Country air exhausts me. Well for the first couple of days anyway until my eyes,lungs,mind readjust to the different pace,air,energy. I have spent two days in the wilds of Sligo and am now slumped in a seat on the train back to Dublin.
Often when out of the loop of regular life activites time takes on a different quality and seems to stop, or expand in a different manner. Another reason for my slumpedness.
The reason for my trip was to help a friend with the opening night of her new cafe called Pudding Row in the quaint seaside village of Easky. A little dot of a place built on an exposed costal plane with sweeping views out to Benbulbin and beyond to Donegal. The night I arrived I took a stroll from the b and b to the sea and witnessed a most spectacular blood orange sunset bleeding into the the dark water.
But other than breathtaking views, surfworhy waves and super friendly locals what would make you uproot your family from the comfort and certainty of city life and take on a the spectacular challenge of opening a cafe in what is, I hate to say, otherwise a culinary wasteland? Independent thinking, passion, bravery, love,resilience all ingredients required and necessary to make a project like this happen and evolve. Ingredients that Dervila and Jonny Conlan seem to have in heaped tablespoonfuls. All this and a build it and they will come ethos will supply locals and visitors with the most beautifully homemade breakfasts and lunches and insure a rewarding future for this family.
I love this non conforming attitude and its non city centric feel. Invigorating refreshing and brave. Words I would also use to describe another venture in Sligo town. Sweet Beat is a little vegan cafe on Bridge street. Vegan and Sligo are not words you might generally see in the same sentence but again this little venture has very busy liveliness to it and has built up quite the fanclub in the last year.
Maybe seeds are being sown, seeds of a new vigour and determination for regrowth and development. This will catch on.