Politics, recessionary gloom, folk yelling on mobile phones an elbow from your ear, as if the contraptions magically rendered everyone else invisible or audibly redundant , computer viruses, and melancholia, all perfectly sound reasons for seeking out an amphitheatre of hush, served with a bed of Alpine Rock Cress, and the aroma of fresh surround air. Brilliant early March sunshine melds into a fuzzy haze of children’s colouring-in. Greens, mauves, sand, silvers and gold, petrol stain the landscape. Would madam like a sprinkling of birdsong, an effervescence of bubble at her feet when the step is released, a whisper of wind in her hair, by the nape of her harried neck, or the taut skin pulsed by a pressing vein, and would she like it uninterruptedly served, and languidly drizzled over the course of the day? Yes, yes, and oh no matter how politically incorrect, YES! From Clydagh Bridge
Clyda Brg (R87450 27780), along the right ( relevant) dirt track out of the car park, through wood, over style, across marshy pasture, up to the ‘ice road’ path, wafting its way ever upward to Lough Curra like a finger traversing a bountiful menu, and at last the splendid reveal of feast for the famished. A bowl of lake booms in its belly, having pigged out all morning on a vast blue sky and swallowed it whole. Frequently and inoffensively it burps, giggling at its edges, where the lower, naked slopes have plunged their extremities. On those slopes where the sun don’t dare peek, is a sugaring of frost unfazed by the festival beneath, inclining to complete indifference in their dark shades, too cool for their own good. Things jump in the lake. Indiscernible. Could be fish, could be joy. Facing the lake, and immediately behind us, stretched for the heavens, Lough Curra’s edges rouse, and so our route to Galtymore and Dawsons table.
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