It’s been a very wild West Cork Valentine’s Day.
Not the most romantic of presents, but I did buy Dee two gardening books to match her huge love of the garden down here – as the good weather shouldn’t be too far away, she will be back out there trying to make our little place here look as nice as possible.
She loves being out there in the garden, which in all honesty isn’t my cup of tea.
We drove to the hotel at Barleycove with the two dogs, Honey and Maggie, parked up, wrapped up and headed down the hill to the beach.
I don’t mind telling you, between the wind and the cold I couldn’t wait to get our beach walk out of the way and get back to the house for a fry up in front of the fire.
I walked and shivered in the rain, with my jacket shut and my hood up and I noticed Dee well behind me as she had stopped to pick up shells on the beach.
She has a significant birthday party quite soon and one of her plans is to bring a beach theme to the party and I guess this was the start of it, collecting sea shells!
I did briefly think “Christ to God Dee, can we not do this another time when we are not freezing our asses off” but watched her as she picked them up, one by one.
I did the same, putting them in my pocket as I walked with Honey impatiently pulling me this way and that.
Dee caught up with me and I put the few shells that I had collected into the dog poop bag that was suddenly a very handy bag for the shells that Dee had collected at that point.
We continued with our walk in the wind and the cold collecting shells as we went and by the time we headed back up the hill, the bag was full of sea shells of all sizes and colours.
“I enjoyed collecting shells with you she said“
Maybe Valentine’s Day isn’t about presents after all?
Greg
Greg Canty is the host and producer of the Win Happy podcast
Tags: Barleycove Beach, Greg Canty, nature, short-story, Travel, Valentines Day, West Cork, Win Happu podcast
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