I've just returned from two weeks in Ireland, and am still in the clouds over the experience. I've been to Ireland a few times before but this was my first journey through the southwest countryside by car, the roads of the Wild Atlantic Way hugged by lush green trees and then opening suddenly onto the sea. We explored holy wells that act as sacred repositories for prayers and wishes. We walked labyrinths tucked behind cathedrals and stood at the edge of Skellig Michael island where 6th century monks built a monastery out of rocks which still stands today.

Locals spoke of the old respect paid toward the fairies - for instance, how certain trees, believed to belong to them, are never to be disturbed, and how developers who ignored this, who cleared a fairy tree to make way for a road or a building, were said to end in disaster in ways no one could have anti