A walk full of beauty, mist and memories
In the lastest instalment of this series celebrating a correspondent’s favourite getaway, Mary Carr makes the case for the charms of Mullaghmore.
IT is mid-summer, and I am walking along the narrow public road of Mullaghmore Head in Co. Sligo. To my right the green land tumbles down towards the frothing waves crashing against the black rocks of the
Atlantic.
In front of me Classiebawn Castle shimmers in the mist, almost like a ghost ship in a maritime painting by Turner or some other master of watery doom.
Geographically this is a headland but in the eye of my mind, it’s like a tiny windswept island and, apart from my family, it’s deserted.
As a child I used to go berserk when my mother suggested this walk, one of few ways we had of passing the time when the weather was dull and inclement which was, as I recollect, a lot of the time.
I hated the endless trudge taking me away from Currids shop where there
was always the hope of some kindly aunt or uncle on an errand throwing me a Curly Wurly or a packet of cheese and onion.
I’d bristle as the grown-ups gave the short cut down the crest of the hill towards the tiny seaside village and harbour – whose tantalising distractions struck me then as only second to Manhattan’s – a grim-faced swerve and plodded on along the roadside, the wind howling in our ears, inflating our plastic kangaroo jackets so that we looked like miniMichelin men.
On and on we’d march, babies and toddlers growing more fractious, older children more disconsolate down by the gate lodge of Classiebawn to turn left, past Rodney Lomax’s boatyard, back towards heavenly civilisation.
I haven’t walked that route in two summers and even before that, it was only intermittently. But I can still see our band of aunts, cousins and siblings walking that high road as if it was yesterday, searching the clouds for hopeful signs of sunshine, the most breathtakingly beautiful scenery in the world at our feet.