Yesterday we visited an 800-hundred-year-old fort where the wind howled and the heather bloomed and the views stretched out forever.

Inside the simple stone structure — made with no mortar — steps worked into the sides of the walls took you to the top, where you could walk along around the perfect circle (as long as the wind didn’t knock you over).

At one point, a rainbow shimmered, not so much in the sky as in the air below the fort. It was like we had come to the end of the rainbow and found not a pot of gold — but a spot of beauty so rare as to make us not care we had been cheated out of a fortune.

The leprechauns always have the last word, of course. In this case, they’ve made it darn near impossible to upload the correct picture onto this blog. So the more classic rainbow photograph at the top (shot the evening before in Portrush) will have to do, and some imagination is required to see the view from the fort (immediately above) shimmering with color. Believe me, it did.