More here.

I should write something about these protests, about the way most of the media here now - after a first week of disbelief and even admiration - is trying to discredit it as a the unruly behaviour of a mob of wannabe Woodstockers, rich kids playing revolution. But this is the usual story and was to be expected. What remains is that my own heart leaped and continues to leap everytime I come across people who put their own heart on their sleeves, who let it all out, the love and the anger. The hopes and the ideas. I believe that for a time in our lives we all see the open corruption, the abuse of power, we see it clearly, we feel we cannot breathe, we must do something. It's a tiny window for most, open and shut before we bow to the pressures of so-called normal day to day living. I could say that opening this window in my life has cost me my glamorous career, but for that I am eternally grateful. Much harder is the never ending taste of sarcasm, mixed with a heavy lump of disrespect, that has been at the back of my throat ever since.

Some nights you wake up at 4 am and you remember what you forgot to include in your tax returns. For a very brief moment you consider the consequences in minute detail before you realise that you have no idea. Other nights you wake up to your child's laughter, you are driving the ridiculously unsafe old car and you watch her in the rear view mirror, her damp hair curling around her face while she talks to the puppy dog on her lap. Then again, you wake up and you are nowhere. You find your breath and you place your hand on your chest to feel your heart beating and as you exhale this sudden jolt is going right through you. And once again you understand, this is not something you just run under the cold tap. This  will not go away.

there you go

deep inside a Poppy

Angelica

Angelica with bees

Silene

lots of Elder

Astrantia

strawberries all the way

The summer before I started school my father came home one Thursday evening and told me that if I could figure out how to ride a bicycle by Saturday morning, we would go into town together and buy one for me. If not, there was no way I could start school after the summer.

It all worked out in the end. I spent the next day begging the older kids to let me have a go and at some time during the afternoon I was cycling along the edge of a muggy carp pond with a gang of kids running beside me, my sister one of them, terrified that I'd fall and drown while on her watch. Worse, that I could damage the bicycle. We were way outside our permitted area. Miles from home as we often were but falling into a slimy pond would have meant real trouble.

There are different directions here for my memory. 

The way my parents set us a task, a challenge and watch - or not even watch - us figuring it out and often enough, fail. A friend once called this the brick wall parenting. The glee and open disappointment when we slipped, missed the right note, fell off the horse, lost a match, when our grades dropped, our teenage skin developed acne, our light blond hair turned darker. 

But there is also the wild secret freedom when you have to learn early on how to look out for yourself, how to hide the worst and hope to somehow be able to sneak inside without them noticing the dirty dungarees, torn sandals, cigarettes on your breath, trashy mascara, cut-off jeans, lousy school report, illegal substances in your back pocket, that big messy wave of your youth, so infuriatingly different and completely useless.

It also is the memory of my first bicycle. I have been cycling ever since, almost daily. But that is another story.

My father is making plans, as always. His whole life is one long schedule. Over the phone I imagine his disgust with my organisational skills when I tell him that I cannot note down this date because I haven't got a diary for 2014 yet. He despairs in me as usual. No wonder, I hear him mutter. No wonder what? Before we get into the usual litany of my failures (which are all due to the fact that I - for reasons he cannot fathom - decided against what in his imagination was the most promising academic career ever) I try to change the subject and start talking about the weather. Clever move. While he goes on about jet streams and Atlantic depressions and the effects on the national agricultural output, I quietly empty the dishwasher letting the phone rest on the kitchen table. For a second I worry that he somehow will notice and in an instant I am 15 again, trying to hide the packet of fags in my back pocket.

Many thanks go to nmj for this gem.

the garden, rainy May

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lillies are still in the greenhouse. Iris just started today. Aquilegia and cornflowers almost finished.

The garden is all green, claustrophobic lushness, buds everywhere waiting for a good stretch of sun and warmth to burst. But those short instances when the skies do clear are not enough it seems. Not a single rose yet, would you believe. The coldest spring in 40 years we have been told. On Sunday it was so wet and cold that we went to the museum to warm up. Practicing for retirement when we'll be poor again and heating fuel will become a luxury.
Too much gallivanting on different continents, too many wild job schemes for a decent pension to accumulate. All those nixers, the barter, the commune stuff, the co-ops, the gifts that were supposedly coming round and round, the exchange society of our idealistic dream years. Plus the years working in paradise where the sun drops into the Indian Ocean every day at 6:30 pm with the birds and their racket in the casuarina pines while I swim out to the little jetty after a long day of work. There is nowhere to enter this stuff on the annual state pension insurance forms. We have a "gap" of about 15 years and it looks like we were living on another planet. Come to think of it, we probably did.

Sometimes I worry about it. But not too often. Not yet. It will work out, we tell ourselves, we will grow more food, build a clay oven, move downstairs, and and and...maybe even discover the true pension contribution of those 15 years of very basic communal living.

trying to keep warm dancing

in the rain(y) forest

Well, well, well. It's certainly a cold May. A very cold May, she mutters as she struggles to pull on her mittens (!!!). And not only is it a very cold May, would you believe it, it also rains. A lot, as in: the river has burst its banks, the garden is a soggy mess and cycling is like taking a bath. Mind you, it's also quite pretty out there in the dripping green forest full of birdsong and I did stop to get even wetter but also just to listen.

There is a point of no return when it comes to cycling in the rain. Waterproof gear is tiresome stuff, all that swishing noise, the flapping when the wind gets caught in it and eventually, the sweat accumulating inside. Then again, cycling inside this cocoon through the forest has its moments of calm pleasure. But I admit that I rather get wet, especially when I know that there is a hot shower and a big fluffy towel waiting for me in the not too distant future. And for a while it can be quite fun to lick the rain that drops from my nose. By the time the steady trickle down my back has reached my toes I am usually home. Of course that doesn't go down well with R who will give me a serious talking to about my compromised immune system. And he is right and I promise to not do this every day. Silly really, because in fact I haven't the energy at the moment to do this too often anyway.

The rain is hammering on my office window, the sky almost black. I can't see as far as the bicycle stand and it does not look like it will improve before I go home. I will get soaked and by the time I'll get home, I'll be chilled and sometime in the night, pneumonia will set in and by tomorrow I'll be dead. Probably. Not at all. Because all we are talking about is water.

For a very long time after the experts had presented me with this diagnosis I saw death around every corner. Every new and strange symptom (well, actually every symptom incl. all my nightmares) sent me round the bend. This is probably fairly normal behaviour when you have been given the potential scenarios of heart/kidney/lung failure and all that shit about going blind and/or deaf. 

I suppose you could say that by now I have become somewhat blasé about it. But only somewhat and only sometimes. I am getting there. Soon I will be completely fearless. There is a thought.

Last weekend we were supposed to be in Luxemburg but as I was climbing down from the cortisone mountain and also because R discovered that he had a touch of sore throat, we cancelled. Instead, we had a really nice weekend at home. Maybe Luxemburg would have been only half as nice. I am getting very good with all the cancellations. In fact, I may start another blog about all the trips we plan and then cancel, my virtual journey around the world.

And another blog about all the recipes I am bookmarking and saving for my gastritis-free future. I could pretend I baked a few loaves of rosemary and raisin soda bread, made rhubarb fool and something fancy with roast new potatoes, fresh spinach and salty Turkish cheese. Lots of olives. Red wine to go with it. And a little espresso.

Last night, this song popped up again which brings me straight back to the early 1970s when I was staying for the summer with my very sophisticated filthy rich godmother who had parties in her garden every night where my 13 year old self learned to dance with the pros.

the easy option

 

Sometime last year I realised that I had forgotten the date of my mother's death. I knew it was sometime in August, or July, but the year? My sister gave me this look again: typical, you have always taken the easy option. The funeral I remember. It is not something to ever forget. But not for today.


The last time my mother came for a visit (maybe 20 years ago), she decided she wanted to leave after the first night. This did not come as a surprise, there was always something. (On the previous visit she could not stand the dust on the skirting plus the fact that we were doing it all wrong with her granddaughter.) While I drove her to the station, she told me that I was and always had been too uptight for her taste. That and the fact that we had asked her not to smoke indoors. And some more, but I stopped listening. Just before she got on the train she managed a quick little thank you. She did have a thing about Good Manners.

I will never pick up all the pieces. I want to think that my very young grandmother here is looking at her newborn daughter with wonder and love. That she is excited, a bit nervous, even a little scared, of course, but basically happy. But I know that she spent hardly any time with her child, that there was a nanny waiting once the photgrapher was done. My mother's life is full of stuff like that, a never ending story of loss and riches, loneliness and grandeur, travel, music, intelligence, war and death, hardship, illness, drugs, addiction, rejection, despair and deep dark sad fury.

My life is different. So wonderfully and miraculously different and whole and sane that at times I feel faint just realising this. Some of my innocent goody-good friends occasionally try to get me to do all that forgiveness stuff complete with the self help books and daily moments of gratefulness etc. Even or especially now, so many years after her death. You must, they press on, find closure.

No, friends, the abandoning was complete and it was mutual. I admit that for some, it looks like the easy option. It was my only option.

lilac wine

Awake in the night I make up my mind to stop making such a big deal about it.

I am done with all these what if thoughts. For the time being. Breathe in, breathe out, smell the lilac through the open window. Don't give me any of this positive thinking crap. I am floating.

The experts spiked my drugs today, this could just be the kick starter of high dose cortisone. Health has become an ongoing compromise of effects and side-effects. Not sure where I am right now. 

But at least I am somewhere. Who knows, maybe I am even here.

Early summer, there is no other word for it. I tried a few fresh raspberries with the grey porridge, hell, I even ate a pear and half a banana. But went back to nibbling dry rusk and toast for the rest of the day. Too much nausea plus vertigo to do anything else. Doctor's appointment tomorrow.

The cat is pretending to be young and agile, rolling under the pear tree and walking away covered in white petals. 

We did none of the things we had planned to do this weekend. Stuff we had marked on the kitchen calendar weeks and months ago, the crafts fair, the anti-nazi demo, the garden center, the fireworks by the river. Too busy nursing our aches and pains, R complaining the Greek olives gave him indigestion. 

I booked another night for October on the Italian lake, online. I can see myself doing this regularly. There is a 24hr cancellation policy free of charges, 24hrs prior to arrival that is. I am very tempted to book all sorts of fancy places just for the heck of it. Pretend travel, until some booking engine cancels our one and only credit card for wasting their time.

My 3 yr. old grand niece is starting kindergarden tomorrow. (My baby brother is a granddad.) It is a forest adventure creche, three hours to start with, on weekday mornings. All outdoors, come rain or shine, waterproof pants, wellie boots, a sturdy handcart, exploring.

As kids we used to play in a small forest, building dens with sticks and moss, elaborate tree houses. Dangers lurking everywhere. My mother made us matching brown corduroy overalls with bib pockets, perfect for collecting beechnuts. For a while I carried with me a flattened lizard I had peeled off the road. My father eventually showed me how to dry it properly on the garage roof. It disappeared that night.

I can still see my little brother in his short lederhosen, crying and clinging onto a branch far too high for him and my mother arriving on my father's black bicyle, in a white pencil skirt, high heels, climbing up to rescue her little prince. As she brushed the bark from her skirt and lit a cigarette, she hissed at me and my big sister from behind the smoke, don't even dream of coming home tonight.

And so we were in the middle of preparing our bed of leaves, discussing whether we should collect acorns for dinner when my father drove up and opened the car door without a word. He grinned all the way home. I saw it in the rear view mirror.

Treat every crisis as normal and soluble.

John le Carré

In the early 1990s, I was working in a large bookshop in Dublin, one of these temples of print and publishing, spread over several floors, classical music, children's activities, Sunday opening hours, free coffee and red wine, readings, the lot. This is where families would go for an outing on a rainy weekend. Those were the pre-latte, pre-kindle days. My family occasionally visited me at work but I never really had the time for coffee, let alone reading or browsing. Show me a bookseller who then had the time to read anything apart from sales figures, bestseller lists, blurbs on the back covers and all the invoices and I'll tell you he/she is a fraud.

For a couple of months we had one of those strange bestsellers. It happened every so often. A book would sell like hotcakes without any advertising, anything in the media, often a title from a small, even obscure publisher without a sales rep. 

Anyway, we sold stacks and stacks of The healing power of illness: the meaning of symptoms and how to interpret them. We sold it to young parents, ageing hippies, elderly matrons, priests and nuns, journalists, teachers, even the odd medical person.

The concept was intriguing and at first glance even convincing. Take the common cold. What do the symptoms - coughing, sneezing, sore throat, runny nose, blocked ears etc. - tell us about the patient? Yes, the message is obvious: stay away, keep out, leave me alone, I cannot talk, I cannot listen, I want peace and quiet and so on. Look deeper and bingo, the diagnosis is staring you in the face: too much stress, too much involvement, too busy ignoring what is really bothering you and so on. In other words, you, the patient, have a minor psychological drama at your hands, but luckily, you now have the power to overcome this. 

This nice little pattern is put to work for almost any health issue and reading it you will find yourself nodding your head here and there. Gosh, how obvious. 

I admit I was pretty hooked - and I have a much leafed through copy somewhere to prove it - until I came to the chapter on migraine. Now, I have never - touch wood - suffered from migraine myself but to diagnose migraine as a misguided orgasm in the head? Good grief. 

Illness and health a far more mysterious. And the riddle never ends. Count your lucky stars for every day, every night of well being, no matter how relative in comparison to whatever. And when the shit hits the fan and you cannot get one foot in front of the other, try to remember that your body with all its billions of cells is programmed for recovery. Which takes time and maybe the outcome is not what you expected. Don't get mad. It's hard work.

It's not that I am desperately missing coffee, after all I have had three cups since January and the last one in particular made my life pretty miserable, but this is spring and there are all these cafes with outdoor seating under the flowering chestnut trees. Try getting a decent cup of tea in any of these. Not. Possible. Sigh.

On the whole the entire health situation is pretty shoddy at the moment. In other words: I feel like shit. Without getting into too much detail.

So today being a public holiday I did all the sensible things I could come up with, such as driving through gorgeous forests, climbing up on the ramparts of a 12th century castle, eating fried green asparagus with too much chili, clicking my way through videos of sleepy kittens online, booking our short October holiday on an Italian lake in a seedy hotel a stone's throw from George Clooney's villa (wishful thinking, it's not even on the same lake), cleaning up what the cat brought in, and now fennel tea, hot water bottle, bed, keeping finger's crossed etc.

the forest is alive and my hand is unsteady

So many plans, so much I want to do. But instead, looking at the magnolia leaves on the ground, all I can feel is time passing while I just sit and watch. Ah, the crucial leap between thought and action. I seem to have completely forgotten how to manage that.

Most evenings I ask myself if the time until the next morning is actually enough to somehow recover. Physically recover. You are such a wimp, says the voice in my head. No, you have a chronic illness, says my doctor. Bah, rubbish, says the voice. Don't fool yourself, says my doctor.

And so on and on. 

Meanwhile, one of the girls has done a runner from her "retirement center". There are only old people here, she cried over the phone, too many wheelchairs. It's not the right place for me.

So she packed got help to pack her stuff and has moved back into her little dingy place in the city where she can push her walker along the potholed sidewalks to the corner shop and say hello to the  men sitting at the bus stop with their drinks and try not to drop her pills and make her own breakfast and dinner again and we all keep our fingers crossed that the next fall plus fracture will not be for a while yet. And better not happen at night.

Just to think of it, me here slouching through my days and over there, our almost deaf and blind Nuala, standing at the bus stop with her walker ready for a day's outing to the sales and a bit of mass thrown in.

What am I doing with my life. What is my life doing to me. What was it again that I wanted?

So here is spring again and this is magnolia week it seems. Next will be lilac week and so on. Much too fast, as always and I could get a bit panicky about it all being over too soon. Midsummer in two months already, first frost in six etc. Yes, I know this is not the way to approach it.

My child is poorly or has been poorly, something lingering that needs medical attention and she is struggling with that and her urgent and full life. A happy and healthy life it is. That is the most comforting part of it all. Could be nothing of course. But try and tell that to the heavy stone in my chest. She lives 18000 km away from me. I probably would be just as helpless if her home was around the corner.

spring

says Robert Redford

"I watch younger people, and there seems to be a lot of attention paid to child rearing, putting in time with the kids, expressing a lot of love and being really smart about it. Maybe I'm looking at a very small segment of society, but this generation of babies, they're going to grow up with a whole lot more of love that's been expressed. And some day they'll be out there making decisions with a value system that might help turn around some things that have been so devalued in our society."

The plumber called and he was very polite. He fixed the dripping cistern and was most understanding when I told him that we were not interested in redoing the bathroom despite its present outdated state of design. Why replace something that is working, I asked and he looked around and replied, you are not one for the new trends then. Bless him.

The sun is out and the doors are open. I am getting used to the spring noises again, all the gadgets, lawnmowers and power hoses and of course my neighbour's teenage daughters across the hedge fighting at the top of their voices over lunch.

We have a loose door frame in the house which will forever testify that this was once home to my teenage girl, the one who would bang her bedroom door every so often. I could get quite sentimental touching this frame. I could get quite emotional, really. But there it is, she moved out and into the world many years ago. And I think that some of this world is a better place because of her. Gosh, that sounds awfully mushy. 

I did not sleep too well, all my aches and pains were at it in excellent team work. This will pass, I know but for now I shall resort to splendid distraction for the time being. Maybe things will pick up after that.

On Sunday, R did his marathon thing, got it out of his system. I stayed home, baked some bread and when he came back, I put his sweaty things in the washing machine and that was that as far as I was concerned. And he expressed similar thoughts, shaking his head, muttering about the loud music echoing from the buildings, the millions of plastic bottles thrown on the streets, the mountains of rubbish collecting around the drains and the mad crowds. Never again, he said. He also said, this is crazy, just think of the crowds and what could happen. Irresponsibly mad.

So there.

And of course this is so shocking, it affects us all so much when the victims look like our brothers and sisters, the streets like our neighbourhoods. I scroll through the papers online, the Irish papers concentrating on how many Irish are affected or nearly missed being affected, the Dutch papers found a Dutch participant to interview and so on.

And I remember the Syrian taxi driver from last January, crying as I innocently asked him about the picture of his family on the dashboard. And the beautiful Iraqi post doc who ran into my arms screaming and shaking one morning after she had just found out that her baby brother had been hit on his way to school. And how clueless I felt with the impact of their grief.

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

Funny really, how quickly we adapt. Was it only last week that I was searching for the thick mittens again, trying to find an excuse for not going out, all that careful wrapping up every day. And the complaints, the misery, will it ever get warm, is this the climate change, would you shut up.

And once again, the air is balmy, a warm wind blows in my face, the trees are in full pink and white and yellow finery. Never mind the odd shower, even if it is a bit of sleet. That's just April, the jester.

We are in business. This is spring. What were we complaining about again?

I'll start with the pots. They look old, obviously. Maybe something ethnic, from an African village maybe?, collectors' items. Of course, I would love to hold them, own them, place them on the shelf together with all the other bowls and ceramics I have been hoarding. To be able to touch them, run my fingers along the patterns. 

These pots, or rather "food vessels" as is the correct term, are safely hidden in a museum considering that they are from the Bronze Age. That is from the period 1900 - 1300 BC.
Sometime in the Early Bronze Age in places like Ireland people started to bury their dead in single graves. I can only guess what they may have done earlier, mass graves like the giant big megalithic tombs, leave them to the elements, recycle, cremate, eat them? I am not good at archaelogy. The dates, all these zeros alone are too much for me to comprehend.

For whatever reason, a change occurred in the way Early Bronze Age society was organised. Not every person, but certainly a growing number of significant individuals was buried that way. Significant apparently did not necessarily mean important as in political or religious leader. But again, I am baffled by the way archaeologists come to their conclusions. 

The individual graves were just large enough to hold the body and several accompanying pots, beautifully crafted, with drink and food for the journey from one state to the next.

But what is the most moving of these burials is that in some of them, the dead have been placed in a foetal position, curled up as if they were curled up in the womb.

Early Bronze Age people were obviously looking very carefully at the human body, they knew the shape of a child in the womb, they had the capacity to observe humanity. And looking at these pots I can glimpse their desire to transcend it.
I find that thought very comforting.

the last picture from Ireland - for a while

I am standing just below the beacon which marks the entrance to Baltimore harbour looking out towards Sherkin Island and that little glimpse of Clear Island well behind it. After that it's the Atlantic all the way to the west. It is very windy and the little ferry to Sherkin will only go once today. 

The last time I stood here was on a very hot and sunny day and all that was behind my back while I took a picture of a grinning R in shorts and walking boots leaning on the beacon, holding our 6-months old baby.

the girls

Nuala

Maeve

Everybody calls them the girls. Maeve will be 100 next week and Nuala will be 95 on Saturday. They could not be more different and yet are so much alike. Now, with age, they are almost blind, almost deaf, but show them a family photograph and give a few hints and they are off remembering every detail. Maeve always was the independent one, running her own business in 1950s Ireland, selling women's fashion from her own van all over the country when a single woman could not get a room in a hotel. In some places they let her sleep in the empty ballroom. I asked her if she was ever afraid, out there as a single woman and she gave me a puzzled look. Why? I never even locked the van. She married late, another independent soul and when he died, she took her sister Nuala along and travelled the world sending postcards from Hongkong and Buenos Aires and Alaska and Nairobi. Maeve's laugh echos from the walls, she never stops talking with her deep hoarse voice. Nuala, sweet little Nuala, was born at a time of great poverty when the family was going through a bad patch. She was ill for most of her childhood and has no education as she likes to point out. She was always carried along by her brothers and sisters and looked after children as long as they weren't too wild and worked as a housekeeper for some very nice priests. She knows all the saints and feast days and can rattle off the rosary in no time. As long as her eyes would let her she sang in a choir, even performing in the National Concert Hall when the nation could watch her on TV.

They are the last of seven siblings. I think they are absolutely gorgeous.

Cork and Jimmy Mac

This time, we bypassed Cork on the brand new ring road with the tunnel and all. And yet we knew without saying that somewhere enclosed by the tangle of roundabouts and four-lane roads lies this messy charming city where so much happened for us, where S was born, when work and money was scarce in a time full of energy and ideas and ideals.

A lot of time was spent organising benefits for campaigns, an endless string of concerts, films, readings in smelly pubs, dance halls, community centers. We danced against nuclear power, for the women of Greenham Common, home birth, anti-apartheid, Nicaragua, gays and lesbians, AIDS awareness, striking miners, free schools, you name it. And often, Jimmy Mac was there with his guitar, a quiet man who could bring a rowdy crowd down to a hush. He leaves it to others to record his songs. Mary Black and Christy Moore.

We may see ourselves as many tribes, but we are one species, and in failing to speak out against injustices inflicted on some of our number and doing what we can to combat those without piling further wrongs on earlier ones, we are effectively collectively punishing ourselves.

Ian Banks

Easter Monday in West Cork

 

There are officially seven pubs in Baltimore. The pretty fishing village of Baltimore on the southwestern corner of Ireland that is. The first Baltimore or mother of all Baltimores so to speak. One of the pubs is the Algiers Inn, named after the attack of Barbary pirates from North Africa which took place here in 1631. It is a gruesome story of conspiracy, murder and slavery. The locals remember it well.

This picture hangs on the wall of another pub, O'Casey's. It is securely nailed to the wall in a dark corner which is why this is such a lousy picture. The girl in the picture is Bridie, she was 15 years old on that day in 1998 or thereabouts and she had no idea who these two fellas were. But they seemed friendly and in fact asked her to be in this picture. So her sister told me. She works in the pub and saw me take a double turn when I took a look. Apparently, not many people recognised these two when they came for a visit but the general opinion seems to be that they were nice enough. The locals remember it well. Bridie is now married with kids I have been told. Lovely kids.  

 

Sandycove harbour wall

 

James Joyce lived down the road from this harbour wall. It was probably a much calmer day when he wrote this.

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither: and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

(A portrait of the artist as a young man, 1915)

Just up and across the road to the left is Teddy's, where JC would buy ice cream for whoever was with him, kids, grandchildren, wife, daughter-in-law, neighbours, and we would all sit on that wall, watching the dogs running in the surf. On rainy days, we stayed in his car, listening to Gaybo on the radio.

The sublime and the ridiculous are always close in this part of the world.

Lough Tay, Co. Wicklow

It feels like a million times that I have stood on this spot looking down onto Lough Tay over the years. But never with snow and ice. The drive was tricky for a bit and we had to turn back eventually, unable to reach the Sally Gap.