DAD DIARY: Making memories in the Mayo sun

PASSING through Pontoon recently, I decided to take a little trip down memory lane. The beaches there were the closest to us growing up in Breaffy and, with family friends nearby in Foxford, they were a regular playground for us.
There are three beaches side by side on Lough Cullen, with little trails through woods linking them. We whiled away so many hours playing there when we were younger.
One of beaches had a little pier (we could stretch and call it a pontoon), which was great for jumping into the water. For those who couldn’t swim – like me – it was manageable, because it was only ever three-feet deep at its end.
The water was shallow, safe and the tree-lined shore gave it a real exotic feel.
I haven’t been there for a good few years, and it certainly isn’t what it once was. They were never pristine, sandy beaches, but they have become very overgrown and, clearly, greatly underused.
But even after taking a look at it recently, when I think of that Pontoon beach with the pier as I write, it is memories of the late 1980s and early 1990s that come flooding back. The splashing, the frolics, the sandwiches and MiWadi picnics, the quests to find new ground away from our parents’ gaze, the wondering whether we would ever be able to swim to the nearby island in Lough Cullen, which looks about 200 metres away.
The answer to the latter is still negative. I learned to swim when I was 15, but the skills are still very rudimentary.
But I recall how lucky we felt to have such a great beach so close to home. It was a 20-minute drive with us squashed in the back with no seat belts. When we went to Pontoon, time stopped turning and we never wanted to leave.
If we wanted to go to a sea beach, it was 40 minutes to Bertra, outside Westport, and an hour or so to our cousins and their nearby beaches in Killeen, past Louisburgh.
It’s why it still feels so bizarre to be living in Achill now, with Dooega Beach only a five minute stroll from the front door.
It has become our kids’ playground, and unlike our days in Pontoon, where we might go only five or six times a year, Frankie, Éamon and Séimí can go there – and do – every day the weather is compliant.
Up until the sudden arrival of warm sunshine two weekends ago, visits this year amounted to playing on the sand and climbing the rocks. They also love to do beach cleans – it is frightening the amount of stuff that washes up.
The kids are at the stage where you can nearly let them off. Séimí might make a bee-line for the road, that’s the main concern.
But at last we were finally blessed with weather good enough to go into the water. We put on their wetsuits and down we went. It was fabulous. Frankie and Éamon were running around in the water having the time of their lives. Séimí’s reaction was more mixed, saying ‘It’s too cold’ and coming in and out. He will have to acclimatise!
The kids may well take the beach for granted because it is so near, but I never will. I’m hoping they’ll have memories to outdo mine of Pontoon. I must get better at swimming too, although swimming out to the nearest island might still be beyond me – Clare Island is at least ten miles away!
Now, we just need that warm sunshine to return....

In his fortnightly column, Edwin McGreal charts the ups and downs of the biggest wake-up call of his life: Parenthood.