Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Before and after the storm.

Anticipating a spell of bad weather in the form of hurricane Ophelia we decided to take advantage of the calm before the storm and once again headed in the general direction of the coast, however we decided to take a road that we didn't know.
When I say road it was more like a country lane.
Before long we found ourselves climbing, the road was getting steeper and even narrower that it was at the bottom, we weren't  even sure that it would lead anywhere but we were more or less headed in the right direction to the coast and the scenery was spectacular.


Unfortunately it was a bit dull, the sun wasn't playing ball but I still got some nice shots.
One thing I am very good at is spotting plants, this trip was no different, I had spotted a black thing growing on the grass verge, Simon couldn't see it until he nearly stepped on it.
He recognized it as a club fungi. Once we got home I looked it up, it seems that club fungus is a very large family, and without doing a spore count it's hard to tell which one it was, besides we had not picked any. My best guess is that it was a Black Earth Tongue. It's the first time I have seen this particular fungus, so I was happy to add it to my list of spotted plants.
Eventually we found ourselves on the outskirts of a town, although we didn't immediately recognize it. It turned out that we were in Ballina, a place that we thought we knew well, just not the mountain end of it.
Rosserk Abbey. 1460.
Wanting to get a glimpse of the coast we headed out to Rosserk Abbey to eat our picnic, this is a place that we know well and have photographed many times, so I only took a couple of shots of the Abbey. Although our trip to Ballina took twice as long as our normal route it was a detour that was worth while.
We escaped the worst of the storm, no loss of electricity or internet, other people have not been so lucky. Three people were killed and there are still over 100.000 homes without power, there are also many people with no water. Despite the warnings given about the storm there were still some idiots that thought it would be fun to go swimming, luckily they didn't get into difficulties.
Today as the sun was shining we once again headed for the coast, this time to get seaweed, we knew there would be plenty after the storm and we weren't wrong.
It was the easiest harvesting ever.
Twelve bags were filled in ten minutes.
As it was such a nice day we headed further along the coast, expecting to see lots of big waves,
however it was fairly calm,
with just a few larger breakers.
It seemed that we weren't the only ones who enjoy seeing waves,

a cow decided that her field wasn't interesting enough and took herself for a walk along the old lime stone pavement, I hope she got back to her field alright as the lime stone is quite slippery.

6 comments:

  1. Glad you got through the storm OK. You do live in a lovely corner of the world!

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    1. Yes, Ireland is very beautiful quite like Galicia in some ways but we don't have the beautiful broad leaf forests as Galicia has, we also done have nearly as many edible fungi.

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  2. I logged on to send you both an email to see how are you are getting on and so glad you've posted this and that you escaped the worst of storm. I've been following the news and thinking of you both! Looks like another beautiful day out. "One thing I am very good at is spotting plants" is an understatement! Me and Jason are always amazed when you start listing things you can see in the hedgerows as we whiz along a country lane! Love the pic of the cow by the sea! xxx

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    1. My nick name when I was at school was ditch watcher, so I guess I've always had an interest in flora and fauna.

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  3. What a funny place to see a cow. Glad you escaped the worst of the storm, my heart goes out to those who haven't been so fortunate, it was a bad one by all accounts. It was rather windy here but we were lucky to miss just about all of it.

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  4. All along the west coast you will see cows or sheep in fields right on cliff edges sometimes. This naughty cow had taken advantage of the fact that the stone wall which formed a barrier in her field had been damaged during the storm, I just hope she got back again safely as the rock were very slippery.

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