My Ocean- Heritage Week 2026 “My first trip to the seaside”
Video transcript
My name is John. I have the unfortunate distinction of being her father.
I reared her well, thank you. I do react to somebody talking to me from the floor.
John, she’s the very best. Thank you, thank you. She’s the best, she’s better than all the rest.
She asked me to come here today to do a little story, and it’s called “My First Trip to the Seaside.” Now, as you can appreciate, it’s a long time ago since I went first to the seaside, but I’m trying to come to it around the corner.
Victory in Europe Day took place on May the 8th, 1945, bringing the Second World War to an end. My father and mother had returned to Ireland since… had not returned to Ireland, I beg your pardon, since 1939, when my father had been first enlisted in the RAF and was looking forward to some well-earned holidays along the west, the Wicklow Coast.
They were married in Cairo in Egypt in 1943, which to us today sounds an amazing thing, but the story behind it is that that’s where they were both based, working for the Allies. And my mother was a cipher clerk; in other words, what she did was she interpreted messages from headquarters through. My father was a navigator, and his job was to navigate the Allies’ forces around Cairo and then to defend Cairo and Egypt, and then working up the way the Battle of El Alamein took place. And that turned to war.
So after that, he was free to go back to England to mastermind the next project, which was called, to us today, D-Day. He called it Operation Overlord, and it was the invasion of France from England. And his job was to organize gliders and airplanes to manufacture that crossing.
Now I go back to my script.
On September 1st, 1945, my parents took the boat train from Heuston Station to Holyhead, and from there the mail boat to the North Wall. They stayed with my grandparents in Clontarf for a week, and from there arranged to travel by train to Wicklow. A pony and trap waited for them at the Wicklow Station, and my father drove himself, my mother, and me, a six-month-old baby.
It was quite a change for my father to be driving a wooden horse-drawn chariot, one horsepower, after spending years flying aircraft in the RAF, including a Dakota, which had a 2,000 horsepower from its twin engines, 2,000 horsepower. According to his flying logbook, which I have, he had first flown a Dakota in July 1943 around the airfields of Essex and Hampshire. Later promoted to acting crew captain, his job was to oversee and arrange the dispersal of aircraft and gliders throughout the airfields of southern England, in preparation for a day you all know as D-Day.
The Dakota was the best known of all the planes used for transporting gliders, as it was used as a commercial aircraft for many years after the war had ended. I remember taking a flight in the Dakota with my father when I was about seven years of age. The unique smell… yes, the smell was hydraulic oil, and the fuselage with the high windows and bare seats added to the noise of the engines made it an unforgettable experience for me at such a young age.
But back to the seaside.
I have no recollection of the trip myself, obviously, but I do have photographs, and I’ll show them to you later on if you wish.
My mother… parents moved back… sorry, I’ll finish that bit.
The first trip, the whole point of all this is, when we arrived down to Wicklow, not having been there before, my father had arranged to stay in a cottage. It was called the First Ditch Cottage, and it was just up from what we know today as Magheramore. So, yes, you know Magheramore? Yeah.
And my mother brought me down as a six-month-old child, placed me in the sea. Now, again, I have a photograph of that, if you don’t believe me. She gave me a love of the sea then, which I’ve retained all my life. I swam up and down the sea.
My parents moved back to Wicklow shortly after. I’m not used to a script. I normally speak text, whatever.
However, moving around in lots of my years, I’ve now spent 50 years in Wicklow Town, buying my first house with my wife in 1979, and raising the children of… I beg your pardon, raising a family of 8 children, and now 17 grandchildren. Wow!
Some of you know my son. He got married here a couple of months ago. He asked us to contact everybody. So, at one stage, we had every family member there, Naoise included, of course. And the next photograph we took was with the 17 grandchildren, with my wife and I. Which was rather amazing. Can you imagine what my wife’s function is at Christmas time, trying to get all the presents?
Now, I’m a little older, and I find to take the dip in the sea every day. Yes, every day. Except when it gets cold, frosty. And last week, I swam in the annual Masters swimming race in Wicklow Town, which is a distance of 700 metres. Now, it’s tide assistance, so it’s not quite as tough as that sounds, but you just swim along. And with people who are half and quarter my age.
But anyway, I got there. And some of my children and grandchildren were intending to cheer me on and to generate some much-needed horsepower on the day.
With those few words, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to think in terms of what the sea can do for you.
Hilda O'Grady
