“Sure, we could be on the Continent.” It was out of my mouth before I knew it and I’m not even sure I was being ironic. At that moment, in that sea in Wexford, I felt like I could be anywhere. I was in the sunny southeast for two glorious days with my dear pal Sophie. We had just done The Dance of the Atlantic, which goes a little something like this:
Wince across pebbles one-two-three, avoid dead jellyfish do-si-do, enter the water heel-toe-heel, scream bloody murder dip-and-swing.The dance comes to a crescendo when you first allow your shoulders to enter the water and reaches a natural end when the breath has returned to enough normality for you to gasp “it’s actually lovely once you’re in”. I had completed all the steps, felt sensation returning to my hands and feet and turned my face towards the afternoon sun when I was overcome with love and gratitude for this little slice of heaven.
Was it Positano or Dubrovnik or Santorini? No. Did it have guaranteed glorious weather stretching out before us for the forseeable future? Also no. In fact, just the previous evening we had been forced to light the fire, such were the frigid temperatures. We were also concerned about the fate of some towels left drying in the back garden, with some dark clouds threatening in the distance. However, at that moment it was the greatest place in the world.
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Wexford holds many happy childhood memories. Out of all the traditional week-long summer holidays we took in Clonakilty, Killybegs and Tralee the place we went most often was Wexford. There was a week in Curracloe where one of my brothers fell into a ditch of nettles. There was another week in cottages at Well’s House with unlimited access to a playground and limited access to the big house under the kind supervision of the German family who owned the place.
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And of course there was the first time I ever laid eyes on Loftus Hall, grey and imposing against a backdrop of trees bent sideways by the wind on Hook Head. My dad told me the story of the devil visiting to play a game of cards and I had nightmares for months, thinking about his cloven hooves lurking just underneath the tablecloth (the devil’s, not my dad’s).
I was back on Hook Head for this trip, swimming in a little cove with a view of the lighthouse. I’ve done the lighthouse tour enough times that I might be able to have a bash at it myself, so a visit wasn’t on the cards this time around. As we did The Dance into the sea, some American tourists – you can always just tell, can’t you? – watched on in bafflement. There was some fairly tenacious seaweed to get through before the water cleared and we placated our fears about lurking crabs and weever fish by imagining we were in a seaweed bath of our own making. “Sure you’d pay €60 for this in a spa”, I declared brightly, scrambling over some extra slippery fronds and wondering why I can remember the bladderwrack life cycle and Latin name (Fucus vesiculosus) from Leaving Cert biology but can’t remember why I just walked into a room or where I parked my car at Big Tesco.
Once free of seaweed and acclimatised to the bracing water we chatted about making sure we weren’t swept out to sea, if only to avoid headlines like “Two dopes down from Dublin winched to safety at Hook Head”. A local might be quoted as saying “Oh I saw two dopes getting in alright. Even the Americans knew it was a bad idea”.
Luckily, we were spared such shame and completed our swim without incident before repairing to Fethard-on-Sea to eat fancy toasted sandwiches outside Grálinn café. It was simultaneously too warm and too cold with a biting breeze and the sun “ag spalpadh sa spéir” (thanks once again, Leaving Cert) but for about the 20th time that weekend felt like the most magical place on earth.
A holiday – even a home-grown one – isn’t complete without a trip around the local supermarket to see how diverse the snack range is and what kind of fancy cereals they have in. SuperValu in Wellingtonbridge didn’t disappoint and these two dopes down from Dublin sailed up and down the aisles with salt crusted in their hair and a cavalier attitude to what went into the basket. I can confirm that buying an industrial-sized bag of Monster Munch on your holidays in Wexford beats the continent any day of the week.