I decided to visit Avondale for a cuppa on Saturday. The treckers in the birthday party group were tackling the Avonmore Way, Rathdrum to Laragh. The plan was that the youngest trecker would be collected at the flask break in Clara. So I had an hour or so to fill.
The visit rekindled may happy memories of childhood trips to Aughrim and Wexford – across the Wicklow Gap, the Glenmacnass Waterfall at the top of the valley where we often stopped for a picnic and chasing games across the rocks in the river, ears popping on the descent into Laragh, the tiny church down in Clara Vale and through Rathdrum. Passing Avondale, we used to sing the song about Parnell.
If we were on the road to Wexford, we next came to the “meetings” where the Avonbeg met the Avonmore to form the Avoca River and where the famous Irish Poet Thomas Moore penned the famous melody, “The Meeting of the Waters”.
“There is not in this wide world a valley so sweet
As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet!
Oh the last rays of feeling and life must depart
Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart”
Thomas Moore
