Beach-Run
I just got back this afternoon from 5 days’ leave in Donegal with a good friend, Ruth, and it was sheer bliss to chill out and not have to do anything. I’ll write more about it in the next few days but to get you started, I wrote the following on Wednesday…

Donegal is such a beautiful place. Where we’re staying is just a couple of minutes from the beach in Rathmullan. We woke up this morning to find everywhere covered in frost and the weather forecast highlighting the possibility of rain turning to snow later tonight. My car has only defrosted in the last hour (It’s almost 1pm as I write). After taking time to get up slowly (oh the bliss of being off!), having a leisurely breakfast and then reading for a while, I decided to go for a run along the beach. It was definitely nippy outside but once I got going I was grand. I ran along the road for a bit to get to the far end of the beach but that was a bit unnerving because of some black ice on the road. Once I got onto the beach I felt more surefooted and it was good to be able to run on the soft sand compared with the hard pavements of East Belfast. The best thing was the view – the flat calm of the sea, a completely clear, blue sky, the sun shining and glinting off the frost on the sand, snow on the hills on the other side of Lough Swilly…everything looked and felt crisp, clear, clean and fresh – absolutely GLORIOUS! I ran to the rocks at the end of the beach and started clambering over them to get to the other beach. Alas the tide was in so I came to a deep channel and could go no further. But it had been fun to try and I just soaked up the scenery for a bit. To be honest this run wasn’t so much about the exercise as about drinking in the beauty of the world around me. I definitely live in one of the most beautiful countries on the planet.

Up to this point I’d had the beach to myself but then as I turned and went back up again I met a couple of dog-walkers and we commented on the perfection of the day. One lady summed it up pretty well, that it was a day where you feel it’s great to be alive. To push myself seeing as I wasn’t covering a big distance I did about 6-7 sprints [N.B. 'sprint' is probably a generous description but let's just say I went at a faster pace than normal!] between the lifebuoy markers, probably only about 50 yards between each one but that was quite enough for me to do at a time! So now it’s great to be back from my run, showered, fed & watered, and feeling a huge sense of satisfaction. How amazing would it be to live somewhere where you could do such a beautiful beach-run everyday?

Unfortunately I’ve developed a bit of a head-cold since Wednesday – if it was the run that did it I don’t really care – it was worth it! The snuffles etc prevented me from doing any more beach-runs but we had danders on the beach yesterday & today (which helped ease my aching buttocks after those sprints haha!) and even a bit of stargazing last night so it’s been a great week. As my camera died in Arizona, no photos yet, but hopefully I’ll post a few of Ruth’s here soon.