Craic On

If ever there was a famine we would be well provided for in the River Row. On the shorefront there are oysters, clams, mussels and winkles which are disturbed further out by the mussel and oyster boats and pulled inland by the tides. In the Bredagh River itself brown trout abound as filmed by local man Anthony Craig last year.

Growing by the banks are wild garlic plants. You get the occasional potato plant too. Also growing there are heaps of wild raspberries, several gooseberry bushes and blackberries too. Mint abounds also. If the famine came you wouldn’t do too badly.

You could start up with some seafood soup from the winkles and clams. You could follow that with oysters and clams done in garlic. You could follow that up with a nicely cooked brown trout with new potatoes and use some of the mint. You could even cook that on an outdoor fire using he wood washed up on the beach along with the coal that is still regularly washed ashore from the coal boat that was sunk a few years ago.

You could finish off with a consomme made from gooseberries, wild raspberries and blackberries.

And all of this gourmet meal cost nothing at all. Of course, if the markets crashed and the famine came we would have to form a militia down here to protect the area from marauding townspeople coming to share our largesse.