Greystones

In the early hours of Friday, 29 June 1860 Samuel and Mary Kent were asleep on the first floor of their detached three-story Georgian house above the village of Road, 5 miles from Trowbridge.

By the way, it was The Reader by Bernhard Schlink who got hepatitis within the opening line.

I decided to walk to Greystones and this time I did. I took some time out to lie on my back at Hackettsland beside a colony of sand martins. Industrious colonists, they nest in burrows on vertical sand faces. Not a recipe for long term survival you'd think until you realise how many glacial moraines there are in northwest Europe. I realised that I was watching their courtship rituals in full swing. The females fly into their burrows, high up on the sandy channels preserved in the vertical faces of eroded terminal moraines, where they are joined by a few hopeful mates. The males fly to the entrances where they hover, their wings almost invisible to me in the blur of the effort needed to keep them in a stationary position. Then they land on the vertical face, often holding onto fine rootlets that drape down like a natural chiffon, invisible from almost any distance. The females seem to watch and before they get too far, the whole colony takes to the air. This happened so often that I realised it was the planes passing overhead that was spooking them, not the sound but their peregrine like shape.

And I walked on to Bray and had a snack at the end of the pier watching the swans. And then a latte at the other end of the famous promenade before taking off up the hill and across to Greystones. The failed marina, the undeveloped prime development properties, the hoardings that cordon them off from the Excalibur Drive, a 50 km route supposed to take you through some of the most spectacular Wicklow landscape, all degrade the Blue Flag Beach and seemingly affluent main street. Greystones has signs that promise they will be tidying up the town soon - how terminal and depressing. Then I bought a train ticket to go home, 15 km added to the 25 yesterday, except there was no train for 45 minutes. Terminal (pun intended).