Happy Place. 

Regardless of life or work or travels, MB is always back home in HX for the Summer Solstice Festival. The home locality is always a happy place in the opinion of MB with its stunning green landscapes around ever corner, but during the festival weekend it is particularly so.

One of the festival events introduced in recent years is ‘The longest walk for the longest day‘. It entails a 2 to 3 hour guided walk around some section of the local lake or adjacent localities, on 21 June, the day of the Summer Solstice, the longest (daylight) day of the year. Regardless of weather, and it was a rainy wet evening on 21 June just past, there is a great sense of happiness & feel good during the event. The below photo was taken by MB when the walkers reached the summit of Knockfennel, the highest hill adjacent to the lake, and the happy smiley faces are a give-away.

For those who may be interested in gaining everlasting youth (everlasting youth – really MB?), the hill in the background of the photo (on the other side of the lake) is called Knackadoon. Knockadoon hides one of the four entrances to the fabled Irish Land of Everlasting Youth (a really happy place), called Tir Na N’Og in the Irish Gaelic language. Each of the four provinces of Ireland has one entrance, and the province of Munster has it’s entrance at the hill of Knockadoon at HX.

The tale of Tir Na N’Og is well known to every Irish schoolchild who reads of it during school years. Many believe that the story is just some old Irish mythology blarney. But HX locals know better. And if you ever caught sight of MB and his youthful looks, you would certainly agree that there must be some truth to the tale. MB is one of course one of a few village elders (even though MB is far from an elder) entrusted with the exact location. And only those most deserving, after a lifetime of good deeds and faithful HX service, are taken at dead of night and totally blindfolded to the entrance cave to arrest the ravages of declining years. But as ever in HX land, MB and the elders are sworn to secrecy. So very sorry dear followers that MB must cut this story short and move on.

The walkers on the Longest Walk For The Longest Day – 21 June 2015, at the top of Knockfennel: