The mission - Fly out from Gatwick to Dublin, drive to Loughshinny harbour, pick up a Rhib & drown a bint in a Victorian dress then exfil to Skerries Harbour and back home in a day.
All good, Klunk & I took a deployment bag with drysuit & assorted accessories each. For the most part we gave it little thought as this was Beeb & we felt they had been on top of flights, production et al.
All that was required weas to drop the kit off and head upstairs at the airport for, in my case eggs benedict with Klunk opting for scrambled.
It was a remarkably good flight with the weather firmly on our side & we emerged Dublin airport in perfect early morning sunshine. Our driver had known our flight and was duly waiting. He got over the apprehension of two guys with bags quietly sat in the back by chatting away to himself, probably more the fact that we hadn't given him a drop off address apart from the harbour. It was a serene day & neither of us did much on the drive apart from take in the sunny drive, odd comment to the driving seat.
You really need to visit Loughshinny, it's a picturesque little huddle of housespl rising from the tiny kids TV style harbour and the beach, dappled in sunshine. At that time of day everything was quiet. Our driver asked where we wanted dropping off, looking around a deserted harbour we agreed the sea wall...No Rhib, no crew, no comms. The taxi driver looked back as he drove off, still not sure of his ride.
We scoped the harbour and very quickly decided to use the deployment bags as pillows, go into battery save mode settling to chill prone in the sun taking in the peace. Yeh, about that peace. we realised with all the curtain twitching that the car had caused curiosity and our rather ambivalent arrival might have broken the routine.
We watched & waited, mostly wondering if we were ever going to do this job or if we were even in the right place. Several hours later still no comms, nothing had wound down the little road to the harbour and no sign of human activity. Another hour past midday and we had gieven up any pretention of doing anything at all, apart from arranging our exit from Loughshinny back to the airport. Having decided nobody did anything here, no boats in or out, no cars or signs of life, no corner shop open for light relief, a solo figure appeared at the top of the hill. Slow moving gentleman with an equally slow moving dog. As this was the most excitement we had we watched him make his way down the hill, pausing occassionally both he & dog pausing, around the bend & houses and to the foot of the harbour wall. Slowly he drew up to us, we spoke our greetings & he moved all the way to the tip of the harbour wall to turn back. This time he stopped and introduced himself as the x harbour master, throwing the unspoken question to us. I decided to go with simple saying we were to be picked up by boat to drown a bint in a Victorian dress for the BBC. He considered for a minute and then said we had picked a good day for a drowning as the sea was suitably calm. We chatted for a couple of minutes, then he & his dog moved off to make his way back along the wall to the road. He had disappeared amongst the houses for only a short while before other humans, a horse rider, a handful of locals on foot and some working vehicles all arrived at lands end from within the dwellings. Mostly with a nod & a wave everybody wishing a good days TV drowning.
Shortly after this grand emergence our Rhib arrived with equally friendly but bemused captain & 3 man, 1 woman Beeb crew. To top the day off I broke clunks dry suit zip & tried to drown him too.
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