My special task as ‘Beetle Baby’ enjoys a reunion with police sergeant...
I WAS in Wicklow last week for a special task, and with shades of 007 and the Man from Del Monte, I brought a smile to the face, and a tear to the eye, of my good friend Joanie Lucy. Even though the wildlife, music and the Sugar Loaf mountain had me in raptures, Joanie’s face stole the show when I was successful with my mission, and it was the first time I have ever seen her lost for words.
Priceless, and with enough Brownie points tucked in my back pocket to keep me going for a year or more, I can now tell readers the full story.
You see, Joanie was born 28 years ago in the back of a VW Beetle in Newtown Mount Kennedy, near the seaside town of Bray just south of Dublin.
She was delighted that I had arranged to take her back ‘home’ for the first time since she was seven years old., but what she had not bargained for was that I had managed to track down the GuardPoliceman who had delivered her all those years ago.
Sergeant Sean Tiernan had retired 20 years to the day when the three of us met up, and as you may imagine, it was emotional.
Unknown to Joanie I had taken a closer look at the front page of the Wicklow People, from August 1989, which she has framed on her wall.
‘Beetle Baby’ is the headline, but as soon as I saw the sergeant’s name further down the article, I donned Sherlock’s hat, pulled on his pipe and began the search.
The newspapers were not much help but I struck gold when I called the headquarters of the An Garda Síochána – the police force of the Republic of Ireland, although the initial response from the desk officer was less than optimistic, “Ah no, he’ll be long dead, especially in this job!”
Thankfully Sergeant Sean was alive and kicking and delighted to meet Joanie, “I often wondered what happened to her”, he said in a lovely lilting brogue.
Sgt Sean soon produced the same front page which he had also kept, and then proudly showed Joanie the hand-painted plate Joanie’s mum had presented him with, complete with a drawing of the ‘beetle’.
Mission complete we headed for the enigmatically named Wicklow Gap on the most beautiful day imaginable.
We looked over the Kings River, the Glendasan valley and the upper lake at Glendalough, complete with the improbably tight-knitted stonework of one of Ireland’s best preserved round towers.
The road reaches a high point of 470 metres after passing the Piper Stone Circles and an ancient Monastic settlement along the way.
If you’re lucky enough to be at the summit of the Wicklow Gap on a clear day, as we were, you get the chance to look back across the Irish Sea and catch a glimpse of the mountains in Snowdonia.
The road twists and turns as it traverses the mountains, crossing wide-open expanses of moorland covered with great clumps of yellow gorse, and on our trip a marauding cuckoo scouted for inviting nests.
There’s hardly a tree to be seen in this area but this does allow spectacular views across to the hidden Lough Ouler, a heart-shaped lake known as ‘Lake of the Eagle.
And I can’t say fairer than that.