THIS year, the number of elvers swimming up UK rivers and waterways was 20 times the norm of recent decades. This is good news.

AFTER the constant blue skies and dry days of recent months, I had forgotten what the view looked like in rain.

NOT having slept under canvas for 13 years, I recently spent a weekend bivouacking in a field surrounded by family.

WALKING the West Cork roads on the weekend before last, we enjoyed the first blackberries of 2013, sun-warmed and shining on the hedges.

ONE night recently, as I drove my daughter and her husband west from Cork airport, they spotted a pine marten with its bushy tail and white bib loping into the woodland skirting the Bandon River near Inishannon.

MINKE whales galore off the Seven Heads, the Old Head of Kinsale and everywhere along the south coast.

ON the south coast, on these sun-kissed days, one can listen to the cries of the terns as they soar, brilliant against the sky, and then drop, spinning like sycamore samaras, to take sandeels from the surface of the sea.

A DRIFT of sand eels lay across the beach, a silver slick like spilt mercury, or shards of a shattered mirror shining in the early-morning sun.

CAMROSS, ANATRIM CHURCH AND DELOUR RIVER WALK, CO LAOIS

THE first time I spoke to Rosie Campbell was on the phone a few nights ago.