The HorseBox Glamping An Capall

01/04/2026

Now available…… from April 1st…..

30/03/2026

Easter Holidays are here - hikes at the ready!

22/03/2026

What a day

09/02/2026

After a Month of It

It hasn’t stopped raining.
Not properly.
Not the kind of stop where the sky says sorry about that.

It’s been raining in instalments.
Drips that pretend they’re pauses.
Mist that lies.
Clouds that loiter like they’ve nowhere better to be.

A month of it.
A mí báistí.
The ground no longer drinks — it remembers.

Rain with names.
Because of course it has names.
Manchán says there are ninety-nine of them in Irish,
and I believe him,
because this rain isn’t just rain —
it’s behaviour.

There’s braon —
the shy drip, the hesitant thought of rain.

Then ceobhrán,
that soft, needling mist that gets under your collar
and into your mood.

Smirr rain — not heavy, not light,
just persistent enough to make you sigh at the door
and put the kettle back on.

There’s bogbháisteach,
soaking rain,
the kind that doesn’t ask permission,
just takes.

Frasa,
sudden, dramatic,
throwing itself down like it’s making a point.

Seaca,
hard rain with an edge,
cold enough to remind you you’re mortal.

And then there’s the rain that has no word in English —
the rain that comes sideways,
that climbs up your sleeves,
that laughs at umbrellas,
that knows you didn’t really want to go anywhere anyway.

This rain has been here so long
the fields have stopped complaining.
The moss is smug.
The stone walls are darker now,
as if they’ve remembered something old.

Boots by the door never dry.
Dogs smell permanently of weather.
Conversations begin with
“Jesus, the rain,”
and end with
“sure look.”

And the sun?
Ah, the sun.

In Irish there are fewer words for it —
because it’s precious.
Because you don’t waste language
on something that shows up every day.

When it does appear,
it doesn’t shout.
It blesses.
A thin gold line on wet grass.
Steam lifting from hedges like the land is exhaling.

The sun here is not a tyrant.
It’s a visitor.
A wink.
A promise.

And maybe that’s the point.

That rain teaches patience.
Teaches listening.
Teaches you that life is not about clarity
but continuity.

That things grow anyway.
That colour deepens.
That there is beauty
in greys layered upon greys
until green explodes through them.

So let it rain.
Let it speak all ninety-nine of its names.

We’ll be here,
watching the light practice returning,
knowing when the sun finally breaks through —

it will mean something.

09/02/2026

So apparently Brad Pitt is filming over the hill in Luggala… anyone seen him?

30/12/2025

What It Means to Be Irish

We are not loud by nature.
We are not green hats or borrowed accents,
not a country reduced to a chorus shouted back at itself
by people who left and people who never arrived.

Being Irish is knowing
that history is not behind you —
it’s under your feet.
In the walls.
In the field that still refuses to explain itself.

It’s learning early
that silence can be a language
and understatement a form of dignity.
That the sharpest griefs
are rarely the ones that announce themselves.

We are a people who learned
how to speak sideways.
Who joke when the truth is too heavy,
and tell stories not to impress
but to survive the telling.

Being Irish is understanding
that land remembers.
It remembers hunger,
and footfall,
and the long mathematics of leaving.
It remembers names said aloud one last time
before becoming photographs.

We carry that memory lightly —
not because it was light,
but because carrying it heavily
would stop us moving at all.

It means we mistrust certainty.
We respect nuance.
We know the danger of anyone
who says they have a simple answer
to a complicated past.

Being Irish is growing up
with humour as insulation.
A kind of verbal turf fire
kept burning against the damp.
Not because we’re cheerful —
but because we’re resilient
and we’ve had practice.

It’s knowing that community
isn’t something you brand
or organise into neat rows —
it’s who shows up quietly,
with a casserole,
without being asked.

It’s believing, even now,
that poetry matters.
That language can save you.
That a well-turned phrase
is a form of resistance
against being flattened or forgotten.

We are shaped by weather
that teaches patience,
by light that appears suddenly
and disappears without apology.

We are cautious with pride,
but loyal to the bone.
We remember who helped us
and who didn’t —
even when we never say it out loud.

To be Irish
is to stand between laughter and loss
and refuse to choose only one.
To hold beauty and brutality
in the same sentence
and not flinch.

We are not plastic.
We are not performances.
We are not a single story.

We are the long sentence,
with clauses and commas,
and meanings that deepen
the longer you stay with them.

That —
quietly, stubbornly —
is what it means to be Irish.

29/12/2025

27/12/2025

I’m from Wicklow —
proper Wicklow —
between Laragh and the falls,
where directions start with
“Do you know where you’re going?”
and end with
“Ah sure you’ll find it.”

Laragh is small.
So small that if you don’t wave back,
someone will ring you later
to check you’re alright.

Glendalough isn’t a place —
it’s a mood.
A soft mist,
a quiet warning,
and a car park that fills up
faster than Mass on Christmas Eve.

We watch tourists bravely attempt the steps
in runners from Penneys,
while locals stand back, nod,
and silently say a prayer
to Saint Kevin
and the mountain rescue.

We don’t rush here.
The valley doesn’t allow it.
Time moves differently between the lakes.
A “quick walk” becomes
two hours,
three chats,
and a sudden awareness
that it’s gone fierce cold.

We talk about the weather
like it’s a living thing.
“Ah the mist’s coming down.”
“The lake’s gone dark.”
“That’s rain with intention.”

We give directions using things
that no longer exist.

We don’t leave parties properly.
We migrate.
One step toward the door,
another story,
a final cup of tea,
and an update on someone
you haven’t seen since 1998.

And we don’t say we love this place.
That’d be too much altogether.

We just say,
“Ah… you’d miss it.”

And you would.

Because once you’ve stood in Glendalough
when the mist lifts
and the valley goes quiet —
you don’t really leave.

You just carry it with you.
Between the hills.
Between the lakes.
Between Laragh and the rest of the world

01/12/2025

Irish goats. St Kevin’s Way. Photo credit - Gavin Doyle

08/10/2025

Happy sunny Autumn day… the Africans are loving it ….

13/05/2025

And relax…. We have R&R on tap