Stack

Pouring rain all morning and into the afternoon. Perfect excuse for a big holiday-cottage-special-fry-up-brunch and Tour De France catch-up. Headed out mid-arvo in brilliant sunshine to the very west of the island past Trearddur Bay (so far west it seems that my mobile operator thought I’d left the country and sent me a not-entirely practical ‘Welcome To Ireland’ text with accompanying charges for my ‘foreign’ travels). Destination was South Stack, the RSPB reserve with the lighthouse perched just out to sea atop the stack in question, reached by an incredibly windswept set of a couple of hundred stone steps and then a little bridge over. And a visitors centre staffed by incredibly friendly and helpful RSPB people who pointed out the adjacent Ellin’s Tower to visit as well with binoculars and telescopes set up to spot peregrine falcons, puffins, choughs, and thousands of guillemots nesting on the cliffs. Plus of course more incredibly friendly and helpful RSPB people.

The whole landscape was as spectacular as anything I’ve seen in recent years and it felt a real privilege to be there. Absolutely stunning place. Could have stayed for hours but it was getting on. And we still hadn’t visited the fish and chip shop in the village yet on this holiday. All that nature’s well and good, but, you know, priorities….

South.