Tuesday 8 May 2007

We Venture Out - Brittas Bay

Dublin has been wonderful so far. It has rained a bit, but the sun has broken through for the most part and anyway, this is Ireland, and tropical weather is not its trademark! There is something comforting about rain, and it makes me feel at home. Maybe because I am English and therefore grew up with it. Dublin and rain just seems right somehow.

Not that I don't enjoy the sun. We have a little as we go to Brittas Bay today. Driving in the car, listening to Sue's Ipod, the windscreen wipers brush away the drops even as the sun tries to dry them.

Brittas Bay is pretty, even with the strong winds that almost take us off our feet. Dianne collects more pebbles (she has to part with some of them eventually!) and Sue plays intrepid explorer and climbs the grassy sand dunes to take some lovely pictures.

Out in the sea the impressive and spookily surreal Arklow Bank Wind Park serves as a reminder that you are in the present, because you need that sometimes when in Ireland. The rugged and often achingly beautiful landscape - with the dark greens of trees and grass, the yellow and black-like contrast of the gorse bushes, the greys of the rock, and the slate blue of sky and sea - transports you to a time when flame-haired bearded men in long robes flashed by on steaming horses.

That is the romantic Ireland that is sometimes in my mind as I stand in places like this, so close to nature and on the edge of a sea that joins my first home and this, my second.

We stay a while and then we leave, getting stuck on the carousel of the Arklow Streets. Then back to Dublin, and our little flat. It's been a nice day... the cobwebs are well and truly blown away.

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