Donegal mum Maria Rushe takes a nostalgic look back at the brilliant bumpy slide at Redcastle. Do you remember it?

A few summers ago, we went to Redcastle for a day out.

Reminiscing enroute about the famous “big yellow slide” of our childhoods, we knew it was no longer there. It has been gone for many years apparently.
So into the softplay area went I with the then Threenager…

As I sat atop the teeny-tiny-really-quite-not-yellow excuse for a “big” slide in there, about to slide down (the whole 8 foot max) with an ickle Mini-me holding my hand, I mentioned to the nice young girl with perfect hair and animalesque eyebrows who was monitoring safety, how “this really is tiny compared to the big yellow slide that used to be here.”

Her eyebrowedness smiled a pretty smile and announced “yeah, all the Old people talk about that. It’s been gone for, like, decades…”

I considered pushing her down the teeny-tiny-really-quite-not-yellow excuse for a “big” slide, but thought better of it.

The G-force might have upset her hair. The eyebrows would never have survived…

Instead, I called “weeeeee” as Mini-me and I slid down the teeny-tiny-really-quite-not-yellow excuse for a “big” slide.

It took a whole 2 seconds.

There were no bumps, or scratchy straw sacks to scrape our legs on.

There were no lanes or scald marks to compare on our arms when we reached the bottom.

And I feel really quite sad that my kids won’t know the utter excitement of handing in tin tokens at the red box, scampering up those tin steps into the magical Rapunzelesque tower and then rushing to the bottom in a blur of banana coloured bliss…

It was our Disney castle, rising like magic from the countryside…You could see it for miles as you approached in the car. (3-7 kids in the back and no seatbelts!)

And I’ve since found this photograph. It’s my mum, myself and my cousin coming down it circa 1983/1984.

(Look at poor Mum’s fablis perm almost blown off her!  The things mums do for their Minions)

Kids these days just don’t know what they’re missing eh?

Do you remember it?