Snow days past and present - and precious memories that last a lifetime

Children, young people and even a few adults have been enjoying this week’s snow days as the latest Arctic air mass brought falls of delightfully powdery snow across the county.

Despite the cold and the road safety concerns, there is something about snow that brings out our inner child; something innocent and uninhibited that allows people of all ages to experience sheer joy in its purest form. 

Whether taking in the beauty of the hushed, snow covered landscape, getting stuck into a snowball fight with friends and siblings, or sliding down a hillside on sleds or plastic bags, it is a change from our everyday routines that we know is short lived and which therefore must be enjoyed to the full. 

Thinking back to my own childhood, snow days were a rare occurrence. Snow itself was never, as far as I recall, a reason to close the school. 

Frozen or burst pipes on the other hand were more of a problem.

Long before the days of text alerts, emails or even a landline in the school, we would arrive at Ballydevitt NS only for the school bus to be turned around at the gate. 

Our driver, Nacie  Herron would have to ferry us all back up the slippery mountain roads to get us home again. 

It was such a treat to have an unexpected day off. And I was blessed growing up to not only be surrounded by a fantastic natural playground, but to have lots of other children with which to enjoy it. 

Snowballs were thrown, snowmen were built, fingers were frozen, and pots of tea or bowls of soup and buttery toast would be enjoyed before we headed back outside to start all over again. 

I can remember one such day falling on my birthday, and it felt like the biggest treat ever. 

Anyone who is familiar with Mullinacrick in the townland of Orbeg a few miles outside Donegal Town, will know that it's a steep climb in any conditions. 

I’m told that Mullinacrick translates roughly as the knobbly bit sticking out of the hill. Whether or not that’s correct, it is certainly a perfect description.

Living on this particularly notorious hill brought its own adventures in wintertime. I can only imagine looking back through the lens of an adult what it must have been like for drivers trying to hold on to any bit of grip, often sliding back down and abandoning the car at a neighbour’s house. 

One particularly memorable incident was when my mother couldn’t quite get her little red mini to make those last few steep yards to our house. She put a few big stones behind the wheels to keep the car in place while she went to get my father. The stones however, didn’t suffice, and the driverless car rolled back down the hill, round a sharp corner, turning itself around in the process and coming to a very polite halt a few hundred yards down the road. 

And the damage? One digit of the registration plate came loose from where it nudged the ditch while ‘parking.’

Of course, it doesn’t bear thinking about how serious it could have been if a car had been coming in the other direction. But all ended well, and my mother got great mileage out of the story, as did the only witness, our late neighbour Victor Irwin. If they have met up in the afterlife, they will no doubt still be talking and laughing about it!

On mornings when the school bus couldn’t make it as far as our road, or the driver was unlikely to chance driving down the steep, bendy slope, myself and the other local children would head up the road to meet it at the top of the more gradual hill on the road that consisted mostly of the townland of Newtown. 

There were a few days when the bus didn’t come that far either. On some occasions we headed home; on others we walked the few miles to school, arriving very late, soaking wet but absolutely delighted with ourselves. 

And we had a lot of fun along the way. 

It’s really lovely to see that despite all the advances in technology, the increase in screentime, use of gaming devices, etc, that a fall of snow has not lost any of its magic. 

We have more means of capturing and sharing those special moments now, and over the last few days, Facebook and other social media platforms have been flooded with pictures of people making the most of this week’s snow days. 

The back is well broken on the winter now and there’s already a noticeable stretch in the evenings. But these few precious days will be relived and remembered long after spring has come and gone here in Donegal.