'And see the sun go down on Galway Bay'.

Continuing my 'recycling' of past blogs which I think are worth repeating, here's another 'A' blog from my archives - a scene which took my breath away.

Which shall I choose? The first sight of the Manhattan skyline as my plane came in to land at Newark airport? The perfect reflection in a still lake of the mountains in the Canadian Rockies? The contrasting bands of vivid colours stretching across the flat land of the Dutch tulip bulbfields? A beautiful deserted beach at Malibu, with the sunshine on the white sand and the surf from the blue ocean breaking on the shore? A small town in Provence, clinging to the side of the steep hillside almost as if it had grown out of the rocks? The wide expanse of grassland where Pickett led his charge at Gettysburg? The sunrise over Lake Nasser in Egypt, turning the Abu Simbel statues to gold? Or maybe the first sight of that ominous watch-tower over the railway line that led into the infamous death camp of Auschwitz? [I'd now add my first sight of the Grand Canyon to that list]

So many scenes, so many memories. But there’s a beautiful Irish song which says ‘you will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh, and see the sun go down on Galway Bay.’

I first went to Galway about four years ago [now 7 years ago!]. We arrived too late in the evening to see the sunset that night. The following day we went south into Tipperary and Limerick and thought we might get back in time for sunset, but then we were held up in traffic on the ring road around Galway City. ‘The sun going down on the Galway ring road’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?

On the third day we were travelling down from Clifden and the Connemara mountains towards Galway Bay as the sun started going down. The sky gradually became pinker, the small dark clouds were silhouetted against the glow.

Eventually we found somewhere to park near the shore, and went onto a small beach. We stayed there for over half an hour, watching the most glorious sunset I have ever seen. As the sun descended to the horizon, the sky turned from pink and yellow to a rich orange and deep gold. The clouds too changed colour until they looked like fiery orange smoke.  All this glorious colour was reflected in the water of the bay. The only sound came from the gentle and almost hypnotic swishing of the small waves which were like strips of molten gold as they broke on the shore.

Watching the ‘sun go down on Galway Bay’ was truly an unforgettable sight.