Ireland day 1543. Friday 19 December 2025- Shackleton Athy

Today’s summary	Went to Athy to visit the Shackleton Experience museum, which we failed to get to on Tuesday when we missed the train. It was an excellent day out. Free travel courtesy of senior railcard and a good museum celebrating the life of Ernest Shackleton who was born in Athy in 1874 and died in South Georgia in 1922. It focused on his epic voyage on the Endurance and subsequent escape via Elephant Island and South Georgia in 1916. The museum only reopened 2 months ago after a €7m refit. An excellent café too. Trains back then some TV, fajitas and Rioja in the evening.
Today’s weather	Fine sunny and dry. Light south westerly wind. Appx 9c.

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): Shackleton Museum Athy

Commentary

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, we had set out to visit the Shackleton Experience museum in Athy, but had been thwarted by delayed trains and missed connections. So today we determined to put things right.

We got up after statutory teas in bed, and finished off a couple of the admin tasks left over from yesterday. Then, in a slightly more organised fashion than last time, caught an earlier train from Malahide, giving us plenty of time to make the connection in Heuston.

After a quick scoot across Dublin on the Red Line Luas, we ended up catching the 1225 Carlow train which got us in to Athy at about 1:10pm. The museum is only ten minutes walk from the train station so we were there by early afternoon with plenty of time to look around.

The museum (labelled the Shackleton “Experience”) only reopened two months ago, after a lengthy €7mln refit. So it was looking shiny and new and it was very well done. It’s housed in an old market hall by the town square, and it looks smart and a real asset to the town. It documents the story of Shackleton’s life, focusing on his development into one of Ireland’s foremost national icons.

Shackleton was born in Athy in 1874 to parents whose forebears originally came from Bingley in Yorkshire, UK. He moved to the UK with his parents at age 11 and was educated at Dulwich College. He is of course best known for his Antarctic travel, and most famously the transantarctic expedition of 1914-17, on board the ship “Endurance”.

Although the Pole had been “conquered” by Amundsen by then, Shackleton wanted to be the first to traverse the whole continent on foot. The expedition failed in that objective – and three team members died (those on the opposite side of Antarctica, setting up the base to receive the transantarctic contingent once they made it across).

Shackletons heroic feat happened on the other side of Antarctica, after bad weather hit the “Endurance” as it made its way to the Antarctic continent, where it was planned to launch Shackleton and his 28 men onto the Transantarctic mission. As a result of the bad weather, the Endurance became frozen in pack ice and then subsequently sank in November 1915, forcing the crew to evacuate and camp on the ice. When the pack ice finally broke up, Shackleton led all the team in three lifeboats to Elephant Island, 550km / 350mi from where the Endurance sank.

From there, Shackleton and five others, in truly heroic fashion, sailed on, in one of the lifeboats, to South Georgia, 1300km / 800mi away. Amazingly in May 1916, after fifteen days at sea, they made it to South Georgia. But on the “wrong” side so Shackleton and two others (one of who me was Tom Crean, a fellow Irishman), walked the 50km / 30 mi over a previously unclimbed mountain range to the whaling station of Grytviken, from were rescue parties could be organised. Eventually, the three men remaining on the far side of South Georgia, and the other 22 on Elephant Island, were all rescued by August 1916. All members of the Endurance crew survived, probably in large part as a result of Shackleton’s undoubtedly heroic leadership.

A real adventure story – up there with Apollo 13 in terms of human achievement. The museum tells the story well, and we both learned a lot. It should be said, though, that Shackleton was by no means a saint. He drank heavily later in his life, and was intensely disliked by Robert Scott, and he had at least one extramarital affair, with an American actress in London. The museum isn’t panglossian – it explores these facets of his life too.

Shackleton died in Grytviken, South Georgia, on another expedition , in January 1922. He is buried there.

After this massive knowledge download, we headed for the museum café for refreshments and to reflect on what we had learned. The giant size jammy dodgers were especially excellent. Then we caught a train back to Heuston at about 4:30 (we found the only two remaining seats), quickly Luas-ed to Connolly, and finally a diesel back to Malahide. We were back just after 6pm.

For the evening, we watched a couple of YouTube documentaries (on Shackleton, of course!) and finished off the fajitas from yesterday. All washed down with an expensive but slightly disappointing bottle of Rioja from O’Brien’s off-licence.

What a wonderful day!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Athy station – I am sure it will contribute significantly to the success of the Museum – it’s only forty minutes (or less) from Dublin Heuston	Inside one of the many, informative but not dull, display galleries

Looking out over Athy – a small town in the heart of what I call “Ireland Profonde”	Admiring the vaulted ceilings of the museum ground floor. Apparently the brickwork was plastered over until recently, and was only exposed during the last renovation works. It looks superb

Here we are – brimful of Antarctic wisdom	Unusual for Ireland – a freight train, today pulling lumber through Athy station. As most of the Athy line is single track, it had to wait in the passing loop until our train to Dublin passed it on the other line going in the opposite direction

The man himself