Going for the Burn

Today

We've had a run of warm and sticky weather lately with some sudden downpours. Here on the Mendips that has resulted in some morning mists which the sun takes a while to burn off.

In My Day

Back in 1993, Paul and I and an assortment of Levetts decided to take a holiday in Ireland. We chose a cottage just outside the Connemara town of Oughterard. That holiday supplies many tales which I feel sure I'll explore in this blog. Every morning started out dull and misty and we would wonder what we could do to get through the day. But, by about midday, the sun would have burnt through, giving us wonderful weather. And the twilights were so long that we still had many hours in which to do things.

On one occasion, Paul and I decided that we would like to visit Innishmore. Off we set in the gloomy morning to catch the ferry from Rossaveal. This necessitated a lengthy drive along pot-holed and rutty roads, passing ruinous farms where raggedy children, dogs and donkeys would stand in the road as though they'd never seen a car before.

Rossaveal is a tiny run-down town on the Galway coast from which ferries to the Aran islands (mostly Innishmore) ran regularly. Having driven all this way we decided to go through with it, despite the dull overcast skies, and climbed on board. As we crossed the water the sun began to break through and, by the time we'd landed, there was glorious sunshine.

There are no cars, to speak of,  on Aran and we thought that the thing to do would be to hire bikes to explore. This we duly did, paying about £10.00 for the hire and £2.00 for the deposit. We couldn't see the logic of such a small deposit at the time, but shrugged and got on with our day.

The land on Aran is split into smallholdings each of which roughly contains some rocky soil, some fertile and a stretch of beach from which there is a valuable harvest of Carrageen moss seaweed. Cattle roamed freely. The lanes were all between high limestone walls and we pedalled happily along. The skies were blue, the fields were green and the beaches like whipped cream. "I'm going down to the beach", I called out to Paul. Did I just say that cattle roamed freely? Just as my wheel touched the sand, there was a roar and a cow turned to chase me away. I cycled madly back up the lane, the cow gaining on me, wondering how I could get myself and bike over the high walls before I was gored. Paul, with gales of laughter, caught the moment on camera and I made it to a gate as the creature thundered past.

But we had a wonderful day, full of sunshine and laughter, and finally got back to the harbour in comfortable time for the ferry. We returned our bikes and received our risible deposits back. As we sat in the sunshine having a Guinness we suddenly realised the wisdom of the deposit. You couldn't steal the bikes - there's no way to get them off the Island, but plenty of people simply found them too much like hard work and abandoned them. The bike company had a little flat-bed truck which they used to go and pick up the bikes, the deposits paying for that nicely!

We finally arrived back at the cottage, so pleased that we'd trusted the sun's ability to burn through. Paul, who'd neglected the factor 50, was less pleased with its ability to burn through his thighs, but, hey-ho! it was worth it it.