Wednesday, May 09, 2007

If you build it, they will come

Back to the subject of the new beach: the other cool thing about the development is that because it needed a car park, we now have a local flat space.

I realise that may not sound like a big deal. It really is. I stood looking at the smallish car park, with its little pavement along its perimeter, and immediately wanted to walk around it. I don't get many opportunities to walk quickly here - going downhill trashes your knees, uphill is reserved for wheezing, but here was flat space. Practically an expanse, except, you know, littler.

So I walked around it (at Malahide walking speed, for those from Malahide). Several times. Then the following morning I went back and jogged around it. Heaven. Already the news of the flat space is spreading: this morning there were people walking their dogs around it, enjoying the horizontalness of it all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another small world moment: I had a friend from Malahide, about your age. Adrienne Stack, pharmacy student from Trinners, graduated '94...come on now, tell me that you know her!

And it sure would be nice to live in a place where flat tarred spaces are a rarity. Instead of going up- or downhill, couldn't you just kind of shinny sideways?

Orlaith said...

Alas, while the world might be teeny, Malahide was big enough for our paths not to cross.

When I first started looking for somewhere to walk, I was thinking in shimmy-terms. But the roads go sideways for a moment, then soar or plummet. I would have just built a series of concentric rings around the island, with little feeder roads in between.