Ireland day 0287. Tuesday 12 July 2022- Raheny

Today’s summary	Walked down the coast to take a look at a possible new flat to rent in Raheny. Continued on through St Anne’s Park and caught the DART back from Killester
Today’s weather	Rain overnight and a few showers in the morning. Sun by lunchtime then clouded over in the afternoon but stayed dry. Light southwesterly breeze. Feeling warm at 22C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The green line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Raheny

Commentary

Today I did something bold. I left the house and went for a walk without taking either a down jacket or a woolly hat with me. I say bold because it’s the first time I have risked it since last October.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I went anywhere, the first job was to make breakfast and some packed lunches, and to see Val off to work by 9 am. (She really is a glutton for punishment – she was straight back to the Model Railway Museum first thing today). Then I had a Zoom call with another friend living in the south of the UK, who was reminding me just how hot it was over there at the moment. We Brits – whether living in the UK or overseas like me – like to complain about the weather no matter what it is actually like. It must be an inborn genetic trait.

But then onto the day’s main course. We have been living in our flat in Malahide for coming up to nine months now. Whilst in many ways it’s very good – Malahide is convenient for almost everything you can think of, from shops, to trains, to airports, to Dublin city centre – where we actually live is both noisy and expensive. We are right by the railway station and although we have sort of got used to the trains, it would be quite nice not to be woken up by the station tannoy announcing “Please stand back behind the yellow line – train now approaching” (and the same repeated in Irish) at 6 o’clock every morning.

So we have just started thinking about whether we ought to start looking for somewhere new – a bit quieter and a bit cheaper, and accepting that it probably wouldn’t have the convenience of where we currently live. I started by looking at the DAFT.ie website (yes that really is its name) and found that there was a flat available for rent down the coast from here at Raheny. It looked quite nice on the website so I thought I’d wander down there and take a look today.

Raheny is a mostly residential suburb of north Dublin. It’s quite nice in an understated sort of way, and interestingly the remains of Giant Irish Elk (Megalocerus giganteus) have been found near here. Well, so the sign in Bayside Park told me. Anyway sadly this magnificent beast died out here at the end of the last ice age, 13,000 years ago (although I believe a relative still lives on somewhere in the Caucasian mountains).

The walk down to Raheny was enjoyable. I elected to take the coast route rather than going up over Paddy’s Hill, because the weather was nice and it seemed perfect for a seaside stroll. The tide was going out – and you could sense the power of the tidal flow in the mouth of the Malahide estuary. So the beaches were opening up almost in front of my eyes, making the walk round the coast as far as the low rock swimming area easy.

I eventually arrived at Raheny and peered at the possible rental property from the outside (no doubt much to the consternation of the neighbours). It looked quite nice but – inevitably – not quite as nice as in the photos on the website. So although it would definitely be a good spot if we were desperate, it probably didn’t tick enough boxes – particularly the lack of proximity to Val’s work – for it to be worth pursuing. Still, we will keep an eye on the market and maybe move if something else, perhaps a bit more convenient, comes up in the few months.

Once the brief property hunt had been despatched, I resumed my walk down the coast and headed over to Killester DART station via St Anne’s Park. I’ve waxed lyrical about this park a couple of times before and I really do like it – lots of space, and a variety of formal and informal gardens to enjoy. I paused to have a late lunch on a bench alongside the main approach road to the former mansion house – now long gone, sadly – and then jumped on a DART back to Malahide.

So now we’ve finished off the roast lamb that I made for Val’s return yesterday, and also the rest of the Malbec. There was just time for a quick walk round the marina in the warm evening gloaming before returning indoors and calling it a day. Altogether enjoyable, even if we didn’t make as much progress on the property front as I might have hoped. Still, every journey begins with the first step.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Leaving Malahide this lunchtime. It was pleasantly sunny when I set off, but clouded over – though stayed warm – later. It rained quite a bit last night but already by noon it had dried up and the grass is beginning to look scorched now. There were a few swimmers out today but perhaps fewer than I expected. I discovered the possible reason when I read the RTE news this evening – sadly a young person got into difficulties in the sea and lost their life just down the coast from here yesterday, at Sutton. Perhaps the tragedy had dissuaded today’s potential swimmers from testing out the attractive-looking but potentially deadly waters today.	I’m pretty sure the umbelliferous plant in the foreground is wild carrot, Daucus carota. You can tell them apart from confusingly similar species like Yarrow and Hemlock because the impressive white umbels often have a single tiny bright red floret right in the middle. It’s there to attract pollinating insects, apparently. The carrots that we eat are a subspecies of the wild carrot – Daucus carota subsp. sativus.

Down on the seafront at Kilbarrack. Howth headland is in the background. It’s so nice to be able to go out in just T-shirt and shorts. This is definitely my sort of weather!	Lime tree (Tilia cordata) – not the sort that you put in your gin, but the sort that Molton Brown like to put into expensive shower gel. Surprisingly for a large deciduous tree, it’s got a very delicate scent which sometimes – especially in places like Dublin’s parks where there are many of them, and especially on warms days like today – can almost be overpowering.

One of the many classical follies in the former Ardilaun (Guinness) estate which is today the large and attractive St Anne’s park – the second largest public park (after Phoenix) in Dublin.	I thought I’d include this here because I thought it was nice that for once – if fleetingly – some interesting good news topped the BBC news headlines – the publication of the first images from the James Webb space telescope. They’re absolutely stunning and I recommend you take a look – it’s fascinating to look back in time to see a universe where the only three elements that existed were hydrogen, helium and lithium. Just imagine – not a single atom of carbon in the entire universe. Makes you think.

The Tree of Life – a chainsaw sculpture carved into a dying cypress tree on the seafront at Clontarf by UK-based sculptor Tommy Craggs. It took him three years to complete. As is the way with these things sometimes, it was set alight by vandals in 2020 but fortunately the damage was relatively minor and repairable. Let’s hope it remains in tact for many more years as it’s simply stunning