The Sea Road

My cousin Pat called and asked myself and the wean to come to a kind of seaside picnic, beyond Delgany, in Newcastle. The drive was lovely, a gold-leafed evening full of Wicklow lushness, though the car, full of the day's heat, was a greenhouse. Eventually we arrived at the little village and I found the aptly named sea road easily, a narrow, shadow-flung tree-tunnel that might have brought us anywhere, though I hadn't expected the railway tracks and nearby aerodrome. It was nice to be invited on this kind of hurried adventure, laden with cooking utensils and food (and a bow saw for cutting wood for the fire). It wasn't ideal of course. The boulder-fortified stretch of shore was a wind-, rather than a sun trap, and I was rotten with a bad cold.

There was an interesting sense of being both between and on the edge of things, little planes taking off and circling back every few minutes and at least one surprisingly swift and silent train rocketing past. Pat managed to cook some sausages (and weiners for the wean), plus a pork chop for myself. The wean kept waking on the boulders in his wholly inappropriate Crocs, sat with Lola and his cousin, A or hunted for a selection of white stones (there were some lovely smoothly sculptural pebbles to be found). I'm all for more of these magical mystery adventures. We were well-tired by the time I got us home.