The Beara

Alarm set for 5.30 am. Left Ilkley at 6am for a 9am flight to Cork from Manchester. Everything was on time and by 11am I was with TJ driving to Kenmare. In torrential rain! Kenmare has a lovely feel to it, even when dashing from shop to shop avoiding umbrellas and the deluge from above that so often seems to accompany my trips to Ireland. After looking out at blue skies for so many hours from the office it would have been easy to have felt hard done by with this abrupt break in the weather the moment I took a day off. But, actually, it didn't matter. The only important thing was being with this very special person in my life.

We enjoyed a very leisurely lunch before driving to the Beara, astounded at the amount of water in the rivers. We were going to do a coastal walk of some kind but seeing all this water cascading off the mountains we changed our plan to head over to Hungry Hill in order to see the huge waterfall there in full spate. It was the right decision. As we drove over the Healy Pass, I could feel all the stress of the last few weeks simply melt away. The mountains energise me. I was aware of a distinct shift in my consciousness, suddenly turned outwards rather than inwards. And, then, almost as if to perfectly reflect the change in my state of mind, the rain stopped, the clouds started to separate, and the sun managed to break through. This blip captures that first moment of brightness. I love being in tune with the Universe in this way!

We drove around to the foot of Hungry Hill and retraced our steps from when we were here last year. There was so much more water in the falls this time, and masses of spray. I think we got there at the perfect time to see them at their very best. I think TJ's pictures did the scene more justice than mine and her blip here captures the scene quite wonderfully.