Reclaiming the Ramparts. (A celebration and a rant!)

Way back in Autumn on a crisp Friday morning I went for a walk in one of my favourite places in Drogheda. The Ramparts walk which follows the banks of the river Boyne from St Dominic's Park to Oldbridge House. one of our most historic sites as it was here that two kings, one Dutch and one English would fight a battle, the memory of which would eventually command an incredible longevity in Irish history. That day was full of calm sunshine, everywhere there was inspiring colour.

 

The grass looks like a Farrow and Ball colour.

 

 I love the stone work on the old mill.

 

 

Hidden pockets of light and shadow.

 

 Turning to look back at the town, almost sepia.

 

 

The river looked beautiful, dressed in shifting alluring reflections and contrasts. In myth and legend, the river was Boyne created by the Goddess Boann who disobeyed her husband Nectain and channelled the power of his magic well so that the waters rose and surged all the way to the sea. But the waters drowned Boann and her faithful dog Dabilla.

This is the fourth river I have lived near and while the sea and the coast are my first loves, I love the slow drama of the riverbank. The Boyne is a tidal river and sometimes her moods are far from subtle. I love(d) the freedom of this walk, safe for the dog to be off-lead for long stretches and the promise of a lovely cup of coffee in the café at Oldbridge House. Sometimes, you may be lucky to be accompanied by a seal, I had no idea these beautiful animals would venture so far into fresh water and was deliciously spooked one day when one raised a sleek grey head to study me. The colour that day has inspired another crochet blanket, about which I have written a little here.

However, I have avoided the Ramparts walk since then and that was due to a shocking incident a couple of weeks later when a female jogger was attacked by a man here at 9.00am. Horrifically, despite falling into the river, the man continued to attempt to assault this poor woman. Profound shock was replaced by anger when the response by the Guardi warning women not to walk or jog alone. The fallacy of this response was eloquently expressed by Una Mullany in the Irish Times here. No one has been arrested following the incident.

I was angry at the attacker, at the police and at myself  - for allowing this mans actions to influence my own behaviour. I love walking with other people but I need to walk alone. It gives me a chance to think or some times not to think.  For me, walking and pushing myself to walk greater distances can become almost a meditative experience. I had planned to eventually continue further and walk part of the Boyne Navigation Canal that ran to the town of Navan. So, I have been waiting for the moment to return and today which began frosty and light was the perfect morning.

By the time I had left the house though it was all grey! Look at the difference in the park,

 

The walk has now been closed thanks to a landslide at the Oldbridge end just where walkers are supposed to join the 800 000 euro boardwalk that is supposed to link these heritage areas. Here are our representatives congratulating themselves yet despite this critical investment for the area, the walkway has been inaccessible from the Drogheda end because the impotent council cannot seem to engineer a solution to the landslide or to bring to account one of the country's biggest developers who built a housing estate on the problematic land. I -on my own responsibility- ignored the closed signs as the majority of the walk is safe and probably the only public land in the locality which is both accessible by foot and where a dog can enjoy essential lead-free time.

 

 

 

Despite this shameful neglect of one of the prizes in our local environment and the fact that I couldn't continue I am glad I walked this route today. I put some demons to rest. Future plans for the area include a walk/cycle way from the Elizabethan Maiden Tower at coastal Mornington through Drogheda to Oldbridge eventually finishing at the UNESCO site of Bru Na Boinne. Wouldn't that be an amazing amenity for the area, so much more valuable to the needs of the local community and our very welcome tourists than yet another empty retail park?

 

If you have stayed to the end of this long post, thank-you so much. Have a fantastic weekend! Can you believe next week it will be March? xxxx

 

Fluff

 

(A Young Girl Reading Jean-Honore Fragonard.)

 

It is very hard to concentrate on my degree sometimes. I do blame the OU for the percentage of online study it requires. Here I am on a most beautiful autumn afternoon supposedly broadening my understanding of the development of the political and social structures that were born out of the aftermath of the First World War, specialising in the analysis of the 'psychological modernity thesis' but because I am reading a journal on the PC, I am swayed, distracted and intrigued by many other interests. Thanks to the internet I have the attention span of a gnat, preferring to investigate:

• recipes for banana bread, there are five very ripe bananas in the fridge.
• recipes for toffee apples, we are not yet done with Halloween, it appears.
• pom-pom scarf tutorials, so cute.
• Mise's curtain malaise and subsequently what to do with my single quince...
• The lovely crochet blog header on Emerald Cottage, so new blanket inspiration approaching very quickly. Need. More. Yarn.
• Benedict Cumberbatch.
• Is chocolate good for you? It is in The Guardian, must be worthy of a read, right?
• the amount of dog hair that has suddenly become visible in the low afternoon light.

If I was in the dim library reading through a dusty old paper journal I would not have to endure these problems. In the years before the communications revolution, I would be frantically scanning through for the pertinent section and then queuing up at the photo-copier with my fellow students, desperately hoping for a pocket full of enough change. I do fear though that my restless brain is not the type of organ that wants to wrestle with phrases such as 'psycho-physical parallelism'. Instead it wants to laze around indulgently preoccupying itself with lovely fluff.

There is a season.

Oh my, September has slipped by so quickly this year, in a swoon of golden light and a myriad of small tasks. It was hard getting back into the busy routine that marks the start of the school year but adjust to it we did and are all the better for it. Slowly, the house is being put back to normal after all the renovation activity and slowly all the plaster dust is being eliminated.

I have been preserving and gardening, simple life affirming tasks that I love doing when all is peaceful in the house I finally got around to making my marrow and ginger jam which has been a taste revelation! Spread on hot buttery scones the taste is of delicate sunshine with a little hot lick of the ginger, so so good. I posted the recipe last Autumn here. I have been planting in my poor neglected garden, 60 tulip and narcissus bulbs all waiting for the spring and a couple of bare root roses which I hope will inject some much needed summer colour and scent.

My tottering pile of granny squares is making me feel quite smug and is keeping me from getting back down to concentrating on practicing my sewing but I can feel the weather turning and cannot wait until all the squares are joined up into a lovely cosy blanket. In between all that, my Open University course has started again and I am loving it so much this my penultimate year. This module is a history module, my first love and we are studying Europe from 1914 to 1989 which gave me quite a start when I realized that the scope of this course ends the year I began to study history the first time around!

We have celebrated Life, E turned eight that the end of the month and is getting so tall sometimes I glimpse the teenager that will appear in my life one day, yet sometimes when she cries for me I sense that my wee cuddly girl will be around for a little while yet. The tooth fairy arrived and she was allowed to ride in the front seat of the car for the first time, big steps for a little person. O found it a little harder to settle back to school this year, he was upset at leaving his teacher from last year and while his current teacher seems fine, he had a special connection with his first year teacher that was always going to be impossible to replicate. Sometimes I do contemplate going back to work but it is such a privilege being here for them when they come home and to have the time to listen to all their little worries and triumphs.

We have also brought in a tiny harvest from our poor neglected allotment, we say this every year but next year we are going to be top growers. I was just delighted with the sunflowers this year and we had a good many cucumbers, courgettes, and the pumpkins are looking good for Halloween. Unfortunately O has adopted that wee pumpkin that you can see on the plate there, 'Pumpkiny' has been going to school with O for the past couple of days and I am wondering how to break the news that I want to roast and eat him...

We have saluted Death, my Grandfather's brother J, was laid to rest in the Co. Tyrone soil that sustained all eight of his brothers and sisters, his Father and Grandfathers. He was almost 95 and jokingly referred to himself as 'The Last Man Standing,' With his passing ends a generation of men and women that connected our familial memory to a past that is retreating all too quickly into our folk history. A history of collecting well water, gas lamps, drying clothes on the blackthorn hedge, thatched roofs and baking soda bread on the griddle. The Child of Prague on the wall and a best suit for Sunday. His family placed his cap, walking stick and wedding photograph on the altar, J and M smiled out from the frame, the joy of youth captured in a shutter click, filmic in their simple 1940's suits and sharp good-looking features, hair swept back. A blink of an eye is a life yet isn't there something so comforting, so right about a life lived well.


Thank-you so much for reading. have a fantastic week! xxx