Sandycove, Glasthule and the Forty Foot

Maggie woke to this, this morning:

A chocolate roll her brother bought from the nearby Clark's station and the video from her friends back home wishing her happy birthday!!!

So fun!


She got to take a pie (that she made, all by herself, from scratch!) to school for some sort of international foods day (I think she blogged about it and the apple pie was Grandma's idea.).

Sheila and I had a few errands to run after we got the kids off to school. We had to pick up her cake in Dun Laoghaire and I wanted to pick up a smaller every-day camera as I never take my big camera with us on a daily basis and want some better pictures than my phone produces. So we headed south on the coast.



I had wanted to visit the little villages of Sandycove and Glasthule. Specifically, I wanted to take a beautiful walk on the coast out to the "Forty Foot" and the Martello Tower that was the start of Ulysses. The area is the main setting of the book I'm reading (At Swim, Two Boys, so I wanted to look around a bit).

Once in the little village (which is darling, by the way. Loads of upscale shops and restaurants) we headed out to the coast for our "lovely walk". It was lovely, but it was a soft day.

We got out to the Forty Foot and the waves were so strong we thought it unbelievable that anyone would swim there both due to the cold and the dangerous waves that would knock you back into the rocks.

Here is a bit about the Forty Foot from Wikipedia: "The Forty Foot is a promontory on the southern tip of Dublin Bay at Sandycove, from which people have been swimming in the Irish Sea all year round for some 250 years."

It was too cold and rough for me today, but we saw people swimming.... In their swimming suits! TODAY!?! (I guess it is a Christmas tradition as well!)

Here are some great images of sunny days and people swimming there. I plan to be back!

Afterwards we headed up behind the Forty Foot to James Joyce's tower.

 The tower was leased from the British War Office (for 8 pounds a year!) by Joyce's university friend Oliver St. John Gogarty. Joyce stayed with him for six days and left after an incident in which Gogarty fired a gun in his direction.

The opening scenes of Ulysses are set the morning after this incident. Gogarty is immortalised as "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan."

Sheila heading up the tiny stone spiral staircase to the top of the tower.

Sandycove from the Tower (Dun Laoghaire Church in the Distance)

A naked dude coming from a swim!!

The Forty Foot from atop the tower.

I love the Georgian homes on the coast. They look gorgeous from across the bay (the Forty Foot) looking back.