Ireland day 0103. Sunday 09 December 2022- Dodder

Today’s summary	A short walk up the Dodder river and back with the Dublin Walking Club followed by a drink in the pub. Transport difficulties getting in and then website difficulties tonight. So a bit of a stressful day
Today’s weather	Cool, dry and bright. Occasional sun. No wind. About 7C

Today’s overview location (the red cross in a circle shows where Val and I are at the moment)		Close-up location (Click button below to download a GPX of today’s walk – or see interactive map at bottom): Dodder DWC

Commentary

This is going to be a rather short blog tonight – I’ve been having some difficulties with my website which I haven’t been able to sort our properly yet. Hopefully it is working well enough at least to read this!

There are three rivers flowing through Dublin – The Tolka to the North, the Liffey (of course) in the middle, and the Dodder in the south. Today, Val and I aimed to join the Dublin Walking Club for a social walk up the southernmost of these – the Dodder – from the delightfully named Farmer Brown’s pub in Clonskeagh up to Orwell Park and back.

The day started off well enough – bright and dry – so we trotted down to the station to catch the 10:30 train and headed off into town. All was going well until just outside Connolly station, the train ground to a halt and stopped there, within spitting distance of the platforms – for 45 minutes. Luckily, the walk leader was actually in the train behind us, so we did a bit of hasty re-planning so when the train did eventually move, we sprinted down to O’Connell Street and managed in the nick of time to catch the no 11 bus straight to Farmer Brown’s door. In the end we were only 15 minutes late, and we ended up on the same bus as the walk leader, so all was well.

It was a short but very enjoyable up the Dodder – which is surprisingly quite a large and fast flowing river, consider it’s only one of the “minor” watercourses in Dublin. Lots of chat to be had, which we of course had to continue over a few pints of Guinness at Farmer Brown’s at the end.

Once refreshments were completed, some considerable time later, we made our way back to the bus stop and caught the no 11 to the station. Luckily by then the trains were running normally, so we had a straightforward journey back to Malahide.

But then the next set of problems began. As I started to work on this blog, I discovered I couldn’t upload any photos nor edit any of my older blogs. It was one of those intermittent faults that are so hard to reproduce and diagnose. Eventually I managed to get enough photos to upload to do a decent blog, and did get this text written (though at one point I could only upload one word at a time before it would crash). Altogether very frustrating and I have no idea what is happening nor if it will be possible to fix it. So I will adopt the tried and tested approach of logging out and turning off my computer then hoping it will have fixed itself in the morning. Otherwise I am slightly stuck. Oh how I hate computers…..

But now – before I go, I do have to explain the rhinoceros. It was lurking in the Dodder just below the Dropping Well pub, foraging in the undergrowth as if it had just escaped from the zoo. Well, even more strangely, as far as I can tell nobody actually knows its origin. It appeared mysteriously one night in 2002 and it’s cast in bronze. Neither the sculptor nor their accomplice(s) have ever been identified, and the nearby pub denies all knowledge. Maybe Banksy has decided to work in 3D?

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The Dodder – a surprisingly substantial “minor” watercourse	Fishing rights reserved!

You can get an idea of the scale of the flow from the size of the weir	This is what happens if you let your Leylandii hedge get out of control. It will soon become huge

Giant Chimney that used to be part of a laundry (long since defunct) but is apparently a favoured nesting site for herons now	Val discussing the finer points of the walk in the pub car park at the end

Well earned refreshment courtesy of Farmer Brown. After all, we needed the iron.