Those readers familiar with this blog will possibly recognise the bizarre title of this piece as a rather nifty and to-be-much applauded development in the field of global geographical location plotting.
If you’re in the market for a spot of mansplaining (and let’s face it, who isn’t?) then let’s hear it for the simplistic wondrousness known as What3Words. For the cognoscenti amongst you, please feel free to combine this clever app with the headline co-ordinates to identify our latest overnight stopover, where we’ve been awestruck by the rolling surf on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean at Strandhill, County Sligo, in good old fully-European Eire.
As suggested in the previous piece, we’ve so far found ourselves challenged by the lack of overnight Knumptywagen parking along the Wild Atlantic Way, so it was with relief and delight that we found ourselves nosing through a raising barrier into a private promenade car-park, sourced through diligent online research by the Chief Navigating Officer, no less. Using a peer-group app called Park4Night, she has located simple hard-standing in a fully enclosed safe haven, where signage informs us we’ll be charged a perfectly reasonable €15 to do just what it says on the tin.
We are sad, however, to be surfboardless, as this is clearly where avid exponents of the sport gather to hone their skills against the toothpaste white-foamed waves breaking in spectacular succession onto the beach which spreads before us. As the evening sun makes silhouettes of their shiny seal-like bodies, they rise, swoop and fall – looking like animated Antony Gormley sculpted figures – each demonstrating balancing skills which we find hard to match even on solid ground.
The scenery is spectacular, made more so by the effulgent warmth of the setting sun, with Aquafresh brand colours sweeping to a cloud-cushioned horizon. On the distant promontory to our left, low lying fields of green – still thankfully dotted with cows and sheep – spill down to the sea, as if applied with the careless detailing of watercolour brushes. To our right, a range of ragged-topped dunes protect the official campsite from the rolling surf, leaving all within without a view, while we enjoy every glorious degree of it, for half the price.
The commercial attractions of the Strandhill seafront have seemingly enjoyed a renaissance since our last visit. Mammy Johnston’s extensive ice cream parlour is offering home-made gelato alongside sweet and savoury crepes; the Shell café provides fresh coffee and pastries from within a delicatessen-styled interior and we presume the Voya Seaweed Baths continue to offer just that, experienced with glee and a good splash of sea-salted slipperiness on our previous visit, eight years ago.
Just off the seafront, a large pub – the Strand Bar with Stoked restaurant above – provides extensive hospitality inside and out in a large, well-furnished pavement area, while across the road, a row of freshly painted shipping containers provide storage and changing facilities for several surf-schools. An upmarket farm shop quadruples its attraction as another delicatessen, café, bakery and general grocers-with-gifts – to the overall extent that Strandhill appears very tidy and well-to-do, with many fine and now-ubiquitous upmarket Land Rovers in shades of grey, all just about ready for the weather to kick off the summer season.
We walk the coastal path towards the ruined headland church of Killaspugbrone, again amused and entertained to be skirting the near-abandoned but still well-maintained Sligo Airport. Sporting an incongruous width of tarmac, the perimeter of this barely used runway was secured against ingress by nothing more than a single strand of blue nylon rope tied to wobbly fenceposts and the occasional tree.