This morning I went for a walk in the Glens with Nez and Fly. Nez knows the name of all of the hills and has tramped over the most of them. Fly likes to run the drains and culverts but then he is a water dog. While we were out I found myself remembering all the times I'd spent in the Glens as a child.
Our parents would pile us into the car, Matty would have made sandwiches or maybe a ween of wee currant buns. We'd go to the beach, usually Waterfoot or Cushendall, and sometimes Daddy would park up on the way down and we'd run down to one of the streams that ran through the Glens and play in the water and jump from stone to stone and eat our picnic there. Sometimes I thought I liked the river better than the beach.
During my childhood there was a landslide in one of the Glens that made headline news on local television. Those were the days when events in Northern Ireland didn't regularly make the national or international news and this event was very notable. If I remember it correctly some livestock was lost, a cottage was swept away and a farmer had a narrow escape. Some time afterwards Daddy drove us down to look at the aftermath. I remember seeing the brown earth and boulders where the grass, plants and trees had been.
But I cannot remember where it was and an hour or more of research on Google has not made me any wiser. It would have been sometime in the 1960s. Anybody out there who might have an idea when and where it happened?
But anyways - my research turned up the BBC archive site and I found this clip of a 1964 Fleadh Cheoil in Clones. There are quite a few well known musicians playing including Luke Kelly and Andy Irvine. They'd only have been in their early twenties then. Luke's long away but Bert went to see Andy Irvine in Ballymoney last week. It's worth a look if you like that sort of thing.
