Running and Rambling

Salterstown, Co Louth

Louth Coastline

Running in the morning, rambling in the evening…

My run went to six and half miles. Decided to walk the last half just because my back was beginning to niggle. And because I really am a lazy sod.

I threw a hill into the run, so maybe that made it all a bit more painful. The first half was pretty much uphill all the way so yes, you can imagine what the second half was like. Though I was a bit too hot and tired to appreciate it.

Anyway, `tis done.

The evening ramble took up me up along the Louth coastline. It was a compensatory trip for Sunday`s sodden disaster. I`d toddled along to the National Botanical Gardens in glorious sunshine. I was almost drooling at the thoughts of the floral explosion my camera would be greeted with there.

Instead, the second I set foot outside my car, I was greeted by the most gawdalmighty awful deluge. It was of Noahesque proportions. I sheltered in the nearest available hothouse with sixty six thousand other people and their annoyingly loud kids. Wouldn`t mind, but it was the cactus house. Is there anything as visually boring as a cactus in a pot? And that vision isn`t improved by the sound of a whiny kid screaming for his Dad, who apparently, had the good sense to shelter in the Tropical House.

Salterstown couldn`t have been more different. Not a whiny kid in sight. Nobody, actually. It`s not a beach, more of a rocky interlude between the road and the sea. But it`s prize, from a swimmer`s point of view is a short pier. And the fact that it`s not swarming with jellyfish.

In my short swim in the Irish sea last week, I had a unnerving sensation of hitting five jellyfish heads within a few short swimming strokes. Shudder! The abnormally warm waters may well have killed them off, as a lot of dead ones had been washed up along the shore. Even so, I had doomsday visions of a Portuguese Man O`War floating my way so I bailed out early.

It was too late for a swim in Salterstown yesterday. But the peace, the skies and the sea were glorious. And yes, I`ll be back for more.