Saturday, February 27, 2010

blue, turquoise, green

blue, turquoise, green

Today I went from Greystones to Bray on the Cliff trail. Beautiful hike!

Most people do it Bray to Greystones, but the other way around makes more sense because the sun is behind you and you can enjoy the views as you walk. It was a last minuted decision, and I thought about it because I needed to be in Bray at 4pm and wanted to enjoy the gorgeous sun before then --I googled Greystones to Bray hike, looked at this page and did the same route. Another site said the hike takes 3h. I figured it would take me less time, so I adventured on the first DART train I could catch. (I found out later that 3h must be the whole loop, because it only took me 1.5h with detours included)

From DART station in Greystones, turn south and then toward the beach under the train tracks. You'll get to the boardwalk of Greystones beach, a fantastic place for families and elders to stroll along. The whole trail is supposed to go along the coast, although the currently is a big construction site on the way: the Greystones harbor.


Past the harbor there are very muddy sections of the path, but the views are just gorgeous! First high cliffs with turquoise water on dark sand. Then a narrower path between natural walls of trees and plants. Later, in the shadow of the hills, more cliff-top views over the rocks with sea life. Down below goes the rail, and there are some ruins of old buildings that I didn't figure out what they used to be.



(to be continued...)

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Fantastic sunny day, small surf


We checked a few places and finally surfed an uncrowded, small Peak. Below is what the low tide pools looked like in the morning.


A few weeks ago I saw some people towing-into some big waves on the West

Friday, February 12, 2010

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A show of nature

A member of the surf club asked my surf buddy Chris what he'd missed by not being there on Sunday, and since Chris is gone on another surf trip to the West today, I replied:

You missed an amazing show of nature: totally foggy when we got there, hard to assess the size of the waves, but it looked nice and clean. We paddled out right after another guy did --we caught some fantastic shoulder-to-head high long-ish lefts, and up to a-bit-over-head lefts with a nice, steep wall :D

It was gorgeous when the sun started to rise, barely showing through some thinner parts of fog, profiling the camper van and our cars on the cliff. Then the fog started to thin out and it's just impossible to describe the beauty of the view we had paddling back out after catching a wave: infinite lines showing clearly thanks to the mist climbing off the water, trying to reach the sky...

See my picture in the last page of responses in this thread for a very watered down idea of what it was like (that pic is the shot I posted below, taken after our session, from the cliff, now with more sunlight and a different perspective... also, my camera didn't capture the colors and special light of the moment)

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Stoked

Saturday: Sunny chill

Three surfers from three different countries get together and pile up in a Ford Ka to hit the waves all the way on the opposite side of the country

We took off on Saturday at around 6am. Leaving Dublin behind --after a bit of a confunsion with directions-- and once the N4 was surrounded by fields, frost was evident on the sides of the road, on plants and... the driver said, on the asphalt! Sure enough, we were on our to the beach, where the water would be waiting for us at 9 ºC. Our surfboard bags were covered in ice...

There was a very good-looking right-hander nearby, but the tide was starting to fill in and those waves to get fatter. One of us was regular and wanted to surf the left, so we surfed here

close-up. Surfer in the note

Although none of us had a memorable session, we were all satisfied after an almost 2.5 hour-long session. Besides crashing my knee onto some rocks on my way out to the water, and cracking the nose of my board, my feet were totally frozen since the beginning of the session. Since I couldn't feel the board at all, I didn't really feel comfortable walking on it, or even moving my feet after taking the initial stance, so that wasn't fun. But otherwise, it was great to get wet.

After changing to no wind (what a pleasure!), we went to another beach to say hi to a few other members of the club, eat, and look into taking a second dip.




It was a beach break and it didn't look great. Most went back out, two of us decided to enjoy a walk to the point under the afternoon sun.


We found lots of shells and fossils


and took a few shots of a really nice break


and the sunset

sunset waves

Monday, January 11, 2010

Snow in Dublin


After spending New Year's in the Wicklow mountains, we've had a white beginning of the year in Dublin city too. Not only the snow, but also (or mostly) the cold temperatures caused the country to kind of paralyze for a few days. I took it as a chance to stay in town and enjoy it.

I took this below on Friday 7th... Bright and sunny work day (luckily I went home to hang my laundry on my lunch break and I got to be outdoors longer than just to walk over to the other building's café :)


Saturday 8th... snowman day. Magda and I made a snowman on Charlotte Quay:



And walked around and had a nice lunch in a Thai and Vietnamese restaurant downtown. (Thanks Magda for the couple of pix I'm borrowing here, and for a nice day together!)



At night I went to a DJ tropical session with a bunch of couchsurfers, and on the way back home I stumbled onto a snow storm (or almost).



This guy's snowman was bigger than my pile of snow, and they had a snow ball war.


The coolest thing of the night was a huge feeling of happiness, enjoying the snow like a kid, stepping on it and feeling it, making a snow pile in front of a park, observing these guys's fun fight, and capturing the beauty of every single moment through my eyes.


Sunday 9th...


In a totally different topic, I recommend this surf article online with cool shots: Searching the new cool - on DRIFT | perspective(s) in surfing