Sunny Days

This bike had 15 gears but only one hard saddle. Ouch!

What a day! I decided to take Wednesday as a vacation day, and I struck lucky. We went down to Salthill Prom for breakfast, and it seemed like the Mediterranean – the sky was clear and blue, the sun was shining and there was loads of people pottering about on the prom. About 100 metres offshore, the dolphin had made a return – delighting everyone with views of its fin and back as it broke the surface of the water time after time¹.

I’ve just about recovered from my saddle-soreness caused by riding a bike around Inis Mór [the largest of the Aran Islands] on Monday. We went over on Sunday and came back on Monday – unfortunately, the weather was resolutely grey and overcast for every minute we were there. Actually, the last time I was on a bike was in May 2005 – on Inis Mór. In contrast, yesterday and today have been warm and sunny. I thought that the overnight stay was going to be an expensive one – I realised last night that I’d left my tripod behind me on the ferry – it would cost 300-400 euro to replace. As it turned out, the tripod had been travelling over and back for the last two days, and when I rang the ferry company, they offered to bring it in to Galway to me. There was no need – a trip to Ros A Mhíl was the perfect excuse to put the top down on the MG and drive along the coast. [Big thanks to the Aran Island Ferries who sorted me out – and – and this is something that hardly ever happens in Ireland – rang me back a couple of times to let me know that they had the tripod].

I’m writing this just before I go outside to throw a steak on the barbecue. Yes – I know it will be raining and perhaps snowing before the week is out, but I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts. I didn’t get to take any pictures of the parade this year due to an overrun on a photoshoot, so no gallery of parade pictures this year.

¹Because we were just going for breakfast, I left a camera bag with 4 SLRs and a bucketload of lenses sitting in my hallway, so no pictures at all of the dolphin (I think it was a dolphin – it may well have been a porpoise – I could only see a black silhouette in the water). Ah well.