Last Saturday — a cold, dark, late-autumn afternoon here in Dublin — Katie Lincoln (who doesn’t have enough interest in Premier League soccer to actually hate it) suddenly nudged me on the sofa. Mid-game of course.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
Five words usually guaranteed to bring out the childish bugbear in old Disillusioned. But I suddenly remembered that when it comes to worthwhile adventures, Katie Lincoln has this unfathomable habit of always being right. Anyway, I had a blog to write and needed something else to complain about in dear, dirty Dublin.
“We’ll walk the South Wall,” she suggested nonchalantly, as I wrapped myself up and mumbled about a missing hat. Walk the what??
She must have spotted the bemused look on my face. “Don’t tell me you haven’t walked the South Wall before? Out to the Lighthouse? How long have you been living in Dubln?” Katie Lincoln is a Culchie meaning – in delightfully derogatory terms – she’s from the country. I am Dublin born. I don’t like the notion of her having one up on me when it comes to the Capital City. But ‘The South Wall Walk?’ No. Never heard of it. Meant nothing to me.
“Of course I’ve walked The South Wall. Good idea. You drive,” I said.
Beyond here, there be monsters
The drive from the City Centre to the Dublin Docks is a short journey through the heart of the Celtic tiger. On both sides of the quays below the elegant Georgian Custom’s House, the glass and concrete towers of the new Financial Services Centre have replaced most of the old warehouses in this post-industrial wonderland. Add in the scores of apartment blocks built to house the workers for the banks and finance houses, and the docklands has become a city within a city, a city of suits, a city of eerily empty and neurotically clean streets, city of cash.
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| Anto on the South Wall |
Disillusioned asked Katie Lincoln to put the boot down and worried for a moment that the sea itlesf might have been concreted over. But then, as we approached the mouth of the River Liffey, an old-school, rusty, industrial landscape rose up to reminds all us white-collar Tigeristas that Dublin is, first and foremost, a port. The giant cranes, the cathedral of perfectly balanced containers, the colossal oil storage tanks; Disillusioned found it refreshing to think that at least some people in Dublin do real work, you know, make things, move things, not bytes, things.
Dublin port itself sits in the protective embrace of two man-made walls. The South Wall begins just after the impressive twin towers of Poolbeg Powerstation. No, not an art gallery that was a power station, but an actual working electric power station here in the heart of the city. (”You can even arrange a tour,” Katie Lincoln informs me. Culchie strike two.) We have travelled back in time, I suddenly realise, to Ireland before the boom. Beyond here, there be monsters.
My trust in poets, rewarded
The South Wall itself was built in 1716 to stop sandbars obstructing the entrance to the port. From the harbour at Ringsend to its end it runs for 3 miles, but only the last half a mile or so is good for walking.
We took our first steps onto the wall and the wind slapped us awake. And like any good adventure we met fellow travellers on the wall: A smiling man with his young and clearly bored young son. The man had a pair of binoculars and told us that this is one of the best spots in the city for bird watching. He pointed down to the water line and we spotted a number of different species feeding on the shore. Gulls of course, the size of rottweilers, and some oystercatchers. And then one loan bird among a hundred others, a curlew – according to our guide, a rare treat.
He gave me the binoculars and I looked down at a small light brown bird with a ridiculously long, ice-pick of beak. A curlew! You can’t imagine my excitement. You see as a schoolboy the curlew seemed to appear in just about every poem – in Irish and English – I was forced to read in school. Irish poets seemed to know no other bird. An example to illustrate, from Seamus Heaney’s Republic of Conscience:
‘I When I landed in the republic of conscience it was so noiseless when the engines stopped I could hear a curlew high above the runway.’
And yet I’d never seen one. No one I knew had ever seen one. I suspected a conspiracy of poets. “I always thought they were bog birds,” I said. “At least in the poems.”
Yes, my bird guru agreed, but they have to come east to the sea to feed in the cold winter. The long beak helped them feed at different depths than the other birds on the same stretch of shore. A curlew, at last. I can trust the bards again.
No, it won’t last
Walk on. From the wall we looked across to the north of Dublin bay and spotted a kite surfer off Dollymount strand. We headed on into the wind and towards little Poolbeg Lighthouse at the end of the wall.
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| Poolbeg Lighthouse, South Wall, Dublin |
But the real joy and wonder of this brisk little walk comes when you turn at the lighthouse to head back. Then you are shocked with what has to be the very best view of Dublin on the planet, especially at this winter early twilight. Here I could see that Dublin is a great, arcing, bay city like Naples and San Francisco. The Wicklow Mountains to the south, the beaches of Killiney and Sandymount, below them the twinkling lights of the city spread for miles in the lowlands, the wild lump jutting into the sea that is Howth Head to the north. And, at the centre of it all, I saw the port, open to the world. The boats, small cargo craft and giant Ferries, moved silently past us back out to the unfriendly sea.
So there it is, old Disillusioned impressed by something in Dublin. Won’t last.
Planning a trip to Ireland? See all the things to do in Dublin that don’t require being too disillusioned.
March 22nd, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Fantastic post. Thanks, I enjoyed this and plan to stick around and read more.