Memories of Ireland

Ireland. I lived in Carrigaline a small village that began in the 17th century located on the Owenabue River in County Cork in Southern Ireland. This is a small town now, but everyone calls it the village. For me a normal day would start early. The boiler was too expensive to run all the time so we would run it for about an hour in the morning so we could get out of bed, and an hour at night, so to compensate we heated our home in the Herons Wood estate with the fireplace on our main floor. We used wood and peat briquettes; my husband would come home from work each day with a new load in the truck of his car that they called the boot. In the mornings, I’d come down the wood staircase and get the fire started and the kettle going with hot water. My boys would want a hot cup of cocoa or herbal tea to warm them up. 

It never gets too cold in Ireland; snow never lasts long if it does fall in the night it’s all melted by lunch the next day. However, it’s never hot either. It’s wet, humid, and cool year-round. It rains almost every day. Often it would rain all night long and by the time that I would be driving my oldest to school the sun would be coming through the clouds. The sun would be bright, and the road would be hard to see because it was covered in a couple of inches of rainwater and the sun’s reflection would be very bright. The sun never lasted all day. The clouds would cover it up. It didn’t always rain, but it was rare for it to be sunny all day long.  

My son went to school in Ireland. They don’t have a bus system so if you lived far from school as we did, then we had to drive and pick him up each day. I didn’t mind. The roads were small, and we drove on the left-hand side, so that was different from what I was used to, but it soon became second nature. At our school, they did not have traditional parking lots like in the U.S. so you just park on the road near the school and walk your child to his classroom. He always dressed warm and had his raincoat just in case a storm blew in. At the end of his school day, the parents are required to stand in line and collect their child from his or her classroom. They did not let the children leave without their parents collecting them. 

The kitchens are small in Ireland, so you wouldn’t typically do a weekly shop, but instead I would buy enough food for 3-4 days. We could walk down the hill to the shops from the house, this was fun to do, and many people did this and collected their food daily or every other day. They’d walk to the shops from their homes and get fresh bread from the bakery, meat from the butcher shop, and other items at the small food markets located off the main street. They had a sweet shop. It was our favorite place to go. It was a small shop dedicated to sweets. You could point to the candy and the lady behind the counter would scoop it into a striped paper sleeve. After you picked a few items, she would weigh it, then have you pay. This shop didn’t take cards so we always had a few euros on hand to pay.  

If you wanted to buy more items at once, then we would drive our car to the store. There were larger stores to purchase food. There was a Dunn’s in Carrigaline and it had most of what you needed and an Aldi’s which I would go to for things here and there. Dunn’s was more expensive and Aldi didn’t have a good selection so we would drive to Tesco. But on our way to school, I would stop by our Aldi’s and get their freshly baked goods. I really loved their apple tarts. If I wanted to do a big shop, I would drive the 20 minutes to the closest Tesco and there they had more options and their prices were better than my local shops. I finally realized that Tesco would deliver, and for 7 or 8 euros I would get my groceries delivered to my kitchen. This made life nice! I would do this once or twice a month. 

We didn’t spend our money heating our apartment, we chose to use it to travel with instead, and we traveled a lot. We lived near a country airport that was a hub for Ryanair and we took advantage of the 10-euro tickets to London, the 20-euro tickets to Paris and the 30-euro tickets to Faro, Portugal. We also were lucky enough to have a car so we could drive around the entire island of Ireland and see so many treasures that this island has to offer like West Cork and the Ring of Kerry, up the coast to the Cliffs of Moher, Northern Ireland to Giants Causeway, down the East to Waterford and it’s infamous crystal factory, and of course Dublin - Trinity college, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Castle, Grafton Street, and Newgrange tomb in County Meath.  

I lived 20 minutes south of Cork. I love that city. I would meet my friends at our favorite cocoa shop, I got addicted to the hot cocoa there. This place would make hot scones each morning and hot chocolate from melted chocolate pieces mixed with whole milk. I still buy, when I find it, Irish butter Kerry Gold, I miss the fresh bread and cheese that I could get from my local shops. I made some really nice friends, and we took our children out on nature walks in various parks, went on hikes, discovered new beaches, returned again to favorite ones, and walked along cliff's edges, sea sides, and through forests, castles and forts. We loved Blarney Castle and Charles Fort in Kinsale. On days that it wasn’t supposed to rain we ran to the beach. It was only a few minutes' drive from our house, and we spent many afternoons on the sand. If a storm rolled in, we would put on sweaters but keep our swimsuits on and play in the sand, get our feet wet in the ocean water, and near the end we would swim. The ocean water was gentle where we lived but it was cold. We would swim for about 30 minutes then we would pack up and go home. We always left the swimming for the end. Myrtleville Beach became our favorite, but I also loved the others that were just a bit further away too. 

I miss Ireland's rainy days, misty mornings, small roads, green rolling hills in the countryside, happy people, dear friends, yummy bakeries, pub grub, fish and chips, nature walks and parks, beaches and cold ocean water, gentle waves to swim in, bank holidays, Ryanair, stormy weather, reading good books next to a warm fire listening to the rain hit the ground. I read a lot in Ireland. Life was simpler there, I seemed to have more time. I loved living in the countryside, yet I was close enough to the city when I wanted to go.