Having somehow never visited any of the Balearic Islands until last week, I had been labouring under the misapprehension that they were just slightly less developed outposts of Benidorm (not that I’d been there either).
Then I spent three days in Menorca with my now grown-up children and was pleasantly astonished at how relaxed, rural and unspoilt the place still seemed to be.
Much of it had a passing resemblance to the west of Ireland, with narrow, winding roads and ubiquitous drystone walls. Menorca has so many such walls, I’m told, that if laid out in a straight line, they would reach New York.
Driving around the island, we could have been in Connemara at times, except for the unbroken blue skies, balmy temperatures, bougainvillea, and olive trees.
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Another hint we were abroad was the constantly changing speed limit, reflecting every bend and dip on the road, with signs to match. You could go from 90kph to 60, 50, 40, 30 and back up to 90 within a few hundred metres, so the gear stick was always busy.
Locals were conspicuously friendly, and a few went to great lengths to make us feel at home. At a lovely fish restaurant overlooking the beach near where we stayed, the proprietor (Fernando) tried out his stock of Irish phrases on us, including “Go raibh maith agat”, “sláinte”, and “oiche mhaith”, all impeccably pronounced.
His wife (Conchi), a woman with a 150-watt smile, told us they had a son living in Cork, which explained a lot. When we went back the second night, even though the place was full, they kept us one of the best tables.
Camí d’en Kane
There is a piece of the Menorcan road network that is forever Irish. It’s called the Camí d’en Kane (Kane’s Way) but could just as well be the Camí d’en O’Kane, because the 18th century governor who oversaw construction was a man of that North Ulster tribe.
Richard O’Cahan, as he was born, first made his reputation as a soldier in the Wars of Religion, fighting for the Protestant side at the Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne, then in several of continental engagements too.
But he spent the last 25 years of his life as ruler, de facto or official, of British-occupied Menorca.
Despite a tense relationship with the local Catholic church, he made many improvements on the island, including the eponymous road, designed to link the old Spanish capital, Ciutadela, in the west, with the new one, Mahón, in the east.
Part of the original camí survives as his monument. Meanwhile, although he died and is buried in Mahón, he is the subject of an effusive epitaph, carved in Latin, at Westminster Abbey.
This eulogises his career at some length (412 words), up to and including his official appointment as governor in 1735. Then the text appears to take a dramatic turn, as translated: “But oh, oh, how uncertain is the life of man!”
Here the writer seems to be foreshadowing some unexpected and tragic turn of events for a man who, as it continues, “under four sovereigns had borne arms with the greatest shrewdness, courage and dignity, who had served God with all his heart and played the role not less of a Christian than of a good soldier, of pure faith and old-fashioned courtesy, dear to his friends, amiable to his associates, affable to his people, kind and generous to all, and in all things concerned more for the public good than for his own ...”
It comes as something of an anticlimax, therefore, to learn the tragic twist was Kane’s death from natural causes aged 75. Not a bad innings for a career soldier of that era who, according to the epitaph at least, “left an island that was both British and Spanish sadly mourning his loss”.
[ Pier Pressure: Frank McNally on a night camping at General Humbert’s landing spotOpens in new window ]
Irish whiskey distilling
The O’Cahans used to have an Irish county all their own, as I was reminded by Donald Trump’s weekend announcement on whiskey tariffs.
Not that Bushmills is considered Irish for US tariff purposes anyway. But the Antrim distillery does claim to be Ireland’s oldest and, to that end, displays the year 1608 prominently on bottles.
This is sleight of historical hand, however, because the company that founded Bushmills dates only from 1784. What happened in 1608 was that King James I issued a licence to an unrelated predecessor to distil whiskey “within the countie of Colrane, otherwise called O Cahanes countrey”.
So Bushmills’ claim to the earlier date rests only on geographical association with an area, straddling what is now Antrim and Derry, where there has been a history of legalised distilling since then.
Trump’s Doonbeg announcement on tariff relief for Irish whiskey may have been in keeping with his new policy of supporting a united Ireland.
But although it was greeted by the crowd around the 18th green as the political equivalent of a hole-in-one, we should have seen it coming. Bushmills was already benefiting from a similar relief for UK distillers, announced during King Charles’s US visit in April.
