Campervan Therapy

Kilmore Quay’s campsite gifts us a view of blue sea and an everchanging sky. The granite walled harbour is busy with tractors delivering crates of crabs to the warehouses, cranes lifting catches of fish from the small trawlers.

We pass the rib bone of a whale beached on the strand here, and the memorial garden to lives lost at sea.

The sculpture of a man and woman, clasped together, with the tails of merpeople tails is arresting.

The marram grass covered sand-dunes meet the long arch of windswept beach on one side and the fields of oats and wheat on the other. Goldcrests and goldfinches feed on the dunes and chamomile studded edges of the fields. A stonechat’s song pebble-clacks. Butterflies flit on the path by the fields and up through the dunes.

Of course, I can’t resist the nature-table-loving-child-in-me on the beach, as I pocket pebbles, polished by the sea and veined with marble, limestone and iron. And who could resist a name like Forlorn Point?  I stride out along the narrow groyne, to ancient rocks, called after all the ships wrecked off this coast.  

We look out at the Saltee Islands, once home to rebels, smugglers and its very own royalty.  Michael Neale declared the islands independent in the 1950s, becoming their first prince. Now it’s a bird sanctuary for puffins, choughs and a grey seal breeding ground. Next year, we’ll visit.

 After a lunch of super-fresh, Cajun spiced hake, we search out the rocks that are some of the oldest in the world, formed almost two billion years ago.

For our whole lives, Rosslare has been our point of entry and leaving from Ireland, but we’ve never explored it. This time we wend our way through reeds, flowering sea holly and lavender, under cliffs with flaming patches of montbretia, out onto a protected bay, with fine, silvery sand.  

We follow the cliff walk by wildflowers, watching an amazing black, red and green striped moth, or perhaps it was a beetle? But as neither of us find the definitive answer, we have to satisfy ourselves by just accepting its beauty.

As we wander down from the cliffside path, through Rosslare village, we detour into a series of interwoven, secret gardens.  Seamus Kirwan established the garden first in mid 1980s and worked on it for 25 years.

Now it’s maintained by the community and encompasses a beautiful lily-pond in what was once the village dump. I can’t resist the children’s hobbit house and the fairy grove.

Butterflies feast on hydrangeas and buddleia. There are beautiful carved wooden benches to relax.

Winding paths give the impression of the garden being much bigger than it is and offer up a surprise round every corner – a rose garden here, a honeysuckle trellis there. I’m really touched by a plaque thanking ‘Our Ukrainian friends’ for the gardening they have done in the park. It truly is a way of bringing everyone together.

A slap-up salmon meal in The Hook hotel ends our Ireland tour. The next morning we board the Salamanca which takes us on the 27-hour cruise to Bilbao in the Basque Region of Spain.