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Head for the Isle of Man for a feast of Irish entertainers
By MALCOLM ROGERS
 MALCOLM ROGERS heads for the middle of the Irish Sea to visit the ancient kingdom of the Isle of Man — home to this year’s Octoberfest.
The Isle of Man is famed for its motor bike racing, tailess cats and low taxes, and of course a craic rating which regularly — according to song — touches 90. Indeed, judging by the line-up for the island’s Octoberfest, the craic might actually exceed 90 this autumn, probably in contravention of EU regulations. But that won’t matter to the thousands who, even as you read this, are reserving their tickets for a weekend which includes input from the likes of Foster & Allen, The Fureys, Davy Arthur and his band, The Classic Beatles and many more.
The great thing about going to a festival on the Isle of Man is that it’s a beautiful, friendly, atmospheric place — it’s familiar, yet there’s enough quirkiness about to make it really interesting. The place is getting a bit of a rep as a stand-in for Ireland in the film world — Ned Devine was filmed in the town of Tullymore, a specially constructed Irish village on the cliffs above Glen Maye on the west coast of the island, some fifty miles from the nearest part of Ireland. On a clear day Man can rival anywhere in the world, with its turquoise waters, vast blue skies streaked with cirrus trails, and the sumptuous gold of a summer’s evening. Look out for plenty more films being made here.
That the Isle of Man has some similarities to Ireland would be obvious to anyone who glances at a map — even if they didn’t know it was formed when Finn MacChumhaill scooped up a bit of Ulster and in a fit of temper hurled it into the ocean. The hole that was left, you won’t need to be reminded, is now Lough Neagh.
With more than 100 miles of coastal footpath, 17 scenic glens and 188 miles of waymarked and signed rights of way, the Isle of Man is ideal for a walking holiday. But aside from the tightly hedged fields of hawthorn, gorse and fuchsia, the island boasts many other delights.
Douglas displays all the best features of a Victorian town emerging into the 21st century with its eyes blinking. Think Portrush with a bit of Blackpool thrown in. Now, you won’t get state-of-the art clubland here. No Ibiza beat or deep house riffs to groove to. What you will get, though, is traditional seaside, end-of-the-pier entertainment — you can sit out on your deck-chair and contemplate the extensive sands, ride the trams (still pulled by enormous Clydesdales), and of course sample the best fish and chips this side of west Cork.
The Manx Museum on the corner of Kingswood Grove and Crellins Hill is probably as good a place as any to begin getting to grips with Manx history and heritage. The people of the Isle are our first cousins (ethnically and culturally speaking) so you’ll recognise plenty of Celtic influences. Peel Castle — which you can also visit — yielded a cache of silver coins minted in Dublin in 1030. It seems that the Danes who occupied the east coast of Ireland at that time, even away back then, used the Isle of man as a an offshore banking facility.
Just beside the Dublin coin exhibit is a very curious item — a woman’s severed scalp. No, nothing to with a hen party from Temple Bar gone wrong. This scalp is a likely piece of evidence of pagan sacrifices. The pre-Celts here would have been the same Neolithic people who lived in Ireland some 6,000 years ago, and their standing stones can be found throughout the island. Human sacrifice is reckoned to have been part of their society, and here in Douglas is physical proof of it. You can almost hear a Neolithic mother moaning at her child: “After all the sacrifices I’ve made . . . .”
Nosing about museums and galleries is always rewarding, but really, the glory of the Isle of Man is its scenery. The ancient harbour city of Peel, guarded by the afore-mentioned castle built by the Third King of Mann, William le Scrope, makes an excellent day’s outing. Meanwhile in nearby Port St Mary you can catch Bob Taylor’s catamaran, Gemini, for a visit to the uninhabited Calf of Man, a bird sanctuary. The outward trip through the treacherous currents of Calf Sound scrapes past the bird cliffs of The Chasms, the Sugarloaf, and Black and Spanish Heads, where a million screaming seabirds are vying for space — guillemots, gulls, gannets, kittiwakes and the odd puffin. The island itself is breathtaking — 600 acres of wilderness grazed by a chocolate-brown flock of rare, multi-horned Manx Loghtan sheep.
They say you should try to wear a different aftershave or perfume each time you go on holiday. The sense of smell is intensely linked to memory through primitive brain pathways, so you’ll find that every time you wear the same fragrance all your holiday memories will come flooding back, far more vividly than when you look at photographs, they say. But do you know — you won’t even need to do that with the Isle of Man. The heady scent of the gorse is as intoxicating as any perfume could be, and from now on every time I catch a whiff of that almost eucalyptus-oil smell I’ll think of the enchanting walk out of Port Erin, at the south-western tip of the island, before climbing up to the magnificent viewpoint of Milner Tower on Bradda Head Road. A distractingly beautiful Man-sized place to visit — and that’s before you even begin considering the bands.
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