Our First Irish Beach

After Breakfast and our walk to the church we packed up and got ready to leave lovely Wicklow. One of the things that we made sure to do was to figure out the windshield

wipers. That done we sallied forth fairly certain that we would be much safer today. We would not crash into some thing or someone while trying to get the wipers to work in case it rained. We could see out of the windshield properly even in a downpour and as a bonus we would not run out of windshield washer fluid.

The skies had turned grey and the rain had begun again. Now let me share with you a well-known weather fact in Ireland.

The weather changes quicker than you can say faith and begorrah. Usually the first wave is sunshine, warm and bright with promises of basking on beaches and ice cream cones to stay cool with. Then those lovely clouds build up and start to roll in and are then followed by the rain. We found that usually it was softly at first working up to a sometimes very much harder downpour before the

clouds would roll away again to have the sun reappear to a sparkling, fresh green landscape. Of course there are the days where the skies just turn grey and the rain spits out in a steady patter with the wind gusty and cold. Our day seemed to be shaping up more like that but we didn’t mind because we were on an adventure.

So with our day shaping up to be grey, rainy, windy and with that kind of open ocean beach cold that can creep in and chill you to your bones, we drove out of Wicklow

on the scenic road, which, on the map, was highlighted with a green colour with a yellow line in the center. It looked wider on the map. It was narrow, maybe 15 feet wide with hedges nearly touching the car or at least it felt like that. There were curves and small rises with little stone walls and trees that seemed to be close enough for me to touch if I put my hand out the window.

We were quite concerned that we might run into someone coming from the opposite direction and then where would we go. This road was much narrower than the roads we were on yesterday.

We were looking for lovely Brittas bay beach the Wicklow tourist office had told us of a little further up the coast or the beach just past Brittas which was supposed to be even prettier with easier road access. It really wasn’t that hard to find.

When we got there we were surprised to see an RV parked in the small gravel parking lot. I was very glad that we had not met them while driving on the road. We were not sure that we could have handled that. The beach was lovely even though it was cold and windy and rainy.

I took some photos with my waterproof camera.

I took off my coat for a moment and tried to get a close up of a wave crashing on the rocks but only really succeeded in getting a little wet. There were plaques in the rocks with peoples’ names on them. Maureen thought maybe they were

for sailors who had died. I thought maybe memorials for people from towns and farms nearby and maybe that was their favorite spot, in the summer. Back in Edmonton and in Comox we have memorial benches with peoples’ names and sayings on them, so maybe that was what these were.

Needless to say we stayed on our first beach for about half an hour and turned the heat on in the car when we continued on our way. Our first encounter with St George's Channel was very rewarding.