Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Have a Seat

One thing I like about Moville is that there is a lot of public space right in the center of town. In addition to the shore walk there is the town green. Both of these get a lot of use by local people. Every time we walk we see all kinds of people using the path. There are a lot of exercise partners out in their gear, walking and talking together. There are mums, dads, grandmas, and grandpas pushing prams or out with small children. There are people walking their dogs, couples taking a leisurely walk, and lone people either out for a casual ramble or racing along doing their workout. There are also people who come with their coffee or lunch, newspaper or phone, or nothing at all--they sit on one of the many benches and eat, read, text, or just sit quietly looking at the light sparkle on the water and listening to the soft whisper of the water as it meets the rocks.

There are all kinds of benches along the way. A few are basic wooden benches, but some of them are like works of art.

The carving on this one is hard to see, but if you look on the right side you can see a tractor pulling a load of silage.



The tentacles on this guy curve around to the sides of the bench.
There are a few stone benches along the path too--they seem throne-like to me.
Up on the green there is a nice curved stone bench.
In his blog today, Bill has a nice photo of the halfway point of the trail, where there is a beautiful round table and curved benches made of stone. We stopped there to eat lunch the first time we walked the path.

It is nice to see these public spaces where people can get together, sit quietly in nature, get some exercise, enjoy the peace, the view, and the brisk sea breeze, and be away from traffic.

4 comments:

Lois said...

I do like those benches!

Shari Burke said...

They are different and creative :-)

Laurie Graves said...

Wonderful! Goes along with my theory that every community needs a center to hold it together.

Shari Burke said...

I agree, Laurie! When Bill and I were on our cross country journey 7 years ago, one thing I noticed was how, in most of the towns and cities we stopped for a few days, there was no public space that did not require buying something. It is good to support local businesses and fun to meet friends for coffee/tea/lunch/etc, but it is also nice to have someplace where people can meet and hang out, even if they're skint and have no spare cash for stuff like that! Besides, it is nice to have public greenspaces!!