Our Days Out

We inhabit an island with unpredictable weather. T’s mother says that there is only one rule for living here: when the sun shines drop everything and go out. On our staycation we have been doing our best to follow her advice. Our two long sunny days out were good in the main, but with an unexpected twist. And it is bucketing down as I write this.

Monday promised to be a hot day with unbroken sunshine. T arranged to meet a pal of hers in Belfast for lunch and some shopping. I took the bike down to Castlebellingham in Co Louth and followed the coast road south. My bike computer showed 80 degrees F with a cooling breeze coming off the sea. I stopped at Termonfeckin for lunch. It sounded like a place out of Father Ted, but the cafe brought me a good bowl of soup and bread. When cycling with my herniated diaphragm and restricted stomach, I know I need to eat foods that are easily digested.

I headed on into Drogheda, a pretty undistinguished place apart from one medieval gate. Turning inland I lost the sea breeze, the sun got hotter and the hills began. By the time I got to Mellifont Abbey, the remains of the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland, I was feeling rough. The lunch had disagreed with me, my stomach was inflating with wind and was depressing my left lung. I was overheating. I tried to drink more but it wouldn’t go down.

From there it was a lumpy 15 miles back to the car. I struggled up the hills, very salty sweat running into my eyes. The bike computer showed 92 F, the highest I had seen on this island. As I cycled on, via Monasterboice, I began to have irrational thoughts, almost delusions. I saw myself standing by the side of the road watching me inch my way up the hill in bottom gear. It felt a little like when I was cycling in Sri Lanka around ten years ago and I got a touch of heat stroke.

I managed to keep on going and thankfully reached the car. It was 6pm and still 80F. Despite the bad guts, depressed lung and dehydration, I had just completed my longest ride this year: 46 miles. I rested for a while; then drove home very slowly. T was already home and tended me caringly. I lay on the bed and drank rehydration salts. Enormous farts began and continued all through the night. I didn’t sleep much. Although I am accustomed to the sun, my face, arms and legs felt sore. The next morning I had the runs. My light lunch in Termonfeckin had indeed proved costly.

By midday I was starting to perk up and T was keen to go out into the clear blue afternoon. ‘It’s boiling’, she said. Unlike the day before, I packed a hat. We did a tour of Lecale by car, starting off at the stone circle in Ballynoe, which is the largest in NI and has a lovely holloway down to it. Unfortunately over recent years it has become festooned with hippy tat; ribbons, wool, bits of shiny metal dangle beside your head as you make your way there. Thankfully we were alone at the stones themselves.

We drove on through Killough and Ardglass, which was a major medieval port and a holiday resort for early Victorians, with a ladies’ bathing house in the harbour. At Kilclief Bay we had a picnic, went paddling and spotted small flatfish and a hermit crab in rock pools. After ice cream at Strangford we walked to Audley’s Castle and around the coast to Castle Ward.

Two grand days out in warm sunshine before four days forecast with unseasonable wind and rain. Mammy T had indeed been right.