A Walk Through Literary Dublin

Statue of Oscar Wilde
in Merrion Square, Dublin.

On this trip I travelled courtesy of Tourism Ireland and Aer Lingus. This story arose from my 2011 visit to Dublin but never went online, so here it is for your enjoyment...

“We call him ‘the prick with the stick’,” says tour guide Pat Liddy, cheekily referring to a statue of the writer James Joyce which stands proudly in busy O’Connell Street, Dublin.

It might seem disrespectful, but inventing such acid nicknames is a casual hobby to Dubliners, who’ve applied them to many statues in the Irish capital.

For example, a busty statue of Molly Malone, who sold “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-oh” in the famous song, is commonly known as ‘the tart with the cart’.

It's all in good fun, says Liddy, smiling as he returns to his pint of Guinness in an atmospheric old pub which is, as it happens, an former haunt of Joyce’s.

It seems somehow fitting that we should be on a literary walk that’s immediately ended up at the pub, given the central role of such establishments in Ireland’s social and cultural life.

Pat Liddy outside Mulligan’s, Dublin.

Having left Trinity College, which contains the famous Book of Kells, we were assaulted by a driving rainstorm that appeared from nowhere, and have taken refuge in Mulligan’s until the weather eases.

It’s a classic Irish pub, with a dimly-lit back room where we sit around chipped old timber tables, a huge gilt mirror on the wall behind us.

Mulligan’s has a literary pedigree of its own, says Liddy, as a longtime hangout of Irish Times journalists and of Joyce, who mentioned the establishment in his landmark novel Ulysses.

The outside of the pub is even painted with the date of Bloomsday (June 16th, 1904), the day in which the novel’s story is set.

As we sip Ireland’s most famous beer, Liddy tells us about the wealth of writers that the city has produced. For a city of a million people, Dublin has a remarkable back catalogue of literary heroes, including Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw and Jonathan Swift. And let's not forget Bram Stoker, whose popularisation of the vampire lives on to the present day.

Liddy is a great story-teller, and he’s easily diverted into amusing anecdotes from his life and tour work. He chats about his son’s train journeys through Asia and Russia, and tells us about having to explain Oscar Wilde to foreign visitors. There’s also a witty story about the time he had to sing Handel’s Messiah to a group of German visitors who’d never heard of it.

Oscar Wilde's birthplace, Dublin.

The beer and the craic are very diverting, but we have pavements to pound. The rain clears and we're off again, through the atmospheric historic streets south of the River Liffey.

We’re entering Oscar Wilde territory here; as we stroll, Liddy points out the former St Mark’s where the great playwright was baptised.

Then we arrive at 21 Westland Row, a respectable facade featuring a big blue door beneath a fanlight.

This is where Wilde was born, and an inscription within a stone wreath credits him as ‘Poet, Dramatist, Wit’. Those are words I’d be happy to have on my gravestone, I think, as we move on.

Our next stop is Sweny, an attractive small shopfront which was featured in Ulysses in its then role as a pharmacy. It was here that the book’s hero, Leopold Bloom, bought a cake of soap with a lemon scent. Remarkably, it remained a pharmacy right up to 2009, when it passed into the care of a group of volunteers who run it as a bookshop and an unofficial shrine to Joyce.

You don’t have to be a fan of Ulysses to appreciate the shop’s atmospheric interior, packed both with books and reminders of its apothecary days. There’s even a drawer full of old photos once developed here, to show visiting kids who may only be familiar with digital shots.

Wendy Conroy at Sweny, Dublin.

The remaining space is lined with new and second-hand copies of books by Irish writers of all eras.

It’s a great place for visitors to acquaint themselves with both the classics and the lesser-known gems of Irish lit, and to pick up some reading for their travels.

Behind the counter today is Wendy Conroy, a passionate fan of Joyce’s master work. “There are Conroys all the way though Ulysses,” she points out.

Not that Joyce was the only star of the written word to hang out in this neighbourhood. “Wilde and Yeats may well have stood where you’re standing,” she says.

From here it’s a short walk around the corner to Merrion Square. Opposite the park stands the house where the young Oscar grew up, and in the park itself is a wonderful surprise - a colourful statue of Wilde which was unveiled in 1997, over a century after being imprisoned for his homosexuality.

A symbol of his 21st century rehabilitation and popularity, the unconventional statue depicts Wilde lounging in a colourful jacket on a large rock, a smile on one side of his face and a grimace on the other. The mixed expression may be a reminder of his mixed fortunes, as perhaps are two smaller nearby statues of his wife Constance and an anonymous male torso.

The plinths of these statuettes are adorned with many of his famous sayings, one of which seems to sum up Wilde’s sensational life: “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”.

Davy Byrne’s, Dublin.

Heading back toward the bars and restaurants south of the Temple Bar district, we pass another pub mentioned in Ulysses: Davy Byrne’s, where Bloom ordered a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of Burgundy.

Though the pub has been renovated in a swish modern style and now specialises in seafood, it’s still a meal you can order there today.

Then, finally, we finish at McDaid’s. It’s a popular pub which has retained its original character, furnished with bookshelves, tiled panels and a high timbered ceiling.

This was a haunt of postwar playwright and novelist Brendan Behan, says Liddy, at least until the one-time IRA member was barred. It was also, inevitably, frequented by Joyce and the other Irish writers who milled around this part of Dublin.

It’s been a great tour. Via Liddy's enthusiastic and colourful delivery, the city's great books and their writers have come to life - and even though I haven't read all of them, I go away with a hunger for their work and an understanding of how much Dublin loves its stories.

Pat Liddy’s Walking Tour of Literary Dublin is available on request. See www.walkingtours.ie for contact details and other scheduled tours.

Hadrian's Wall by Bus

On this trip I was hosted by Visit Britain.

Last year Narrelle Harris and I visited Hadrian's Wall, constructed in AD 122 by the Roman Empire in order to mark and guard its northernmost border.

You can hike the entire length of the wall, but that's a long way to walk - the trail runs 135 kilometres from eastern Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. And the best section is in the middle, where the hilly country with its lower population has left much of the structure intact.

The solution for us was to catch the seasonal AD122 bus. The bus runs between the railway stations of Haltwhistle (in the west) and Hexham (in the east), with easy connections to Carlisle and Newcastle.

As it stops at key sites along the wall, including museums and former forts, it makes the historic structure accessible to everyone, though there's still some walking to do from the bus stops to the wall itself.

Not everyone's up for a long walk, especially in such hilly country, so it's a good option for travellers who are less mobile.

In the end we did walk a section of the wall, taking a leisurely two hours to stroll up and down the sloping trail west from the fort site now known as Housesteads.

Once we'd had enough of that, we used a farm access road to get back to the main road, where we were happy to flag down the next bus. A day ticket allows multiple rides, and the bus will pick up anywhere that's safe along its route.

The walk was great, but we were happy to get back on the bus and use it to reach the ruins of the former Roman military town south of the wall, Vindolanda [pictured above].

We used it the next day as well, to see some of the wall-related sites closer to Haltwhistle. It was a great way to explore Hadrian's Wall, and allow some walking without exhausting ourselves.

For more details about the AD122 bus, click here.

Planets of St Kilda

Welcome to my 300th blog post!

It was a hot summer day in the mid-30s last Sunday, so Narrelle and I decided to escape the sun by walking 5.9 billion kilometres across the solar system.

Wait - let me clarify. We actually walked 5.9 kilometres, from Melbourne's St Kilda past Middle Park and Port Melbourne to Beacon Cove. And we started at this Sun:

I'd gone years without noticing this sculpture. In 2008 a Solar System Trail was established along the Port Phillip Bay foreshore, including models of the Sun, all eight planets, and the demoted dwarf planet Pluto. Also one other interesting item I'll mention later.

What's remarkable about the work, a joint project between artists and scientists, is its attention to detail. Constructed to a 1:1 billion scale, the stars and planets are both in correct proportion to each other, and correctly spaced apart. Hence the 5.9 (billion) kilometres between the Sun and Pluto.

The foreshore walk is great fun anyway, as you pass beaches, rollerbladers and cyclists, always with the bay in view. Visiting each planet would be a bonus on a hot sunny day.

Though I was surprised at the variation in their spacing.

The inner planets were only a couple of hundred metres apart; in fact I could see most of them from my vantage point next to the Sun, opposite the corner of Marine Parade and Blessington Street, St Kilda.

Only 58 metres away was tiny Mercury:

Then 50 metres further on, comely Venus:

And then at the 150 metre mark, our dear old home Earth - complete with Moon (38.4cm from its parent world):

Finally on our tour on the inner planets, at the 228 metre mark - warlike Mars:

Well, that was easy. Now, as we approached the gas giants, the planets became further spread out.

We had to walk another 550 metres to reach mighty Jupiter, which we found next to the lawn near the St Kilda Sea Baths. As the largest planet, on a 1:1 billion scale it was about the size of a softball:

We'd covered 778 metres so far, an easy stroll. We found Saturn at almost twice the distance we'd already covered, next to Catani Gardens at 1.4 kilometres from the Sun. Sadly its marvellous rings were a little the worse for wear, probably due to vandalism:

We'd done six planets! We only had three to go! Hooray! But we'd only covered 1.4km of the 5.9km trail. Hmm. This was clearly an inconveniently designed solar system.

We then had a long stroll for another 1.5km along the Middle Park foreshore, finally locating lopsided-orbit Uranus near the corner of Beaconsfield Parade and Wright Street, at the 2.9km mark:

We were now halfway across the system, with only two planets left. Another 1.6km walking brought us to Neptune, at the 4.5km mark within sight of Port Melbourne's Station Pier and the docked cruise ship Diamond Princess:

It had been a great walk but we were very hot and tired by this point, and I was tempted to call a halt by invoking Pluto's demoted planetary status as an excuse.

However, on reflection we felt we'd come too far to give up. So we trudged on past Station Pier along the boardwalk in front of ritzy apartment buildings, a final 1.5km, to find... this:

A colossal 5.9 billion kilometres from the Sun (at least it felt like it), and that's all we got? Well, at least we'd made it all the way to everyone's favourite dwarf planet. Then we had to walk a kilometre or so back to Port Melbourne for the tram.

And the bonus astronomical object I alluded to earlier?

Back near the Sun, just a few metres away, was this model of the star Proxima Centauri:

The nearest star beyond our solar system, it's located a breathtaking 40 trillion kilometres away.

So why was it so close to the model of the Sun, if everything was in proportion? Because at the 1:1 billion scale, you'd have to place it 40,000 kilometres away - and that, coincidentally, is the circumference of the Earth.

Yep. If you started here and travelled in the entirely opposite direction around our entire planet to reach the Sun model the long way, you'd have covered the appropriate distance. And that was the closest star beyond our immediate stellar neighbourhood.

As Douglas Adams once wrote, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that’s just peanuts to space."

He was right.

Dandenong Ranges: The Hills are Alive!

I'm standing in a clearing about three-quarters the way up a steep slope in the Dandenong Ranges National Park east of Melbourne, and I've just startled a wallaby.

As I was crunching my way along a ridge, trying to see a way around the fallen trees that were blocking the marked track, the brown furry creature bounced rapidly away from my position, heading downhill.

About 50 metres behind me is Narrelle, taking a break after realising she's wearing quite the wrong shoes for a track this steep and leaf-strewn.

There's just a tinge of Macbeth about our situation - in that returning downhill is as tedious as to go o'er - so we really need to find a way up the last bit of the slope to the roadway we know is nearby. But at least we saw some crimson rosellas on the way up. Very pretty.

I'm over-dramatising, of course - we're not really in any trouble. We know the road and a golf course is just up there on top of the ridge, we could still reverse our steps back down the hill to the RJ Hamer Forest Arboretum, and it's the middle of the day so there's little chance of the sun setting before we get out.

I probably even have mobile phone reception. And it is very beautiful in this expanse of native forest, surrounded by gum trees, mountain ash trees and tree ferns.

And this always happens to me when I visit the Dandenong Ranges. Keen to bushwalk, I consult a simple map that includes tracks but not topographical info, and inevitably find out that part of the walk is much harder than expected. But I've always come back alive.

On this occasion I go back to fetch Narrelle, and we walk along to a point where the undergrowth is minimal. Then we start up the remaining slope - and are immediately surprised to see a woman in a pink shirt strolling along what must be an intersecting track above.

Fairly soon we're walking along the edge of the golf course, back to the sealed road. I can tell we're in civilisation, because there's a man in a cap trying to rescue his golf ball from the long grass on the fenceline between wilderness and manicured greens.

Walking along the road back to the town of Olinda, we're slightly startled by the contrast. A few minutes before we were picking our way up a poorly marked track on a slope in the middle of nature; now we're walking past cars and modern signage, and soon stepping into the golf course's cafe for a rehydrating drink.

On the basis that you're allowed to eat whatever you want after vigorous exercise, we'll soon be purchasing a couple of meat pies for lunch for Olinda's excellent (and much-touristed) Pie in the Sky pie shop.

Which is part of what I like about the Dandenong Ranges National Park. Rather than being an area of total wilderness, it's actually a long, attenuated nature zone wrapped around an core of small towns and B&B accommodation.

Which means you can go for a vigorous walk through dense native forest, then arrive at a place well-supplied with tea and scones. Try doing that in the Wolfe Creek Crater National Park...

Tim Richards travelled courtesy of Tourism Victoria.