It was the evening before the big adventure, and I needed to pack! Maybe a life jacket, some food for a picnic, a jumper in case I got cold on the water, a mobile phone in case we needed help, an underwater camera too. The next day was going to be a big one. I
If Rivers could talk what stories they would have to tell, good and bad. Unfortunately they can’t – at least, not in language we can understand – so we have to tell their stories ourselves. I’m from Bray in County Wicklow, and like anyone else from the town I have plenty of stories about the
That summer was the hottest I remember. It took the good humour out of everyone so by the time Mum and I arrived at the shoreline of the lake’s dry basin, we weren’t speaking. The boy who was already a man with layers of mud on his hobnailed boots indicated we should follow him. I
When I was young in the 1950’s we lived in Dublin but every summer we decamped for two months to a caravan near Blessington, in a field beside Poulaphouca Lake. There I had the freedom to roam with my dog Pickles. He was a very special dog. His mother was a pure bred Scotty and
The sea and sky merge seamlessly on the horizon. We stop on the brow of Mattie’s Hill and gaze at the sea at Woodstown glistening and shimmering in the distance. It never fails to thrill and excite us. “The tide is out.” Our war cry goes up. We cycle, freewheeling down the hill, shrieking with
My local waterbody, Potter’s River, may seem minuscule in the grand scheme of waterbodies. However, it’s ubiquitous presence around my homeland has allowed it to trickle into copious amounts of my childhood memories. I remember quite clearly the day we ‘named’ our home. Noting the difficulty that the postman had in finding our house in
“As children, myself and my younger brother often heard our Father tell stories from his childhood about the river Greese across from his family home on the ‘Blind Lane’ as it is known locally. He told us about how himself and his younger brother Denis would catch trout and how with pollution over the decades