Beach will never be same
Inch is scrubland and pebble merging into sand; the kind of place where parents dole out sandwiches and fizzy drinks and keep a casual eye on their kids from behind their newspapers as they sleepily slouch in their deckchairs on a sunny Sunday.
You can get to Inch a number of ways. You can come over the breathtaking clifftops from the nearby fishing village of Guileen.
Or you can drive down the quiet country boreen a few miles from the busy town of Midleton.
You cross the bridge to the strand, plodding through rough grass and rushes.
The sides of the stream are hidden in scrub.
When my children were little, they thrilled to my stories of a monster living under Inch bridge, a monster who patrolled the scrubland, surviving on whispering rushes and leftover sandwich crusts, a dark night creature who could be awoken from his daytime slumber by the lightest step. They loved to tiptoe dramatically across the bridge grimacing in anticipation of waking their imaginary monster.
This week a real monster came to Inch.
Whether the monster came via the clifftops or via the quiet country road may never be known. What we do know is that he or she bore a dreadful burden, the stuff of every parent’s nightmares.
The monster left his burden in the ditch. He left it hidden in gorse, surrounded by scrub, tucked away in dense growth at the side of the pretty boreen leading to Inch strand.
Where he came from, we don’t yet know. What drove him we may never be told.
It will take years, decades, even, for the tide of memory to wash away all traces of yesterday’s discovery.
And Inch beach, and the well-known, but quiet, little road leading to it, will never be the same again.
