Back in the 1980s my brother lived in Michigan and loved to fish. He couldn’t come home because there was no Green Card but we loved to open the presents he sent. My sister got a quilted jumpsuit and I got a fishing rod and a few lures. One dark rainy night in March, while
My Father, the Fisherman I can still see him standing at The Gap, a local fishing spot in Thomastown, casting his line into the surging water – a man who loved the river bank and who’d spend hours waiting for the salmon to bite. Many times I was there when a tug would come on
Night was closing in, smothering us in darkness. I sat on the old, rickety bench watching the fire twist and swirl in a never-ending dance. I held my marshmallow out on a skewer and waited until it was brown. I picked it off and plopped it in my mouth savouring its warmth and softness as
One of my favourite places in the world is the mouth of the harbour in Berehaven, with Ardnakinna lighthouse looking down on you from your port side and the Pipers Rocks standing tall and secure to starboard. Even more special are the Glas Lochs, a series of lakes in a scooped-out basin in the Caha
The grass is always greener on Instagram #wildatlanticway. Scenes of brilliant green fields with cliffs, beaches and meandering coastline, sun breaking through cumulus clouds. A mythical fairy land, beautiful, stunning, spectacular. The images on my phone inspire me to get in the car and drive for an hour and a half until I reach the
When I stand on the bridge in Ballytore and look into the river, I am taken back to childhood remembering happy times spent walking the banks, going to and from school in Crookstown, and paddling in the shallows below the bridge. The Greise river rises in Tubber Co. Wicklow and flows into the ‘Barrow, near
The gullet is a small stream of water that runs under the boreen where I live. It flows in to the Camogue River near the village of Emly. In winter it floods up so much it is barely able to get through the eye of the bridge. When I was a young lad it had
The summer of 1945 signalled the end of the terrible conflict that was World War II, with millions of displaced persons wandering helplessly through war- ravaged Europe in search of a home and missing relatives. In contrast, a whole new world was opening up to us with the purchase by my father Joe of a
Our river didn’t have a name. It still doesn’t. Though fed by a large spring and several farm drainage pipes, I suppose it wasn’t a river; more of a fast-flowing stream. But to me, as an undergrown child, it was a river. It was the obstacle I had to jump over on little legs. I
This is a story of imagination and conjecture! Just how did this beautiful bowl end up in Loch Marrave close to the village of Keshcarrigan, Co Leitrim? Dating from the 1st Century this beautiful piece of Art was discovered in Loch Marrave or The Lake of Death, 500 metres north of the village of Keshcarrigan
My memory of my summer holidays in France Puivert lake is in France. I go there every year. When I see Puivert lake, I see a huge lake, lots of trees behind it, I see gliders going around in the sky – and sometimes a plane pulling the glider. I also see the cafe –
Lough Swilly holds many dark secrets. This enticing Lake of Shadows, claimed my mother’s eight-year-old sister, Brigid. This is her story. A fisherman found her in the tidal part of the Crana river. Her long hair was entangled in an old salmon net ‘she was like a little doll floating,’ Dan said. They had to