Recipefiesta

Some of the quirkiest, most picturesque villages are nestled in the outer reaches of the Irish countryside, which has helped preserve their character

Ireland’s most beautiful and well known villages are easy to love. Even their names – Doolin, Adare, Dingle, Kenmare – roll off the tongue in a smooth syllable or two, as if they are part of a jingle or the end word of a rhyming couplet. Some of them rocketed to fame when they caught the eye of a film crew – such as Cong in The Quiet Man (1952) or Trim in Braveheart (1995), while more places grew in prominence because of their proximity to large cities or popular attractions.

Yet dig a little deeper and you’ll discover some of the most charming in the more remote areas of the Irish countryside, where the past sits more comfortably with the present. Their obscurity – perhaps because of a limited bus service or their narrow country roads – has preserved their wonderfully idiosyncratic character. They might even be more beautiful than their high-profile counterparts yet perhaps less appreciated by tourists, because they are not as accessible. But, for me, that just adds to their allure.

The setting for Kathleen MacMahon’s new novel, The Home Scar, is a haunting expanse of lakes, bogs, heathland and mountains in County Galway

It starts at the top of a mountain. Not the novel itself, but the idea for the novel. The mountain is Errisbeg, on the coast of Connemara in County Galway. It’s an ugly lump of a thing, pocked with prickly yellow gorse and patches of swampy bog, but the landscape it commands is magnificent. The face of the mountain looks directly down on the back-to-back beaches of Dog’s Bay and Gurteen Strand. To the east is the lovely village of Roundstone. The Ballyconeely and Erislannan peninsulas are to the north-west, and beyond them lie the beginnings of the Atlantic, dotted with small islands.

So far, so normal. It’s only when you turn away from the sea and cast your eye inland that things get a little strange. The view travels across an expanse of desolation that stretches as far as the Twelve Bens mountain range in the distance. Not a thing lies between, only bog and scrub and pockets of water and the shadows of clouds travelling over the land. There’s a savage beauty to the place, but there’s also the feeling of something missing. This is a landscape strangely bereft of trees.

Only minutes from the centre of one of Italy’s most visited cities, the Sant’Ambrogio district has managed to stay under the tourist radar. Locals in market square tell us what makes it so special

The Florentine neighbourhood of Sant’Ambrogio may only be 10 minutes’ walk east from the landmark Duomo and Palazzo Vecchio, but this part of the Tuscan capital has a distinctive character far removed from the tourist pizza traps and overpriced gelato. It’s a tight-knit community that is still genuinely Florentine but also multi-ethnic. It’s a food nirvana and a favourite student haunt.

The crowds thronging the historical centre quickly thin out as I pass into Sant’Ambrogio and the tranquil gardens of Piazza dei Ciompi. It is noon on Friday, and while Giotto’s bell tower may be chiming back in the Piazza del Duomo, the noise that greets me in the piazza is the muezzin’s call to prayer. Crowds of Muslims unroll their prayer mats in the middle of Piazza dei Ciompi, home to the Masjid Al-Taqwa, Florence’s principal mosque.