events of 22 August 1922 immortalised this picturesque valley in West Cork near to where the builder boyfriend and I have bought an old country house. Beal na Bla, or Blath, translates as ‘entrance to the good land’.
The memorial by the curve in the road where Collins was murdered is surrounded by lush pastureland.
We pulled the pick-up truck into a layby and walked along a newly made walkway installed for the 100-year anniversary so that Leo Varadkar could have some razzmatazz when he visited with the TV cameras.
Sadly, it means that the actual spot where Collins fell, still shooting his gun as he died from a head wound, is now impossible to see unless you know where to look for it.
Beneath the modernistic grey granite walkway walls, very Strasbourg, there is a small crumbling white marker stone on the grass verge. We caught sight of it quite by accident as we pulled away in the truck. Too late, we had passed and could not stop on the busy road. How sad that the real tribute to Collins goes unnoticed, hidden by a pretentious new structure installed for speech-making about what the untimely death of Ireland’s most beloved revolutionary meant for independence, and a united Ireland.
What would Collins make of the current leaders of Ireland? Not much, I don’t think, if you consider that the mainstream parties have been only too happy to sign away their freedoms to the European Union.
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