Ireland day 1355. Saturday 14 June 2025- Book Festival

Today’s summary	Took a mid morning train to Dalkey to attend an event sponsored by the Financial Times as part of Dalkey book festival. Speakers included Robert Shrimsley of the FT, and it was in a marquee in Dillon’s Park, on the coast. It was excellent. Light lunch in a Dalkey café then caught a Dart back to Malahide. Spotted a new DART train at Clontarf depot. A short walk, chicken stir fry, red wine and ” Mad Men” once again rounded off the day
Today’s weather	Rain most of the day, heavy in the morning but easing to showers in the afternoon. Little to no wind. Appx 16c

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

Commentary

My over-riding thought when I woke up this morning and heard the rain pouring down outside was “thank goodness it wasn’t like this yesterday”. Because it was a truly miserable start to the day – heavy rain, leaden skies, and low temperature. The poor weather didn’t deter Val, though, who went out to brave the elements and complete a Park Run up at the demesne. She returned an hour or so later, looking bedraggled but proclaiming her enjoyment of a challenge successfully overcome.

By the time she had got changed, and we had enjoyed a mid morning cup of coffee, it was time to set out on the main activity of our day. The Dalkey Book Festival is running over this weekend and today there was a lecture on “British exceptionalism”, sponsored by the Financial Times, that we wanted to go to.

So we went down to the station and caught a train to Dalkey (via Connolly). We arrived at about 12:30, which gave us plenty of time to walk down to the lecture venue in a marquee at Dillon’s Park, overlooking Dalkey Island – and still get a cup of coffee before proceedings began.

The event – which was a panel discussion – featured a couple of FT columnists, including Robert Shrimsley, who we both read from time to time. It lasted an hour and was interesting, informative and good natured. The moderator, Colm O’Regan, was particularly good, and he kept the discussion flowing well.

Afterwards, we walked into Dalkey and found a café where we could enjoy a sausage roll and a cup of tea. Just what we both needed by way of a late lunch. When we’d finished, we had a quick look round Dalkey, which as usual was absolutely buzzing, then caught a very timely Dart straight back to Malahide. The most exciting aspect of our return journey came when we caught a fleeting glimpse of the first new “DART” train stationed in the depot near Clontarf. I can’t wait to see them coming into service on the Malahide line!

We got back at about 5pm and we spent the rest of the evening as we have many recently. Enjoying a couple of glasses of red wine, dining on the rest of yesterday’s stir-fry, taking a short walk round the marina, and watching an episode of “Mad Men”.

Today was a somewhat new type of day for both of us, and all the better for being so.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Dillon’s Park, Dalkey, where our Festival event was being held. It’s a nice little corner, down by the sea, overlooking Dalkey Island. It’s actually larger than it looks, and could accommodate quite a substantial marquee today (I estimated there were about 350 seats, and our event was fully sold out)	Refuelling before heading into the event

Ready to start – no photography was allowed during the event itself, so you’ll just have to imagine the empty seats being filled with speakers	Details of what we were here to listen to. Very well worthwhile, and quite objective

Here we are, on our way back to the station, with Lamb island (an offshoot of Dalkey island) behind us	Excavation work for a new construction on the Dalkey hillside has nicely revealed the underlying bedrock. It looks pretty solid to me, and the surface drift is clearly very shallow.

Great excitement! First look at one of the new DART trains – parked outside Clontarf depot. Note the batteries on the roof – which will allow the electric DARTs to run all the way to Drogheda, including on the un-electrified section north of Malahide