One Fine Day

Write a story about a voyage on a boat

One Fine Day

I was brought up on a farm in County Derry and we did not have lakes. There was a well on the farm and a few streams but no lake. The nearest seaside town, Portstewart was about twenty-five miles away. So earth, rather than water was the main element in my life. 

For the first twenty or so years of my life I was never on a boat. In my Irish class our teacher taught us a song about a boat. 

Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Góla,

Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.

Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Góla,

Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.

Filum's little boat went off to Góla

Filum's little boat and Filum on it. 

Filum's little boat went off to Góla

Filum's little boat and Filum on it.

I also remembered studying a poem called ‘Le Bateau Ivre/The Drunken Boat, by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud:

As I was going down impassive Rivers,

I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:

Yelping redskins had taken them as targets

And had nailed them naked to coloured stakes.

I was indifferent to all crews,

The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons

When with my haulers this uproar stopped

The Rivers let me go where I wanted.

So my first encounter with boats was through literature. When I was young, I remember a boat trip to the Aran Islands, which are off the coast of Galway. There are three islands, Inishmore, Inis Maan and Inisheer. The famous Irish writer John Millington Synge left Paris in order to live for some time on the Aran Islands. He was advised to do this by W.B. Yeats, who told him to give up Paris and move to the Aran Islands. He said, ‘Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression’. 

When I started to visit different countries as an adult, I got the opportunity to take a few boat trips. One of the most memorable was a boat trip I made around Lake Garda. Our tour guide pointed out many interesting places along the shore. For example, Sirmione, a very popular holiday resort, which is located on the tip of a peninsula which protrudes from the southern shore of the lake between Desenzano del Garda and Peschiera. Maria Callas had a summer villa near the town of Sirmione. It is said that when she had a row with Aristotle Onassis, she would go to the villa for some peace and quiet. The tour guide told us that she would sit under the cypress trees surrounded by oleander shrubs and beautiful flowers. The tour guide told us that Onassis was sometimes very unkind to Maria and would tell her to go back to her cabin in the yacht and change her dress, because he did not like the colour. 

Maria was one of the most renowned opera singers in the world. Some of her most famous arias include Puccini’s ‘One Fine Day’ from Act 2 of Madame Butterfly and Habanera/ 

L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" from Georges Bizet’s 1875 opéra comique Carmen. 

The tour guide told us she valued this Retreat very much especially after having a fallout with Onassis. Her love affair with Onassis seemed to have been doomed.  As I looked up towards the town where her villa was located I felt empathy towards her. She was a woman with such prodigious talent and she could enthral and captivate audiences all round the world. Unfortunately, she was not so lucky in her personal life. 

The tour guide also pointed out another very interesting place on the shores of Lake Garda. It was called Limone sul Garda. It is renowned for its lemon groves and excellent olive oil. Apparently the diet is so good that the residents have a ‘mutant form of apolipoprotein called ApoA-1 Milano’ in their blood which gives them ‘a form of high-density cholesterol which lowers the risk of cardiovascular diseases’. Therefore, the residents have a longer life span, and there is a ‘dozen people over the age of 100 for a total of about 1,000 people’.  

The second most memorable boat trip I ever went on was in 2007 when I visited China for the first time.  My trip began in Shanghai and our tour guide took us to the Bund waterfront area. The Bund area, located along the Huangpu River was once the main centre for overseas bands and trading houses, including UK, USA, France, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands.

I noticed that there were many skyscrapers in Shanghai. The tallest one was the Shanghai World Trade Financial Centre which is 492 metres high. The building which I really liked was the Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower. It is supposed to be based on a poem written by Bai Juyi called the Pipa song where the sound of the pipa instrument is like the sound of pearls dropping on a jade plate.

We also visited the Su-Causeway and had a boat trip on the lake. I enjoyed my visit to the Su-Causeway. West Lake/Xī Húin Hangzhou has three causeways, and boasts elegant pagodas, and temples. Of course Chinese poets have waxed eloquent about this charming lake. In 2011, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We have a famous Causeway known as the ‘Giant’s Causeway’, which has also UNESCO status. Everyone who visits the Causeway is impressed with the polygonal columns which were formed by volcanic eruptions around 60 million years ago. It is truly amazing to see the 40,000 interlocking basalt columns sticking out of the sea. Of course, Finn McCool built the Causeway in order to walk across to Scotland in order to fight a Scottish giant who had challenged him. There are all the tell-tale signs that the myth is true, as you can see the Giant’s Boot, his Organ, and his Wishing Chair. 

These are some of the birds, and plants which you could see at the Giant’s Causeway: 

Birds 

Eider ducks 

Redshank 

Cormorant 

Fulmar 

Guillemot 

Razorbill 

Plants 

Blue spring squill, 

Pink thrift 

White sea campion. 

Oysterplant. 

Marine Life 

Shellfish 

Seaweeds 

Sea anemones 

Shrimps 

Crabs 

Small whales 

Porpoise 

Basking sharks  

Salmon 

Sea trout  

I have had other boat trips but these were the most memorable. I never realised you could find out so much about a place, by taking a boat trip.