I'm Lacken Ammo....

With the kids back in school, and the sun splitting the stones, my good friend and colleague Ammo took me for a spin.

She is a born bread and buttered Dubliner who loves my neck of the woods.

So I showed her the shoulders.

We took the Lake Drive, thro Lacken, Ballyknockan and Valleymount, tiny stonecut villages that would take the sight from your eyes and hand it back prettier.

And you know what?

We didnt meet a single tourist.

Within spitting distance of my humble Taj Mulhall, there are lakes to rival anything Geneva can offer, mountains lesser than Alps but breathless with history, prehistoric stone circles and ringforts never breached by any Sassenach or Viking invader.

And an air of majestic desolation and wind-swept, hard core, fuck-you ruggedness that turns card carrying ascetic hermits into swivel eyed blood rage headcases who would rather gnaw on their own ankles than kneel to a foreign Queen.

I truly, really, madly, deeply love this place.

(But we could do with a few more tourists....)