Agog in a Bog in the Irish Fog : Horsewomen lose their way, but not their sense of humor, on ride through County Sligo

SLIGO, Ireland — Exploring County Sligo on horseback with only a map for a guide seemed like a swell idea--until my friend Judi and I got lost one afternoon in the bog, in the fog.

We were heading toward a mountain pass, climbing through a misty field of grassy hummocks interspersed with low, muddy ground when Terence, my horse, called a whoa in front of a trickle of a stream. Got quite huffy about it, in fact, and couldn’t be persuaded to take another step. Of course, at least Terence had the advantage of knowing that we were on dangerous ground.

True, it had been a while since we had seen one of the arrows that were sporadically painted on trees and rocks to show us the way, but the person in charge of marking the trail seemed to take perverse pleasure in putting lots of arrows only where it was impossible to get lost. This wasn’t the first occasion during our five-day trek of about 80 miles through northwestern Ireland that the arrow maker had left us in the lurch.

So we weren’t necessarily off track on this, our fourth day out . . . or so we thought. I decided to dismount and lead the testy Terence through the stream.

Proceeding on the theory that a horse will follow you anywhere as long as you don’t look back, I descended the low embankment and squished through a few inches of water and muck. Terence, at reins’ length, held his high ground. Judi waited astride her horse, Lance, to see what would happen.

Keeping my back to Terence, I hauled on the reins, putting my weight into it. He resisted at first, but then, after a few moments, I had the satisfaction of feeling slack. Reluctantly, Terence was coming across.

It was then--as I was congratulating myself on my horse sense--that the ruckus began. I heard Judi yelling something just as the reins were nearly jerked out of my hand. I spun around and there was Terence, all 1,200 pounds of him, plunging, snorting and sinking fast into the mud. As I watched in horror, the black ooze reached his belly. A vision of the last of Terence flashed before me--a muzzle upraised, a flaring nostril, then a slow slide beneath the mud forever, kind of like the sinking of the Titanic. Thank God, I didn’t hear about the bog that swallowed the bulldozer until that night when we were safe in front of the fire.

Thank God, too, that Terence had a cool head and didn’t panic. Instead, before he got in any deeper, he marshaled his forces and gave a mighty heave, throwing himself onto the solid ground where I stood, still limply holding onto his reins. If a horse could sneer, his lip would have curled.

After that near-disaster, we decided to put our trust in Terence to find the trail. Not that we had a choice. We were lost. And Judi’s horse wasn’t smart enough to chew with his mouth closed.

Of course, we had relied on Terence once before to show us the way, on the first day of our trek, and he had let us down. He had seemed so confident, too, about where he was going--head bobbing rhythmically, stepping out smartly--that we hadn’t doubted he would take us to the bed and breakfast where we were headed for the night.

Turned out, Terence had a different destination in mind. He took us a couple of miles in the wrong direction before pulling up expectantly at a paddock gate behind a pub. Apparently, we were supposed to trot inside and take on fortification while he chowed down in the pasture. Boy, was he miffed.

But Terence certainly had been right about that stream, so despite our earlier side trip to the pub, I gave him his head in the bog. And just like the other time, he seemed to know exactly what he was about.

In no time, we were right back where we had started--at the bottom of a boggy mountain, in the fog without an arrow in sight and the afternoon beginning to fade away.

It was then that we felt a clammy touch of worry, which led us, naturally, to the matter of apportioning blame. On that, Judi and I were in agreement--it was all Tilman’s fault.

It was Tilman, the owner of Terence and Lance, who had sent us out on the trail after going over five days’ worth of map in as many minutes. In passing, he had said something about the bog, but who remembered?

After a few minutes of muttering and useless milling about, we decided we’d better do something constructive and struck out for the other side of the field, about 30 yards away. I thought I might have seen an arrow over there on the way down, but, then, I was always thinking I saw arrows; half the time they turned out to be flattened cow plops.

I went first on foot, not wanting to be a passenger if Terence repeated his disappearing act. One bit of muck looked much like the next to me. But not to Terence. He was particular about where he stepped, and this time I didn’t push him to go anywhere he didn’t want to go.

Up the mountain we toiled--sweating, swearing, getting soggy. Circling, backtracking, crisscrossing, running into dead-ends, coming up against fences. Finally, when our mood was just about as foul as the weather . . . Eureka! We spotted an arrow. We were saved.

Later, we found out that we had gotten off easy. At least we had an early start. Some riders who slept in not only got lost in the bog in the fog, they were still out there when it got dark.

The airbrush of memory has transformed that unpleasantness in the bog into an “adventure.” No retrospective touch-up is required for the rest of the ride, however. Although we got lost more than just that one time on the mountain, and uninterrupted sunshine was our blessing for only one day, Judi and I felt we had hit on the right way to see Ireland--on an intimate scale, at a pastoral pace, with our feet off the ground.

Our week started and ended at Tilman and Colette Anhold’s Horse Holiday Farm, which sits on a wonderful prospect overlooking the sea about 15 miles north of the city of Sligo (pronounced sly-go), on Ireland’s northwestern coast. When we arrived early one afternoon last October, we were drawn immediately to the spread of picture windows that faced the beach.

To the south, we could spot a band of tiny figures cantering on the sand flats--guests of the Anholds, of course. To the north, we could see a wilding surf, as waves that had raced so many miles across the Atlantic finally crashed upon the Irish shore. Also to the north, atop a headland beyond the dunes, loomed Classiebawn, every inch the classic castle. Lord Mountbatten was vacationing at Classiebawn when he was blown up in 1979 by the Irish Republican Army--still not a topic to broach with the locals.

After a bit of lunch, we wasted no time in meeting our horses. Judi and I had heard a lot about the big Irish “hunters,” and we were initially delighted with our assigned mounts, the massive Ginger and General. Unfortunately, on a shakedown cruise later that afternoon along the dunes, the two “Gs” turned out to have all the animation of carousel horses. The idea that they would “enjoy a gallop on the beach,” as the brochure claimed, was laughable. It took all our energy just to persuade them to walk.

Faced with the prospect of a week with Ginger and General, Judi and I worked up our nerve to complain. We were a tad deflated when, without demur, we were given Terence and Lance. Since the Anholds don’t evaluate or supervise the way their guests ride, Judi and I decided that they must give unknown quantities like us their slowest horses and wait to see if anything is said.

The night before our trek, Tilman issued us saddlebags, a route map and a key for the farm gates along the way. He also gave us a list of the places where we would be staying each night, capped with those too-brief words of advice. At that point our main worry had been the size of our saddlebags, and we went to sleep secure in the knowledge that we’d been able to pack enough clean underwear for the trek.

The first day out on trail--the sunny one--we rode mostly on the beach. After our horses picked a path through kelp-covered boulders for an hour, our way opened onto a sweep of tidal flats where the footing was sure and the obstacles nonexistent. Terence and Lance immediately began to prance and toss their heads, impatient for one of those gallops the brochure touted. We loosened the reins and pounded across the sand at, literally, breakneck speed. It was thrilling.

After several photo opportunities and another gallop beside the surf, we circled back up the beach to explore a shaggy island punctuated by the ruins of stone cottages and the remnants of pastures. We led the “boys” through a gap in a stone wall into lush grass, where they could graze while we unkinked our legs and took in the stunning view of sea and shore. We didn’t linger long, though, for fear we’d be stranded by the incoming tide.

By 4 p.m.--even with our unintentional trip to Terence’s “pub”--we were at our lodging for the night, a B&B; on Streedagh Point a few miles south of Sligo, above the beach. After feeding the horses and turning them out to pasture for the night, we took a pre-prandial stroll to investigate a ship-shaped memorial we had seen on our ride.

Though still under construction in 1991, it commemorated an event from 1588--the sinking of three galleons of the Spanish Armada in a gale. The morning after the storm, according to a chronicler of thE time, the strand was littered with the corpses of 1,100 sailors.

How awful, you might think. But the few Spaniards who managed to make it to land alive didn’t fare much better. One, a Capt. Francisco de Cuellar, recounted the reception he received from the Irish:

“There was the shore lined with enemies who were dancing and jumping around with joy at the sight of our misfortune,” he wrote. “(W)hen anyone of our people reached shore, down on him they came and at once stripped him of every stitch he had on him and then ill-treated him and left him covered with wounds.” Luckily, Irish manners have improved. Our receptions were a lot warmer.

Most nights during our trek, we stayed on farms--”agri-tourism” the Irish government calls it. Our routine was to get up early and feed the horses. Then we’d fuel up for the day on a huge breakfast--juice, coffee or tea, cereal, brown bread and white toast, bacon and eggs and fruit (the word cholesterol passed no lips save our own). A snack from our saddlebags held us until dinner, which was always bountiful and fresh.

We went mostly at a walk, pulling up constantly to examine our crumpled map and debate our possible whereabouts, taking turns getting off our horses to open gates, of which there were many. We saw thousands of cattle and sheep, which would pause in mid-chew to watch us pass.

We also met a lot of dogs--a Jack Russell that tried to pee on my leg in the parlor; a black-and-white German shepherd that raided our saddlebags, consuming even our emergency cookie rations; a 17-year-old Yorkie that went ballistic at the mention of kitties, and Scoobie, a horse-loving mongrel that escorted us the last mile of what had been a long day on the trail. The only Irish setter we saw was painted on the side of a bus.

During our days on the trail, we had more fine gallops on the beach. We traveled untrafficked lanes and paths, passing fields and flower gardens that would have inspired Monet. We saw prehistoric wedge tombs casually incorporated into the landscape of a front yard. (Sligo has impressive megalithic sites, including Carrowmore, with its stone circles and dolmens, and Queen Maeuve’s tomb, visible for miles as a huge rock mound atop a mountain.) We came across the curious sight of tractors on the seashore, harvesting seaweed for iodine, I’d guess. And along cliff tops touched by windblown spray, we saw peat bogs marred by square black cuts where turf had been mechanically removed for fuel.

One morning we rode by Glencar Lake, as still and silvery as a mirror in the mist. Blackberry bushes grew in profusion along the way, and even in October, they were loaded with fruit that made good snacking for horse and rider.

Sligo is famous as William Butler Yeats country. Our ride took us through Dromahair and Slish Wood and by Lough Gill and Innisfree Island, all of which figure in his poems. Although Sligo’s favorite son died in France during World War II, his body was returned to his native soil in 1948 amid much ceremony and was buried in Drumcliff churchyard.

One evening before dining at the Yeats Pub, we visited his grave. It was easy to find. In the twilight, a single rose left in offering gleamed red against the Earth. Amid swaying shadows cast by wind-blown trees, the poet’s famous epitaph was boldly writ:

“Cast a cold eye on life, on death.

Horseman, pass by.”

For two tourists seeing Ireland from horseback, the lines seemed somehow apt . . . but way too stern. We would indeed pass by, but in the passing, we found our pleasure.

GUIDEBOOK: Horsing Around in Ireland

Getting there: Aer Lingus has daily nonstop flights from New York to Shannon and Dublin, both about 135 miles from Sligo. Aer Lingus offers connecting service from Los Angeles via American, TWA, United and Delta. Round-trip service through Sept. 15 on American and Aer Lingus runs $829 from Los Angeles to Shannon, $859 to Dublin. Round-trip fare on Delta, which offers daily service from Los Angeles to Shannon and Dublin via Atlanta, is $1,071. A special fare of $728 will be available Oct. 1-March 31 if tickets are purchased by Sept. 4. Many airlines also offer connections to Ireland through London.

We made rental-car arrangements through a travel agent before leaving the States, and picked up our car at the Shannon Airport so we could do some touring on our way to Sligo. We dropped the car off at the Sligo Airport. For $25 apiece, the Anholds sent a car to pick us up at the airport and, at the end of our stay, deliver us to the Sligo bus station.

The rides: The Anholds offer day rides and five- or 10-day treks through the County Sligo countryside. Most rides are unsupervised. Cost includes the horse and all equipment plus tack, lodging and breakfast. Dinners are extra. Our ride, which included a night’s stay at the farm on either end of the trek, cost about $800. Guests also have access to a cross-country jumping course. In season, Tilman will take the daring on a fox or hare hunt. Contact Tilman Anhold, Horse Holiday Farm Ltd., Grange, County Sligo, Ireland; from the U.S., phone 011-353-71-66152, fax 011-353-71-66400.

American outfitters offering rides in Ireland include:

* Fits Equestrian, 2011 Alamo Pintado Road, Solvang, Calif. 93463, (800) 666-3487.

* Hoofbeats, 162 Cambridge Ave., Englewood, N.J. 07631, (800) 733-2995.

* Equitour, P.O. Box 807, Dubois, Wyo. 82513, (800) 545-0019.

For more information: Contact the Irish Tourist Board, 757 Third Ave., 19th Floor, New York 10017, (212) 418-0800.