Sun setting over the bay at Couscrom

We are back on the Kerry coast for the first time in many a year. My family first visited Ireland for a holiday when I was in my early teens. We had an old scout tent which my Dad had bought from a traveller and we drove around the Ring of Kerry till we found a quiet spot out overlooking the Atlantic. Although there was a small camping field nearby, it looked rather messy and my father much preferred wild camping so he found a spot on a patch of grass near a very quiet lane. The following morning when we were out walking and my Mum was back at the tent reading a book, a farmer passed by and made an edgy comment about cheapskates who would camp by the side of the road to avoid paying a night’s rent on his camping field.
Later, when my Dad heard about this, he asked around to find out where the farmer lived and went to his farmhouse to offer him the camping fee and explained that we just weren’t too keen on camp sites; it wasn’t just a ploy to save money.
So began a friendly relationship with the farmer, Michael MacGillycuddy. A year or two later, my parents came in to a bit of money. Some old Victorian photographswere discovered in the attic , taken by a relative of my mother’s, and my parents consulted an art dealer who offered them £2,500 for the lot. My Mum thought they could be worth more and pressed for £5,000 which he reluctantly agreed to. (In under a year, we subsequently read that a fundraising effort was attempting to raise £16 million to keep them in the UK, otherwise they would be sold to America!)
Well, anyway, at the time Michael MacGillycuddy was on the point of selling off a charming and rather dilapidated two room cottage which was a farm labourer’s home in decades gone by. No running water or electricity. The money raised on the Julia Margaret Cameron photos was enough to buy the cottage.
Over fifty years on, here we are in the cottage. Gone the old crane and cauldron over the open fireplace - we now have a multifuel stove, a cold water supply from the local spring and an outside lavatory. No bathroom but a kitchen sink or a splash in the nearby stream.
The photo was taken from the back door.