The white, wild water rushes towards the end of the world across the jogged unheeding cliff top. It had run down across the yellow and pink heather covered lands, rushing desperately, never finding a final destination. Flying into mid-air is it rages out and free for a second then gravity pulls it down and down,
Sounds of water lapping, squelching, splashing, glugging, flowing are trapped within my hiking boots which trudged the Wicklow hills. Heading to the Sally Gap, I don my newly polished boots. Leaving the forest tracks behind, we head cross country towards Lugalla or Fancy Mountain. “Watch out for bright green moss” said my companion. Too late!
The Anglia full of fishing bags, rods, the fishing net, sandwiches in brown paper; we’d often go fishing, my Dad and I. He’d drive up the long hill from Kilmacanogue. Then, on the Calary Bog road, I was allowed to hold the steering wheel. I was about ten years old. We were on our way
The day dawns fair. I walk out my front door and in five minutes I’m by the sea. The sky is blue and dotted with white clouds, mirrored by the blue of the sea and its ‘white horses’ whipped up by the fresh south-westerly wind. In an instant I have forgotten my cares and concerns.
Ever since I was a young boy my Daddy and also my Grandparents have taken me fishing. My grandad is 85 and granny is 82. They live near me and we regularly travel to lakes in Roundwood. I caught my first fish there when I was only 3. We were in a boat and I
I grew up alongside a River at the bottom of the Dublin mountains and I now live alongside a River in the Wicklow mountains, only about a mile from its source which is a tributary the start of the Liffey. It’s nature at it’s best and as an all-round angler can appreciate that this is
“I’d rather be at Nick Higgins’s at Liffey Head!” It was a phrase of my mam’s growing up. It meant I’d rather be anywhere but there, she said. It was wasn’t exactly a regular saying of hers but it had its diverse uses in our house. “Mam, would you not want to go to Santa
We moved to River Lane before we knew that was its name. Google, estate agents and the vendors didn’t even know, but the Coronavirus brought the OSi map back into all our lives as we rushed to the boundaries of our 2km radius. Our little terrace of just six houses is fortuitously placed bordering a
Near to where I grew up in Blessington there was a dark pool of water that fascinated and terrified all of us children. In winter, the pool was from a sullen overflow that turned hypnotically in its dark bowl; on a windy summer’s day it was a dirty palm that rattled loose stones like knucklebones
A Dhia, a chruithidh Farraige, sleibhte agus speir, Go mbeadh fuinneamh agus brf na farraige ionam, Ceol na farraige i’m chro1, Neart agus buan na sleibhte i m’intinn Nuair a thagann na stoirm; Go mbeadh s1ora1ocht na speire i’m spiorad, Is radharc fiche/fiche i suile m’anam, Go bh’feicfinn na sforaf i ngach nf A chruithidh
The little Sally stream rises near Djouce, passes my old house, from where it continues, dead straight, under Sally’s bridge and beyond, to the Vartry reservoir. Stuck in the dregs of the reservoir is a tiny shiny-red boot. Sally’s Bridge, Roundwood, Co Wicklow. I said it was dead straight. It was straightened. Farmer Brady’s two
After the sudden heavy rains that August, the little river that meanders through the suburbs from Deansgrange in Dublin out to Killiney Bay swelled to a torrent along the narrow culvert through the railway embankment. Tearing its way across the shingle to the sea, it had carved a deep channel with steep sides at least