Wow

I wanna go.

I drove west into Leitrim in the dead of winter. Whereas the middle of Ireland is surprisingly flat, as soon as I nosed across the county line, the landscape began to ruffle and fold and climb, this way and that, and I found myself ploughing through mists, rhythmically popping up and down through them, making a trail like the coils of the Loch Ness monster breaking surface.

Mysterious stretches of water would appear each side of me, one every couple of miles, flat sheets with gloss, frothing silver mist, and forests sometimes rose tall and dark beside them. It was a landscape from a dream, unmanicured, informal, raffish and intimate in its beauty, changing textures all the time. If Kew Gardens were the grand salon of a mansion, this would be its teenager's bedroom.