June 24, 1990: Dublin to Marley Park Hotel

On June 24th, a sunny Sunday in London, I left a sleepy wife and a disappointed dog at 7:10, and carried my pack and camera downstairs to the waiting car of James Meehan, Senior. Gavan helped me store my things in the trunk and we buckled up for the journey to Heathrow Airport. We were about to begin a week-long expedition on Ireland’s Wicklow Way.

There was one additional stop; Gavan got distracted and failed to give his father the right directions but we were soon purring down the Edgware Road. The car phone rang; it was Mrs. Meehan with some directions on how to reach the American Embassy in Dublin – if we had an emergency. Gavan accidentally cut her off and had to dial again. To get us in the mood for our journey Mr. Meehan was playing Irish folk music on the tape deck. We wound behind Park West for a few blocks and stopped at the townhouse of the Ford family. Mother, father, and dog came out to see Elizabeth off; mother handed me an emergency medical release form. Gavan settled into the back seat in order to begin the first of many spirited tiffs with Elizabeth.

Mr. Meehan drove us through Hyde Park and down to the Cromwell Road. As we sped west this successful executive kept looking back over his shoulder for the sign showing the number of Lotus software users; he had just the ordered the sign installed. We were not slowed down much by this maneuver and shortly before 8:00 we had arrived at Heathrow’s terminal one.

We proceeded directly to check-in. Gavan’s bag (he was using Janet’s black giant) weighed the most; mine second. Neither of the kids had baggage tags and had to scramble to fill these in. We spent some time in a bookstore and I used a loo. I recognized an SLD politician, Alan Beith, in the crowd, but I couldn’t remember his name at the time. Then we passed through security and headed for an Aer Lingus boarding area. I think everyone was tremendously excited to be starting at last on a journey that had been in the planning stages for almost half a year.

I had first suggested to Gavan that he might like to do some more walking with me just before the Christmas break, when I had amused him with a long version of the story of my first Alternatives trip to the Lake District. I had proposed four possible routes but he clearly favored the longest and only Irish route, the Wicklow Way. We chose the week after graduation so that I would be relieved of the usual in loco parentis responsibilities, though I don’t suppose that this is the way my walking companions’ parents thought of it. Elizabeth had been recruited by Gavan after their romance had blossomed in the spring. I would have been willing to take on one or two more just-graduated seniors – but Gavan and Elizabeth couldn’t agree on any further nominations. This was a week usually devoted to walks with the Lees – but they had long ago abandoned me in favor of a trip to Scotland. Thus I was free to pursue one of my own long-standing ambitions, the 90-mile route that heads south out of the Irish capital as the Wicklow Way.

We were served breakfast shortly after our 9:00 departure but only Gavan and I ate ours. The flight lasted only an hour or so and shortly after 10:00 we were touching down on a soggy Dublin tarmac. We were not asked to produce any documents and had soon reclaimed our bags. While Elizabeth changed some money I tried to buy a booklet of Dublin maps from an undermanned tourist information booth – where we also inquired without success for some information on how to buy groceries in Dublin on a Sunday.

The rain had just about stopped when we at last went outside to wait for a coach to the Store Street bus terminal. We didn’t have too long to wait and for £2.30 each (the Irish pound being worth just a little less than the English) we were on our way. I enjoyed my first peek into Dublin’s streets; they and the country they represented seemed, however, to be only a minor variation on the England I was now so familiar with. Dublin could have been any provincial city in the UK, although slightly behind the times in its sign-painting and standards of refurbishment. Just before we hit O’Connell Street I spotted an open food market and this cheered me up considerably.

After a long conversation with ASL’s Irish janitor I had discovered that we could leave our knapsacks at the bus station. This we did shortly after 11:20. I kept my old blue coat, the veteran of every campaign since 1974, with its many useful pockets, and my camera, and we walked in front of the handsome Customs House on our way to the abused Liffey, which ran through the downtown in its wide green channel.

We walked up to the next bridge and turned left, heading for Grafton Street via the cloistered grounds of Trinity College. Dublin was celebrating the second day of a street festival and there was a most colorful atmosphere: children with their faces painted, street sellers, and many musicians. On one corner an accordionist yanked on our tears with “Danny Boy” and at the next a toddler fiddler scratched out a tune while an even younger brother stood frozen in a Presley trance with a miniature guitar; a brave string quartet sawed out Vivaldi against the wind; and a Latin band tuned up at the end of the street as we neared St. Stephen’s Green.

We went into a lovely old iron building, recently malled, and had lunch in the restaurant upstairs, that is Gavan had a fry-up, I had a curry, and Elizabeth again had nothing. There was a good view of the proceedings below and we remained here quite some time before working our way through the crowds, past the fire eaters and the banjo pickers to a 24-hour 7-11 –where we proposed to stock up for the next day’s youth hostel meal, following a menu painstakingly extracted from my two young friends, each of whom had denounced much of the menu of western man before they had agreed on a modest diet of spaghetti, no sauce, and canned peas.

Outside a rock group was blasting away on a podium and we waited as a few drops fell before heading back to the bus station, checking the departure times on Hackett Street for our afternoon bus. We returned to wait in front of a cinema

a few minutes later, and I had a Kia-Ora. Our 7-11 bag blew away while we were transferring food and Elizabeth chased after it. Gavan pulled out a borrowed book of questions and as soon as we had boarded the 47B at 2:50 he began posing complicated philosophical queries as we bumped through the southern half of the city. I would have preferred to look out the window and not deal with the issue of whether, if I had only one year to live, I would devote my time to wretched excess or save the rain forests – but the book seemed to keep the kids amused.

I had no idea where we were; the districts got leafier and the little old ladies thicker as we twisted and turned. At one point we went into a suburban cul-de-sac and then returned to our original route, which took us, after 40 minutes or so, to the environs of Marley Park. The driver indicated that we had reached the entrance we needed and so we got off and dodged the traffic to cross over to the well-disguised north gate entrance. After a loo stop and a traverse of the parking lot we were actually able to locate the Wicklow Way notice board, where our walk could officially begin.

I had proposed completing this section of the walk this afternoon because the park did not open until 10:00 in the morning – and I felt this would be too late of a start for a fourteen and a half mile day. Now, after a photo of the young people in front of the notice board, we were ready to follow our first yellow arrow. This confused me a bit because I was holding the first of many xeroxed pages from J.B. Malone’s The Complete Wicklow Way upside down.

After Gavan straightened out this ambiguity we were off on a march through the woods along a path that paralleled a little stream. There were lots of strolling families and kids about, some on bikes. At a little pond Gavan was surprised to learn from me that Mallard is a species, not the name for a male duck. It was humid in the woods but there now seemed no further threat of rain. At the top of the park we had to turn west to escape onto College Road. Elizabeth thought we were going to return by the same path and declined to walk through a dusty car park – but this was needed to escape Marley Park.

We now headed east on College Road, walking below the grounds of St. Columba’s College, the Eton of Ireland. Elizabeth now had the question book: if your grandmother was going to be devoured by a crocodile in 1993 would you tell her or wait calmly for the inheritance.

After dodging traffic for about fifteen minutes we arrived at a crossroads where we located the Marley Park Hotel; it was 5:30. Elizabeth had reserved two rooms for us here and we were given our keys by the receptionist, Dervla (surely not the local spelling of this name), who also informed us that we could get into the disco at 11:00 for free! We agreed on an hour’s rest before a reunion in the bar and Gavan and I went to our room.

I took a bath, later explaining to Gavan how you could shampoo your hair even if there was no shower. Neither of us napped and at 6:30 we went into the bar for our first drink together. Gavan, eighteen, and Elizabeth, a few days shy of this anniversary, were served throughout this trip with no questions asked. He had a pint of Budweiser and I had a glass of Guinness on the advice of my cleaning lady, Cathy. Then I switched for the rest of the trip to the national lager, Harp.

We were sat down in front of a giant screen TV that was presenting fuzzy images from the World Cup. All of Ireland was in a football frenzy, since the national team was still in the competition and due to play again the next day. We decided to order some food – but the dining room was closed and the bar menu offered only one choice: chicken. This was just as well because Elizabeth now announced that she ate no red meat.

The food wasn’t bad and was a distraction from the omnipresent game. Elizabeth and I left Gavan in front of the screen while we took a walk up the nearby road as far as the entrance to the Stackstown golf course. It was a lovely evening, with a late sunset over all of Dublin – a city without high-rise buildings – below us. I did not really know Elizabeth all that well; she had walked with me on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path in 1988 and had written two pieces for the school paper this spring but she had never been a student like Gavan, who had been in my classes for three years. She was an extremely intelligent young lady, quite mature, but strangely unemotional. “I’m kind of spacey,” she told me, and while she was waiting for me in the foyer an Irishman stopped to cheer her up because she looked so downcast. A great achiever at school, she had been president of the National Honor Society and a winner of one of the three final awards presented at commencement two days earlier. Like Gavan, she had already experienced her first ulcer. I must say I was walking in distinguished company – for Elizabeth was on her way to Yale and Gavan to Harvard. “Is an ulcer what it takes to get into the Ivy League these days?” I asked.

Gavan was still watching football when we returned, but as the game came to an end (and well before 11:00) they began testing disco equipment and we headed for bed. We were just far enough away that the sound of the idiot banging a nail into the wall with his head (for this is how Clive James described such backbeats) was not too burdensome. Gavan began a routine of lights out soul-searching chats that persisted for an hour or so – but at last I was able to get to sleep.

To continue with the next stage of our walk you need:

Day 1B: Marley Park Hotel to Knockree Youth Hostel