Tuesday is set to bring an end to a rainy spell that we’ve seen every day so far this year
Ireland is at its best in the rain(Image: irishmirror)
Tuesday is set to be one of those days.
The ones when the population of Ireland emerges blinking into the light as if just freed from a basement after a prolonged hostage drama.
It will be – if forecasts hold – the first day of 2026 when it hasn’t rained.
And the old rumour will begin again. The one that goes something like “there’s nowhere quite like Ireland when the sun comes out.”
The psyche of being marooned on an island on the edge of the North Atlantic ocean seems to have driven many of us mad with the idea that we were really born to live on a sun-kissed tropical paradise.
It’s as if we want Ireland to identify as Ibiza. But does the glaring sunshine really show the nation’s crown jewels in a more impressive light?
I’ve had time during these last few years of staycation renaissance to reflect on how the wonders on our doorstep compare to other parts of the world.
Nowhere even in the fevered fantasies of Disney’s theme park ‘imagineers’ have I encountered something as majestic as a sheer cliff face of gannets emerging from the Atlantic mist aboard a boat trip to the Skelligs.
Nothing in the grand spa towns of Europe has revitalised the soul like a walk along the Cliffs of Moher during a July downpour.
Standing with the horizontal rain driving in your face on the Burren or Hill 16 is to commune with the spirits of those who have gone before every bit as much as a pilgrimage to Pompeii or the Roman Colosseum.
But what all these rain-soaked experiences have in common is how they could not have been engineered more perfectly as an appetizer to the main Irish attraction.
The average Paris street may have more Michelin stars than the Spillanes have Celtic crosses, but they are taste-free zones compared to the gastronomic delights of an Irish pub toasted sandwich, washed down by a pint of stout and garnished only with the rain lashing against the windowpane outside.
Grogan’s pub in Dublin serves one of Ireland’s best toasted sandwiches (Image: X )
It’s why the first warning sign of heatwave madness – the canary in the mine – is the Irish beer garden. Or to give it its scientific name, the car park.
At the first hint of temperatures north of 14 degrees, otherwise sensible people, who for the remaining 360 soft days of the year are to be found sitting before magnificent marble and oak bars luxuriating in the serene shelter of an Irish pub, flee to the beer ‘garden’.
There they sit soaking up the UV radiation, traffic fumes and contemplating the tarmac while their beer slowly curdles.
Meanwhile a few feet away the watering hole equivalents of the Sistene Chapel, the Louvre or Royal Victoria and Albert museum sit abandoned and ignored.
To paraphrase the nation’s late punk poet laureate Shane MacGowan – singing about rainy nights in another jurisdiction – it’s in taking shelter from a shower that you can truly step into the arms of Ireland.
When it rains, there’s really nowhere like it.
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