Port a Doris - Where the Ordinary World Meets the Realm of the Fae.
Dearest Reader,
Back in the early 2000s, childhood came with a wonderful sort of freedom. You could disappear after breakfast, spend the entire day exploring and, provided you appeared again in time for dinner, nobody asked too many questions.
My childhoodbest friend Claire and I, along with our two older sisters, Julie and Bronagh, spent our summers at a caravan park in Greencastle, Donegal.
One day, we all went rock climbing and exploring, as you did when you were young and had absolutely no appreciation for the dangers of your own adventures.
And quite by accident, we stumbled upon something extraordinary.
A doorway through the cliffs.
To four girls with wild imaginations, we’d discovered the entrance to another world.
And naturally, we did what any sensible group of girls would do back in those days.
We made a pact.
This was our secret place. No telling the parents!
After all, friendship pacts were serious business back then. Almost certainly more binding than anything drawn up by a solicitor nowadays.
And for the first few visits, we kept our promise, eventually having to give in and tell our parents where we’d been disappearing off to for hours every day. In reality, our parents probably knew exactly where we were going all along. But in our heads, they hadn’t a clue.
We had discovered somewhere that felt like it belonged to the fairies.
And, for a little while, it belonged to us four too.
So, obviously, when I became a mother, I had to take my own kids.
We walked through fields, across little beaches and around hidden bays, each turn revealing another secret of the coastline.
In one bay, we spotted three seals. Two bobbed about in the water while a third basked on a rock just above the tide.
Naturally, this was the perfect opportunity to tell my children about the selkies — the mysterious seal folk of Irish and Scottish folklore who could shed their skins and walk upon the land as humans.
I can tell you they looked at those seals a little differently afterwards.
The path grew narrower as we climbed along the cliffside, just as I remembered from my own childhood.
Grasses and ferns rose so high that my youngest couldn't see over them. So, naturally, we started singing our bear-hunt song about the long, wavy grass and having to go through it.
And then came the butterflies.
A wildflower beside the path was covered in them. So many, all gathered together, their delicate wings resting among the petals.
We passed right beside them, yet they barely stirred.
It was as though they knew we were coming.
As though they belonged there, quietly watching over the entrance to somewhere sacred.
The little guardians of Port Doris.
Suddenly it appeared, A mysterious doorway through the rock.
Whether shaped by Mother Nature herself or by human hands, no-one could tell you.
Whatever age you are, standing before it makes you feel as though you’re about to step into another realm.
Beyond the doorway lies the hidden bay of Port Doris, surrounded by towering cliffs like a great natural amphitheatre.
Huge boulders, some as big as cars, lie scattered across the shore.
And then there’s the sound.
Oh, the sound.
Waves crash against the rocks, and as the water retreats, thousands of pebbles tumble and roll against one another.
They rattle, whisper and sing, echoing all around you.
It’s as though the sea is playing its own music.
No orchestra. No instruments.
Just the Atlantic with its own song to sing.
Since I was a child I always loved rainbows they are like little pathways to a happier place.
In Ireland, rainbows have long been tangled up with stories of leprechauns, hidden treasures and the possibility of something wonderful waiting just beyond our reach.
And isn’t that a lovely thought?
That somewhere between the rain and the sunshine, there might be a little doorway to another world.
Port Doris has always felt like that to me.
A place where children can imagine mermaids beneath the waves, selkies among the seals and fairies hiding in the long grass.
And where, for a little while, grown-ups can believe in them too.
When I began designing my new scarf, I wanted to capture that feeling.
Not simply the colours of the landscape, but the magic of being there.
The soft sandy and stone-coloured tones reflect the pebbles and the soft sands in the bay. And woven through them are delicate stripes of the rainbow joyful colours.
To me, Port Doris is a place where the veil between our everyday world and the realm of the Fae grows thin.
And so I named the scarf Port Doris, after the place that has lived in my imagination since childhood.
If a scarf can carry even a tiny piece of that wonder into someone’s everyday life, then I think it’s done its job.
Some stories are told. Ours are woven.
Until next time, Dearest reader
Leona
Elsie Tweed