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.

“OH, I do like to be beside the seaside...” So went the Cockney music-hall song of the early 20th century.

TO ME — as to most of us — many parts of Ireland are a foreign country, one which, in general, is full of fascination.

The cliffs of the Seven Heads in west Cork are garnished with confections of sea pinks in full bloom, blankets of yellow kidney vetch and mantles of golden bird’s-foot trefoil.

Where to begin?