Inishowen

River Estuary

Saturday morning started late and slow with a terrific Irish breakfast. A bit of chilling with our Kindles, relaxing before the fire.

Eventually we persuaded ourselves to get up, get out and do something. We had heard there was nice wee bar on the other side of the peninsula at Culdaff that offered good lunches and might have a céilí this evening. Off we set.

Just round the corner, as it were, was the estuary of a small river. We were able to park and walk down to the shore.

The tide was out leaving huge sand flats on either side of the river that stretched for miles inland bordered by pretty high dunes. Clusters of houses and maybe even villages could be seen the distance. The scale was incredible! Above us the dark foreboding sky occasionally opened with stunning shafts of light reflecting of the wet sand and distant glass windows; the shafts of light picking out inconsequential locations. We shared the beach with quite a crowd of folk but they only appeared as specks: testing the water course of the river or fetching sticks for a dog or preparing for some local 10km marathon.

Big sea, west  towards Ballyliffin

In the distance the sea was crashing across the beach or flooming against rocky outcrops but it was so far away, the size of the waves seemed small and tame but the sound belied that, whirling towards us, carried on airborne surf tasting and smelling of the sea.

Later when we had explored enough at sea level, we drove up one of the headlands and were able to look down at the mouth of the estuary where the sea breakers could still be heard crashing on the shore or rocks. Even at this distance the violence of the waves could be heard with huge areas of the sea almost taking to the air in a fog of salt-water. The wind up here was even greater than at sea level where we had been sheltered by the dunes and the cliffs