Most residents and visitors to Glandore Harbour & Village know this view. It's an unmissable sight, particularly because it’s located on such a tight bend that any driver will get a brief, straight-on glimpse of it as they turn their steering wheel sharply. During the summer months, when many are following the Wild Atlantic Way, it's not uncommon to see someone standing beside an open car door, engine running, holding up an iPhone or another camera to capture this view.
I'd been out for the day, driving around in the car and looking for photo opportunities, when I received an invitation to join a friend who was shore fishing in Schull Harbour. The day's showery weather was being guided by a brisk northerly wind, and after a couple of hours of dodging and sheltering from driving rain and hail, and failing to capture any satisfactory photographs, the chance for a chin-wag and some banter seemed like a welcome relief. The footpath leading to where my friend was fishing passed alongside a burial ground and the ruin of St. Mary’s Church.
I captured this image over a decade ago, and until recently, I thought it was lost due to a computer hard drive malfunction. I was reminded of its existence after meeting with a friend who had it as the wallpaper on their phone. They were full of praise, and after I left my friend, I began reminiscing about when I first uploaded the image to Facebook and the many likes, comments, and shares it received. I started to wish I had printed at least one copy. Why did I never print my most popular image? I decided I would try to find out if there was any copy of it left; it seemed worth the effort. After searching through the deeper recesses of some USB drives, disk drives, and external hard drives, I found it.
Looking out through the open doorway of our house; through horizontal stair-rods of rain I could see a tree in the front garden bending so hard that the tips of its branches were touching the ground. I really never thought that I would ever witness wind and rain like I saw that October. So it was uncanny to realise that the very same thing was likely to happen again and, coincidently, it would be 30 years to the day give or take a few hours.
I am walking along, looking for things to photograph, like I often do. I'm on the beach. It's one of those bright early spring days where the weather has been calm and sunny for a while, and the sun's rays are strong enough that a brisk wind blowing from the south carries a hint of warm summer days to come.
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