Surprise outing

Paddy and I are up early and I can't keep him waiting too long before we hike. First, the view from the house in Creeslough, taken yesterday afternoon.

So off we went to Ards Friary for a swim at Monk's beach this morning. On the way, I took a photo of the estuary, but it doesn't capture the zig zag pattern that repeats: sand, water, sand, water, sand, water, in a lovely serpentine.

One of Paddy's swimming holes below. Paddy's a wee dot one-third the way down the beach.

So then he runs toward the water, turns and looks at me (throw stick, woman!!), runs toward the water, turns and looks at me, etc. This creates a line-loop-line pattern. Hard to make out but here it is:

I brightened the image to try to capture the loops--he cracks me up. My plan for the day was to hike to Ards Forest and back however I got a text from Siobhan Bigger asking if I wanted to meet at the garage in Creeslough and carpool to the back of Glenveagh Park for a hike. So that is what I did. I drove with her on miles of back roads--a route I could never retrace--to get to a part of Glenveagh I didn't know existed. With her brother Donald, his girlfriend Gail, and friends Suzanne and Fergus, we hiked a few miles on one side of a valley.

It was a cold day and I probably wasn't dressed warmly enough, but I was OK. All of us are old school friends, except Fergus. It was lovely walking and talking with each of them--lots of different conversations. I think Fergus is a psychologist. I know he has spent a lot of his time on reconciliation in divided communities. We talked about Say Nothing. He spoke both of IRA atrocities--killing three men in his town (Crossmaglen) as a warning to three women who were dating British soldiers. The men were picked randomly to stand in for the women, as killing women would be bad PR. They also disappeared a man whose son joined the British Army. But he also spoke of the IRA's role in keeping discipline in communities--for instance keeping drugs out (by killing drug dealers). I guess when you are trying to help former terrorists rejoin society you have to find positives??

When we got to the bottom of the valley hike, there was a bothy--a seasonal cottage. We pulled benches out and enjoyed Prosecco, sausages (which Donald cooked on a gas cooker), tea, and biscuits. Siobhan, in the red jacket, is so like her mum in that way--getting people together for a bit of craic. Her mum invited me on some of their family picnics in Donegal--hike, eat in a protected sand dune, hike. Lovely memories.

I ended the day making a fire and reading a really good book about the scandal that brought down the Northern Irish government. Ironically, the book is called burned.

21 March