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Published: August 7th 2007
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Coloring Humanity's Wind
Walking through Skerries against the winds of man Due to Travelblog.org's site crash, the memory of this blog was lost and had to be re-published. Apologies for the missing material and all articles will be up in time Day One’s Nuclear Resolution Another Sunday, another city—the highlife of Dublin deep in the Temple Bar district of an old city—and another Irish spring day, south within the Republic of Ireland. A layer of clouds hid the morning sun with a chilled line of pavement beneath our feet.
As dawn’s stiffness flexed its weary muscles, the sound of cracking toes echoed down the empty spaces of Grafton Street. The small group of thirteen international Peace Walkers moved north out of Ireland’s capital and reversed the colloquial saying of the land. It was an old Gaelic
Éire, now with a new face and a new meaning: All Roads Lead From Dublin. A swift pace and the 86-day countdown began.
Organized by Marcus Atkinson and KA of
Footprints for Peace, the Peace Walk from Dublin to London was on the map and moving. Along the way, the route was laid for a foundation in the hollowing grounds of Mother Earth, as man and his beastly drive for power surged the seas
Roads From Dublin
Temple Bar district, Dublin of desire. Uranium was on the radar, and nuclear power was the new false truth:
A resolve to global warming!
A clean new energy!
A safe future!
The enlightened future!
Nuclear power! It seems to be the global chant to ease this planet’s climate change and solve the energy crisis, but what those walking and supporting soon discover is that it is the opposite. Nuclear power and the facilities, operations, processes, dangers, affects, and methods of extraction are causing a ripple effect across the land. It is a human rights violation against the indigenous peoples and their soils. It is an inevitable destruction of the health of this planet and all persons.
Little did we know the face of reality as the Peace Walk for a nuclear-free future headed north on its three-month venture along the shores of the Irish Sea, green and churning with its tidal cycles of poison.
A Day In The Life Of A morning of Balbriggan in eastern Ireland inside the town’s scout hall with the usual tea, white bread, peanut butter and jam. We rose stiff on the third day out of a demeaning 86. Brought together from our nations
of America, Australia, England, Austria, Japan and Scotland, sandwiches were strapped to our backs with raingear dangling from our shoulders.
At nine that morning we met Trevor Sargent outside the Town Hall, the leader of Ireland’s Green Party. With a congenial send-off, the sun continued to rise, peering through the clouds over a crisp walk, which warmed us and guided our path ahead.
North along the Irish Sea, we hit the coast, moving steadily with cramping feet and slowly roasting blisters. For lunch, the pack rested at SONAIRTE Ecology Centre: an organic information garden as verdant as an Irish spring after months of winter rain. The clouds remained ominous, cooling our pace, but after refueling, a wrong turn eventually ran us empty.
As we reached the beach-town of Bellystown, the group chose the “scenic route” and a three-kilometer road straight on an unending stretch soon sapped our legs. Yet with the nearing of our destination, a sight caught our vision. Stacks of smoke pipes and plumes of waste pumped from a concrete bunker as if it was built by a child with HDD and a stack of gray Legos.
Leading up to the Drogheda’s
River Liffey
Dublin mornings industrial center just east of the town center, we wound along the littoral of an empty inlet. Low tide showed the northern latitude’s drastic cycles, and sinewy mudflats of stink connected the city to the Irish Sea. The group neared, separated along the bay’s road, and slowed as traffic sped by. The pavement was narrow, the speed limit posted a 60km/hr, and our legs were quickly giving way. However, the vision of tea and biscuits in the city’s Town Hall was the carrot hung before our mule train. The Deputy Lord Mayor was waiting—our arrival an hour and a half late.
The city of Drogheda is directly across the Irish Sea from Sellafield, the world’s largest nuclear reprocessing facility along England’s western shores. With this interrelated distance, nuclear waste fills the waters and is carried in the currents to seaside settlements and beyond. As a result, Drogheda holds a cancer rate 20%!h(MISSING)igher than Ireland’s national average. Its fishing is tainted. A lifestyle vanishes. Its citizens are living under the effects of nuclear power, dying while their own country remains the only nuclear-free nation surrounded by poisonous powerhouses yearning for bigger and better.
Making A Party Out Flags Higher
The send-off by the Dubliners Of It
Our image of the town was bleak as we entered Drogheda’s outskirts. We passed the Scotch Hall shopping centre and its massive modern complexes where groups of young Irish lads called out “Hippies! Hippies!” Yet, the tea and coffee were still hot despite our tardiness, and the snacks were fresh in their sparkling foil wrappers. Another surprise was to finish off the day.
As we sat in the Town Hall’s council chambers—stinking, sweating out our exhaustion, and bleeding our soar feet with fresh air—the Deputy Lord Mayor informed us of our six o’clock dinner at the Bru Restaurant & Lounge. We were blind with salvation.
Bru Restaurant & Lounge on the riverside was empty, set with personalized menus entitled “Footprints of Peace”. We had our selections of fresh sea bass (from the Irish Sea?), steak baguettes, fish & chips and penne pasta with an endless supply of fresh juices—pineapple, cranberry and grapefruit. We feasted like kings, toasted a 23rd birthday in the party (
ah-hem), and continued to indulge over hot meals.
Night seems to pervade as always, and being stuffed, a warm welcome at the community’s Bahai Centre brought us our
River Scents
Along side the river outside Laytown where we took our lunch break at Sonairte Ecology Center first showers on the walk. Yes, none of us could resist a Lidl’s frozen cake for dessert. Fuller, cleaner, dryer (and did I say fuller?)—not a bad way to say goodnight after long days with friends and family on a Peace Walk for a Nuclear-Free Future.
To be continued...
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megan
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love it