KERRE MCIVOR

IRELAND IS GRIPPED BY A HEATWAVE AND KERRE CAN’T BELIEVE HER LUCK

The Great Irish Heatwave of 2018 will go down in history. And for very good reason. The mercury has soared this past week.

Twenty-eight degrees Celsius.

Twenty nine. On a couple of occasions, it even nudged past 30 degrees. The good folk of Ireland don’t quite know what’s happened. They’re so used to apologising for their damp, rainy climate, they don’t quite know what to do with clear blue skies and scorching temperatures. A common phrase in Ireland is “Sure, and if you put a roof on the country now, we’d be perfect.” But there was none of that this week.

The weather was all anyone was talking about and the newspapers were full of heatwave-related stories. People were being urged to keep up their fluids and check on their neighbours. Parents were told to smother their children in sunscreen and limit their exposure to the sun. Farmers are facing drought conditions and widespread water restrictions may well be introduced across Ireland if the dry spell continues.

But despite the alarmist headlines, thousands of people are enjoying the novelty of the finest summer weather in 42 years – and that includes me. It’s been bliss feeling the warmth of the sun after leaving behind a New Zealand winter and we’ve been ideally placed to make the most of the weather.

I had a week in Ireland as a guest of the Irish Tourism Board before heading to France to spend three weeks with my extended family, and our first stop was a gorgeous wee seaside village in County Sligo. Strandhill is just five kilometres from Sligo city, so I suppose, technically, it’s a suburb of Sligo but it has a wonderful, laid-back beachy feel all of its own that makes it quite separate from the city. There are great cafés and bars – according to the husband, the Strand Bar pours one of the best Guinesses he’s ever tasted and trust me, he should know. There’s an excellent ice-cream shop and crêperie run by a young man who spent time in New Zealand perfecting his ice-cream-making skills and, of course, there’s the ubiquitous Kiwi actually living in this tiny town.

Kiwi Paul, as he’s known in Strandhill, owns the local surf school and what’s even more of a coincidence, he and I used to work together in hospitality back in the day and his brother is one of my bosses at my radio station. Paul was working up to 10 o’clock at night most evenings, making the most of the long summer evenings and the holiday makers thronging to Strandhill. Like most resort towns, everybody has to work from dawn ‘til dusk during the summer season to tide them over during the long winter months. It was amazing how many surfers there were in the water.

I’ve never really thought of Ireland as a surfing nation. But according to Paul, there are some excellent waves around the Sligo coastline and plenty of room to surf them.

And it was great seeing just as many girls as there were boys with boards balanced on their heads, heading out their front gates and walking down the road to the beach.

My Irishman was most bemused. He’d never seen the like of it when he was growing up in Derry. And he couldn’t believe that his homeland was experiencing temperatures higher than those in the Canary Islands. He needed a hat to protect his fair skin from sizzling to a crisp and I had to visit three different stores in Sligo to find him one – they’d all sold out. It was the most splendid week and I can’t believe that the one fervent wish I had when we left was that the weather would be as good in France as it had been in Ireland. Whoever would have thought it?