A July Walk On The Flaggy Shore

This weekend we went for another walk on the Flaggy shore. It is a long time since we walked here - February - to my shame. 

At that time there had been terrible storms which flooded the nearby fields and destroyed a great deal of the road. You can see the damage in my February post.

The road has still not been repaired, driving along it to reach the parking place is still possible but difficult.

JELLYFISH ON THE FLAGGY SHORE AND IN THE FLAGGY WATER!

The weather was lovely and warm when we visited and people were in swimming. I didn’t get in. The sand was littered with jellyfish and there were thousands of them in the water.

I had a couple of very painful stings from the ‘Purple Stinger’ when swimming in Malta and I must admit I don’t want a repeat of that. Although I am sure the jellyfish on the west coast can’t deliver anything like the bang of its Maltese counterpart I was only tempted to do some some careful paddling. These happy swimmers showed no such qualms.

WALKING FOR ICE-CREAM

We varied our route ever so slightly this time as we took a detour to a homemade ice-cream cafe. It was positioned at mid-point in a walk - so as to test even the strongest of will power and believe me - my will power was tested and so what I enjoyed that ice-cream very much.

There were a lot of people there eating ice-cream and I suspect that ice-cream cafe may add 'purpose' to a lot of people's walks. As we left the cafe we came across this wall - dated, as you can see, with the year 2000.

GRANNY AND GRANDAD

The wall had quite a few interesting features - including this rather incongruous and bespectacled pair.

THE FINNVARRA MAN
To the side of the wall was this alcove. Someone had added some rather interesting graffiti, or was it a an original feature?

CASTLE NAMELESS

On the return route we passed this beautiful old castle and I will return to this page with its name once I find out exactly what it is called. 

JELLY-FISHING 
Returning to the Flaggy shore itself we watched this fisherman and wondered if he managed to catch any fish in the jellyfish cloud.

GENTLY FALLS THE SUN

Later that evening we watched the sun begin to set over the shore.

SUNSET ON FLAGGY SHORE

And later again we watched this beautiful sun set as the sky fell gently into darkness. 

I hope you enjoyed my visit as much as I did - and if so why not say hello in the comments. I would love to hear from you.

Bye for now,

Grace

The Queen Of Eddy

If you ever come to Galway you will notice it is home to a lot of boats! Not all of them are on the water, or anchored near piers. A lot of them are wrecked, crumbling gradually in the earth around them. Maybe it's more trouble than it is worth to get rid of them, so their owners just leave them. Out of sight out of mind. Quite of lot them end up lying in rest in fields, or near the shore like this old boat below.

I love to see these old boats. There is such a sense of history about them and even a little beauty in their woody decay. If you walk up close to them, or sit down in rest in one you will feel an atmosphere around them in the same way as a derelict house might seem to retain the atmosphere of its former occupants, or is that just my imagination?

My favourite wrecked boat is this one, 'The Queen Of Eddy.' A beautiful, red wreck that has been leaning up against a wall at my local pier since I moved here. I moved here in September 2012 and until recently it was leaning up against the wall as you can see in the picture below.

The Queen of Eddy marks the halfway point of my daily walk and I love that first glimpse of her bright red colour that makes her stand out against the grey of the stone walled pier.
Even when I walk at night I can see her, as she lies right below a light which casts her in a new role - as  the highlight of the bay.

Recently as you may know, Galway has taken quite a battering in the storms and so, unfortunately has The Queen Of Eddy. I thought at one point she was going to end up back in the Atlantic but as you can see in these pictures, somehow she remained tethered to a huge rock and managed to stay on the shore. Thankfully, there she continue to reign until we see where the next storm takes her. I hope it doesn't take her far I would really miss The Queen Of Eddy!

Walking On The Flaggy Shore

Yesterday the sun was shining and there was no storm blowing. We haven't had a day this good for a while so we decided to get out for a walk while we had the chance. As always we brought Sheba, our German Shepherd, and for the first time we brought little Eppie, our five month old puppy who hasn't walked this far with us before.

We headed for the Flaggy Shore. The Flaggy Shore is in northern Clare and is one of nine sites of geological importance recognised by Unesco. It is one of our favourite places to walk because of its beautiful views and shore line. It is also very close to where we live and I consider it part of my fictitious Ballyyahoo area.

We were shocked when we arrived to find the road we normally drive along to park our car had been washed away by the storm. All that remained were the stones. Most of the rocks and boulders are grey limestone but there is also some granite and sandstone. 

In fact the landscape is very different from our last walk. Not just the roads gone but whole fields have become lakes. This below was a grazing field. It is now a lake edged by tons of seaweed. 

This used to be a road that turned into another grazing field but this is all that remains. 

Again you can see the remain of the road in the photograph below. The surface has been washed away and the surrounding fields look like part of a bay - they weren't before!

Sheba loves swimming and she quickly got herself in the freezing salt water to enjoy herself in what used to be a field.

 As we walked on we found a large length of the road still okay but as we went further we found the road had disappeared into the water. The area to the left used to be a field!

This is a closer view of the water. You can see the long grass just floating below the surface.

We couldn't walk through this river/road so we decided to climb this stone wall and cross the field to avoid it. Eppie wasn't sure whether she wanted to go over the wall but in the end she went for it.

We all made it over the wall and after the crossing the boggy field we had another wall to climb.

The Flaggy shore walk is great as an easy walk - you don't have to back track because it loops around to take you back to where you started and there are no shortage of beautiful sights as you go along.  

This horse was quite tame and happily trotted up to the wall to be closer. 

Despite the damage, the walk along the Flaggy shore is still very enjoyable and beautiful but I can't help thinking about those whose land and property has been damaged by the recent storms and floods and hope that they can recover from this. 

If You Went Down To The Woods Today

BALLYYAHOO WOODS

The woods I describe in my Ballyyahoo books are inspired by different woodlands. Many of them are in Wicklow where I lived most of my life, one in Wexford and several in Galway.

We went to Kilcolgan woods today. We are regular visitors to this woods as it is not too far away from our home. We have had such stormy weather lately we weren't sure what we would find but we were very pleasantly surprised. The dark relentless rain of the morning gave way to scattered showers by mid-morning. As we began walking, the sun trickled through the treetops and dropped a dappled chain of light throughout the trails.

The rain seems to have given rise to a lush growth of ivy, ferns and moss everywhere we looked. This tree below had fallen, yet it appeared to have given birth to two baby trees that were growing vertically despite their position on the sunny diagonal of the trunk.

BIRTH OF A TREE

ON THE FOREST BED

These two pictures show different portions of a rather graceful looking piece of trunk. This rested on the forest bed as though gently placed there by nature herself while she decided how best to depict their beauty.

FERN

As we walked through the paths we passed a great deal of ferns like this one below. I think these ferns are looking more fully formed and lush than their sisters of last years.

LESSER KNOWN ROSES

Nature placed the branch to which these little brown cones were attached gently across a bed of ivy and moss. She couldn't have positioned them any more perfect in my opinion because the cones look like little brown flowers from a lesser known species of rose. 

THE CHOPPED DOWN TREE

The contrast between the sharp cut of the chopped down tree and nature's own tangle of branches caught my eye. 

MOSS ON A ROCK

Behind this moss covered rock, the bare trunks of the trees seem to have sprang from another, more barren climate, yet they can only exist together. I love the way the fern hangs down like feathers.

FAIRY GLADES

It is easy to see how the idea of fairies came about when you look at these glades. Who else could you imagine living here other than those tiny translucent creatures. Fairies could hide so easily in the small crevices in the rocks, take shelter from the rain underneath the ferns and of course sit down on the softest of seats made from moss!

FLOOD POND

At the end of one of the trails we came to this recently formed pond. This is the only part of the woods that flooded. This was surprising considering the amount of nearby fields that have been transformed into lakes, complete with confused looking cows clinging to their boundary hedgerows.The line across the water is a row of wooden slats placed there for cyclists, none of whom braved the woods today.

A REST FOR THE WEARY

There are always plenty of resting places in the woods but this is my favourite. The soft blanket of moss shields you from the coldness of the rock below.

If rocks could whisper I would have heard it say 'sit down.' 

The Calm After The Storm

Bay At 'Ballyyahoo.'

This week saw an end to the storms that hit Ireland after Christmas. The damage around the bay is being cleaned up and anything that washed up in the storms is being moved up the pier.

THE OYSTER BED

My walks to this little bay have become even more interesting because each day when I arrive down I am greeted by something new and unusual.

The first and biggest thing to arrive was this oyster bed. It had broken up during the storm and a local farmer dragged it up the pier with a tractor and left it on this grassy area. I think its years being churned around the Atlantic and has bestowed it with a quiet beauty and I think it holds its own against the landscape.

Oyster Bed at Ballyyahoo

THE COLOUR OF ROPE

This is the view from underneath. It is a huge structure and I have no idea what it is made of but to me the pipes look like huge bones. The ropes dangling down are all different colours and wonderfully  strange.

What Lies Beneath The Oyster bed.

THE SCENT OF THE SEA

This is a side view. You can get more of a sense of its size in this photograph. I wish you could smell it as it is surprisingly fresh.

Side view

ROLL IN THE BARRELS

This little lot arrived a few days after the oyster bed. The blue barrels in the crate seemed to appear with the black square of pipe so maybe they were connected in their former life.

Roll Out The Barrels

NATURE ROCKS

This large block with a chain attached was next. It is very large and heavy and it must have been some kind of anchor. I have no idea how something this size got broken and washed up but then again I am pretty sure nature can trounce anything we can make!

Chained up


That's all for now. Happy January
Grace

Water Water Everywhere

I have always lived quite close to the sea. Even growing up in Liverpool we weren’t too far away – a bus ride and a fifteen-minute walk to the River Mersey.

Being landlocked would be a nightmare for me. I honestly don’t think I could stand it. When I visit places in the midlands here in Ireland I always like to find the nearest river or lake and go for a walk. I seem to need proximity to water in order to relax.

When I used to live in County Wicklow I was a mile away from the sea and when we moved to Galway we decided to look for a place as close to the sea as we could get without being in danger of being flooded.

COUNTY WICKLOW

Greystones, County Wicklow

KINVARA

We succeeded in finding a place exactly a mile from the sea near Kinvara and we are now within walking distance of this beautiful little bay and pier below.

GALWAY

This little beach is also very near and we enjoyed some great swimming there last summer.

COUNTY CLARE

The beach below is just in County Clare and is part of the Burren. It is a favourite for walkers in the area and forms a loop around a small peninsula.

GALWAY

This bay in Maree runs out to the Atlantic. This is another favourite walk of mine and I was very lucky to be around on one of the rare occasions when the wind was quiet and the water was still enough to cast these reflections.

BALLYYAHOO 

The Kinvara area and the surrounding areas of the Burren and Maree provide much of the inspiration for my Ballyyahoo stories and sites.