Thu 14 July

It's been a great holiday, an experience that tells me that I can travel. Perhaps this is an easy introduction - after all, everyone speaks English and the Irish seem naturally friendly and welcoming.
Surprisingly, despite the inconvenience and lack of fresh veg - eating pasta and packaged ingredients every day - I've enjoyed the villages the most; Malin Head and Doolin.
Malin Head was the favourite, with its sheer proximity to the Atlantic crashing into the bay, the wind and rain flexing the windows, while sitting inside chatting, eating unnecessarily and drinking nothing stronger than several pots of tea. It explains why the internet terminal was disconnected by the provider due to poor use, and the unspoken understanding that turning on the TV would be plainly wrong. And there is the plain enjoyment of a 6 hour walk, much of it in the rain, keeping me cool - grey skies, grey light over lush green fields, punctuated by a band of light breaking the clouds and drifting over the hillsides.
In Doolin, the low mist, starting as the light faded, was beautifully eerie. I missed [kicking myself] two evenings of opportunities to get photos of the green landscapes rendered grey and indistinct by the mist: cows grazing before layers of grey parallax, and bare fields, grey-yellow-green in the foreground, falling off to a uniform grey. And best of all, when the light has gone completely, and a glow appears over the crest of the road, brightening, then forming into beams from the headlamps cutting a clear set of rays through the mist, and sometimes silhouetting people, casting their shadow through the dense air. In the distance, street lamps and lights on houses form orbs of coloured jelly in the black.
The usual connection of seeing mist all around and feeling the crisp cold doesn't hold - the air is soft, speckled with moisture, and surprisingly warm. I stood in the mist, Guiness in hand, enjoying the new contradiction, unsure whether those around me were aware of this novelty in my body. None of them mentioned it, so maybe it was just me.