There was a definite smell of summer in the air this week. The garden has begun to bloom, roses are opening, trees are fully leafed, the grass is growing like demented Russian vine and the bees and insects are out in force. Long, bright days are here at last after a seemingly eternal winter and I, for one, get the urge to go exploring the by-ways of Wicklow.

One of my favourite roads is the one that runs from Laragh to Rathdrum, skirting the Avonmore River for much of the way. It's a bit like driving down a green, leafy tunnel at the moment and when it's sunny you get a pretty dappled light breaking through the canopy of trees. You could argue that it's even better in Autumn when the golds, russets and reds dominate, but right now, under the sun, it looked pretty good to me. I feel an affinity with the Avonmore River because I live right alongside it. In theory I could get into a canoe at my house and go right downriver to Arklow, something I've thought about doing for twenty-five years but haven't got around to doing quite yet. So driving the length of the river is the next best thing - through Laragh, Rathdrum, Avoca and then Arklow, passing long stretches of natural beauty and then the nitrate factory by way of contrast.

Like many Irish towns Arklow hasn't really made much of a feature of its river. You could drive right through the town and be barely aware that a river runs through it. But my wife and I had come to find a particular riverside feature, a restaurant called the Riverwalk, right on the banks of the Avonmore. There is an actual river walk - a road runs as far as the restaurant, then upstream after that it becomes pedestrian only. There's a big car-park nearby to makes things easier, which you can reach from the main road. We stopped to take in the view of the river, the sun making its eddies sparkle. Geese and ducks kept sensibly to the far side of the river just out of range while small boys tried unsuccessfully to pelt them with stones. A lone fisherman plied his rod, a few mothers and children passed by.

Inside the Riverwalk we took a table by a window overlooking the water. The boys got bored of throwing stones, the geese fluffed their feathers and settled down, the fisherman appeared to catch nothing at all, the children kept playing on the grassy banks and we settled into our table. Wooden tables and chairs and simple chintz curtains gave a rustic, uncomplicated air to the place. A tiled floor, some plain linen and you get the feeling that you're in a quiet rural space, which is no surprise, because you are. The lunch menu is short enough, with the sort of dishes that are well tried and tested. Nothing wildly imaginative or innovative, just wholesome and plain. So in the starters we found Cajun chicken tenders at €5.95, deep-fried mushrooms with garlic butter at €4.50, vegetable soup at €3.75, seafood chowder at €4.95 and smoked salmon salad at €8.75.

The main courses followed a similar theme: a pita bread steak sandwich and fries for €9.95, smoked chicken carbonara at €8.95, steamed mussels at €8.95, fillet of plaice with tartare sauce at €9.95, grilled pork cutlets at €8.50, savoury omelette and side salad €7.95, tortilla wrap with spicy chicken €8.75 and stir-fry vegetables at €7.95. With simple dishes like these the important thing is to make sure that the basics are right: that the ingredients are good and that the preparation is precise and uncluttered. Susie picked the smoked salmon to start and I chose the chowder. Susie's dish exemplified the point. If what the restaurant serves is only slices of smoked salmon, it ought to be good smoked salmon, and in this case it was. Decent bread too. My chowder had plenty of seafood in it and came with plenty of cream as well, but I'd have enjoyed it more if the cream and the seafood had been cooked a little longer together.

As for the wine, this time Susie took the list away from me and said 'How come you always pick the wine?' She scanned the short list, noticed that there were no half bottles and so ordered two quarter bottles of Chilean Chardonnay for us, a couple of small mineral waters and a jug of iced tap water.

Our main courses arrived, steamed mussels for Susie and a savoury omelette for me, in this case a cheese and bacon one. If I were to be picky and difficult I'd say that Susie's mussels had been toughened, either by over-cooking or by being kept hot under a grill, while my omelette had become dry and crumbly for probably the same reasons - but as we were enjoying the view and the quiet serenity of the place, these quibbles never became more than minor background observations. We still ate most of what was on our plates and finished our meal happy enough.

It was a pleasing enough lunch, then, nothing remarkable by way of food, but a very pretty location on the banks of my favourite river, and for me at least, a leafy sunny drive to get there. Our bill came to €45, of which nearly ten percent was made up of a half-litre of mineral water. How does Irish water end up costing €8.80 a litre? Down the road in Arklow, Lidl are selling six bottle packs (9 litres) for €2.70 which is imported here from Germany. So where is the justification for this kind of insane price for Irish water? Quarter bottles of water should be eliminated; they're costly, expensive to distribute and bad value for the consumer. I'll never buy another one and neither should you.