Seaside Haunts/Cruit Island: Enda Wyley recalls magical childhood summer days spent exploring the deserted beaches of Cruit Island, in Co Donegal

My father was a nine-to-five man. Every morning he would kiss our mum goodbye, leave the chaos of a family home - bursting with the demands of five young children and a dog - and make for the railway station to catch the 8.21 a.m. train. He would work all day in the city, then take the 5.21 p.m. train home again, returning just in time for tea, his top button open, his tie loosened, his battered brown leather case heavy with the weight of his day.

But one morning in the early 1970s things changed. My father didn't take the 8.21 a.m. train as usual, because he was being sent away to work for a few days. When he came back he was full of excitement. He sat at our blue Formica kitchen table and told us he had found heaven on earth. It was in a place called Donegal. We all knew then that there was nothing else for it but to go there.

My mother soon arranged for us to leave school three weeks before term ended - an experience we delighted in but that would no doubt infuriate schools and teachers today - and headed north in our old Ford Escort.

The dog whined at my mother's feet, and in the back seat my four siblings and I pinched each other, giggled, sang The Bear Went Over The Mountain, played I Spy or, as the journey progressed, annoyed our parents by continually asking: "Are we nearly there?" We had never imagined a journey so long or an arrival so breathtaking.

For this was how our summers would be for the next 12 years. Each June we would make the arduous journey to Co Donegal, filled with excitement at the thoughts of what we would find there and cheering loudly when at last we saw the grandeur of Errigal Mountain ahead of us. Then we knew that at last we were truly in Donegal.

At first we rented a chalet in Bunbeg, but in later years we were very happy to return again and again to the village of Annagry, where the bungalow next to the post office became our holiday home.

We loved Annagry: the friendliness of the people, the Irish we heard spoken, the rugged fields we played in, the beaches close by.

But above all we adored Donegal for its stunning, deserted beaches. And by chance we had discovered our favourite one, a beach that throughout my adult life I have associated with the summer holidays of my childhood.

Just beyond Dungloe - An Clochán Liath: the road signs were always in Irish - we followed the Kincasslagh road until we came to the Viking House Hotel. Then, turning right over a quaint land bridge, we would cross on to Cruit Island (pronounced Critch by locals), one of the main islands of the Rosses.

I loved the music of the name of this place, loved the magic of its being an island but one that we didn't have to sail to. Most especially I loved the view that greeted us when we crossed the bridge. The tide always seemed out, and the wet sand would glisten in the morning sun. The side of the road was dotted with wild, high grasses, and the air smelt of turf. At St Mary's cemetery the people were in tune with their dead, tending their graves and waving at us, all smiles, as we passed.

In those days there was only one two-storey old brown house on Cruit Island. We would pass that, leaving the rocky road and turning right over a track across a field.

There, laden down with rugs and towels, bags and playthings, we would leave our car and follow a sand path on to a broken coastal edge only to finally look down on the small cove we had claimed as our own. It was ours, and if we had our way nobody else would be allowed on it. Strangely, we never saw anyone else on the beach, and so the problem never arose.

We would set up base in a sheltered spot and play all day - rounders, hurling, chasing balls, floating with our dog over the foamy crests, our father flapping his arms in jest at the sea like Cúchulainn fighting the waves - stopping only for a lunch of soggy salad sandwiches, limp egg-mayonnaise rolls and warm Mikado biscuits.

On a treat day we would sip cans of Coke, but otherwise we drank orange squash. These were the days before cool boxes, but everything still tasted delicious, and even now those lunches are lodged in my memory as the best I have ever eaten.

When the tide went very far out we would swim across the remaining sea channel, then walk on to another, longer beach. Some days, if we had the energy, we would walk to Kincasslagh and back.

Further on, at a small pier, we befriended fishermen who spoke Irish in an accent we could barely decipher, before they sailed off towards Owey Island, where we could just about make out the old schoolhouse.

If the weather was bad we would take long drives. Co Donegal, I grew to realise, was a beautiful but dark place. In MacBride's bookshop in Bunbeg one rainy afternoon I read about a one-eyed monster who came across from Tory Island and shed a tear on a local valley. Ever after it was called the Poisoned Glen.

In Dunlewy, as the story came back to me, I would be petrified at the sight of the ruined church in the hollow of the glen and would want nothing more than to be back on Cruit Island beach, safe in my seaside world of play and swimming, far away from monsters and scary things.

Recently, I travelled back to Donegal with some friends. In Annagry we stayed in Danny Minnies, a wonderful B&B and restaurant run by the O'Donnells. The house we had stayed in as children was just down the road, and I felt immediately nostalgic. But Donegal has changed a lot. The next day, driving through Gweedore, I couldn't help but notice the evils of property development. The strength of sterling has meant a proliferation of holiday homes but with no apparent planning. As a result, houses built close to each other have sadly come to obscure the view of Gola Island, Inis Meáin and Inis Sionnaigh from the road. The past 20 years have seen a lot of prosperity in the area, but more recently factory after factory has closed down - even Fruit of the Loom has gone from Dungloe.

But good things are happening too. Irish is still strong in the area, and NUI Galway and Queen's University Belfast are running successful courses through Irish. There is confidence in the air.

Clannad, who I remember as a child playing in Teach Leo's, might alas be no more, but Altan are still going strong, and Gweedore's football team is thriving, having won the county championship last year for the first time in 40 years.

As for Cruit - well, the island itself is no longer a quiet, barely inhabited place. A cluster of 10 four-star thatched cottages has been built close to a nine-hole golf course that people can get to easily by flying to Donegal International Airport, only 15 minutes away.

But travelling out the windy road the new developments don't bother me much now. I am too busy noticing the profusion of wild flowers: orchids, primroses, sea holly. I am sniffing the air as our family dog, now long dead, once did.

And then I am out of the car, standing on the edge of the cove that once was ours. I am 10 years old. Nothing has changed. My father is casting the sliotar to the holiday waves and we are young again, chasing after it, whooping and yelling. And later we are walking back, back, over rabbits sleeping deep in the sandy dunes of Cruit Island - back to Annagry and teatime and stories to be told.

Enda Wyley is a poet. Her third collection, Poems For Breakfast, was recently published by Dedalus Press Tomorrow: Louise East on Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow

Saturday: Thomas McCarthy on Dungarvan Bay, Co Waterford