Connemara National Park: On an Irish Jaunting-Car through Donegal and Connemara by Samuel Gamble Bayne was published in 1902. Photograph: Bryan O BrienThe first decade of the 20th century saw a remarkable flowering of books about Ireland as travellers toured the country gathering material for colourful stories. Their gaze often turned to descriptions of the weather and scenery, especially the dramatic seas and skies, the mountains and bogs, and the remorseless wind and rain of the west coast.
However, one name from this period that has slipped from the writerly radar is that of the remarkable Samuel Gamble Bayne who died 100 years ago on April 20th, 1924. His digressive 350-mile journey, On an Irish Jaunting-Car through Donegal and Connemara, was published in 1902. It was based on a tour from the northwest, concluding in Queenstown .
Food often plays a part in travel books and in his hotel at a fishing area in Mayo, Bayne wrote of an “aquarium style of living”, which became monotonous: “They served up salmon boiled and salmon broiled, cold salmon, salmon steak, salmon croquettes, salmon cutlets and stewed salmon, interstices with white trout, black trout, yellow trout, brown trout, sea trout, speckled trout, and gillaroo.”