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PRICE OF FLYING HIGH: 'DOLLYMOUNT HAS improved so much. A few years ago it was like Mad Max down here with cars tearing up the beach. You notice the difference?” asks Francois Colussi, proprietor of the Pure Magic kitesurfing shop on Clontarf Road in Dublin. I remember all right. The kids, and I was one of them, learned to drive on Dollymount, weaving around the windbreaks and toddlers of day-trippers, the whipped ice-cream vans. The L-plates weren’t a patch on the joyriders, either.

Dollymount looks so grown up now, cars neatly penned in, uncrowded despite the big blue sky. Even though the wind is “super-light” (you have to imagine it with a French accent), Colussi has agreed to introduce me to kitesurfing, or flysurfing as it’s sometimes called. This is just one type of power kiting, brother to buggying and landboarding (kite plus special skateboard), and sister to surfing. He says he won’t be taking me near the water, yet – I would need to do a full training session – and I’m secretly relieved after a story I heard recently.