Jan 27 2010
The Riviera Doyllymount
When I lived overseas and far away from home my thoughts would very often return to those places of my childhood where I felt safe and happy. One of those places was Dollymount Strand. In that far away place I would sit in a quiet spot and closing my eyes I would would transport myself on a ‘Time Machine’ back to my childhood years and Dollymount Strand with its long wooden bridge that you had to walk across to get to the beach. The bridge was made of lengths of timber with spaces in between that allowed you to see the seawater below. I could see my siblings and I running across the wooden bridge as we scared the life out of each other with tales of people who had fallen through the spaces into the water below.
When we crossed the bridge one of the first sights to greet us was the old shelter above. We would race each other to it and climb through its window openings without a care in the world. My mother would sit inside on the seat with her head back and her eyes closed taking in the sunshine on her face, indifferent to the screams and laughter of her young brood. Her thoughts were probably miles away with my eldest sister in England. Or perhaps she too, like me had transported herself back to her own childhood when her parents brought her to Dollymount with her bottle of water and a sausage sandwich.
In most of my memories of Dollymouny Strand the tide was never in and children had to walk miles out to the water. We never had any towels either. The ‘Ma’ would tell us to run up and down the beach to get ourselves dry and when you bit into a soggy tomato sandwich you could feel the sand gritting between your teeth. As children we had no worries or cares, our parents took it all on their shoulders. Wonderful parents created wonderful memories. As I walk along Dollymount Strand today I can still hear the laughter and screams of my siblings in this distant memory. I give thanks that I am no longer faraway and I sometimes think of all of you out there who are and wish that you were walking alongside me having a chat and a laugh of your memories of Dollymount.