Ath an Chiste · Co. Cork
A scatter of houses on the Sheep's Head, a sundial that catches the light at the minute a plane fell from the sky, and two of the better pints in West Cork.
Ahakista is a scatter of houses on the south shore of the Sheep's Head, the narrowest and least-trafficked of the long West Cork peninsulas. It sits about halfway out, between Durrus eleven kilometres east and Kilcrohane a few minutes west. "Village" is generous - there is a pier, a church, two pubs, a stone circle in a field, and not much else by way of inventory. That is the point of it.
But this small place carries a large piece of grief. On the morning of 23 June 1985, Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747 flying Canada to India, was blown apart by a bomb off the southwest coast. All 329 people aboard died, most of them Canadians of Indian origin. When the families came looking for somewhere to mark it, they chose Ahakista, because the headland here is the nearest point of dry land to where the plane went down. The memorial garden opened on 23 June 1986, a year to the day, with the foreign ministers of Ireland, India and Canada present.
The garden is quiet and exact. A curved stone wall carries every name. At its centre is a sundial by the Cork sculptor Ken Thompson, set so that the sun strikes the dial at 08:00 - the minute of the explosion. There is no grandeur to it and no need for any. You can stand at the wall and look straight out at the water that holds them.
Beyond the memorial, Ahakista is simply a good place to be on the Wild Atlantic Way without the crowds that go to it. The Sheep's Head Way passes through; the pints are honest; the bay light is the best on this side of the water. Graham Norton keeps a holiday house above the harbour, which tells you something about how the people who can go anywhere feel about it.
