Ballycastle - 2017

I went on this trip without you. Whilst you are away, I will always try to be happy, to fix and to strengthen myself, for you, for us, for our family. Here’s where I went at the end of 2017. I will take you one day, I promise. 


Along The Causeway Coastal Route from Ballycastle 

So, between my past year and this new one sat Ballycastle, in Northern Ireland, on its rocky, green and dramatic coastline. Enchanting, restorative, refreshing and, somewhat mythical this place enveloped me. Despite its huge waves crashing violently on craggy, rocky outcrops, its wild wind combing the surrounding grasses flat and bringing with it the driving December rain and sleet, to me, for me, it was calm. 

Arriving at night time the sky was colbat blue, mixed with a generous blob of ivory black - you know how we mix the acrylics to get the right colour? It’s darkness was untouched by city lights or pollution. The moon was highlighting a smattering of cloud edges in a small cluster. The light was swallowed by the night as your eyes moved from where the moon hung. The lighthouse in the distance was lighting a path and, just as quickly, throwing it back into freezing cold darkness. Rathlin Island, across the water, was a foreboding dark silhouette against the sky. Barely visible lights from the sparsely populated island’s homes blinked weakly through the winter air, across to where we stood. 

The sea dominated all. The deep swell pushing up huge, roaring, rolling and crashing waves. The cold, dark blackness of the sea’s surface was broken, like a cracked sheet of ice, by light, scattered all over by the rise and the fall of the waves. Transient yet constant, the waves kept coming. Rising, breaking, falling until they crashed heavily onto the black shiny rocks at our shore. 

The wind and the waves played a song that night and somewhere between that time and that place, I breathed deeply in the cold night air and tried to find me again. 



The beauty of this place is hard to convey. We will go one day. There was so much more to see and I’ll tell you all about the rest of the trip another time sweetheart. Sleep tight for now, it’s late. I love you.

Mummy xxx

Winter 2017 - at home in Brinkley xx