Click to listen to a great documentary about the history and culture of Irish peatlands. Thanks to Dermot Kearney for finding this and passing it along.
Fred Kearney, one of the people interviewed, has been our guide at the Corlea Trackway Centre in Longford. Here's Fred as he began our tour:
And a few more pictures of the Corlea Trackway, a 2,000-year-old bog road that was excavated about 20 years ago, and the boardwalk outside the museum, showing what the trackway might have looked like centuries ago.
Near the trackway centre, people are still cutting turf for fuel...
The documentary talks about the controversy surrounding turbary rights, that is, the right to cut turf on your own property. It's an issue that's more and more pressing as Ireland's peatlands continue to dwindle, mostly because of industrial-scale peat extraction by Bord na Móna, the Irish Turf Board.
In HAUNTED GROUND, Brendan McGann, one of the brothers who discovers the red-haired girl in the bog, is worried that he won't be allowed to cut turf on his own land for much longer.
