Dublin and drink

We planned to spend a couple of days in Dublin and on the way up travelled through a little village called Ballykissangel. Well that is not its real name but what most would know it by. The well known BBC series was actually set in Avoca. This is the pub which was a regular feature.Another part of the plan was for me to play Royal Dublin Golf Course as there are reciprocal rights with Royal Canberra. I was able to get a 3:30 tee off time and seem to have most of the course to myself. It is on North Bull Island which sits in Dublin Bay. Getting to the island is by a long one way timber bridge. The course is beautiful but challenging. Many holes comprise very narrow fairways (15 – 20 metres) 2 metre second cut and then lost ball country. It is a typical links course with 9 holes going out (in this case into a headwind) and 9 holes back. Fortunately the weather was warm with a light breeze so I only lost a couple of balls and had a reasonable round for much of the 18 holes. I would not want to play this in the more normal wet and windy conditions!

Dublin city has many attractions and figures; too many for this blog which is probably soporific enough. Nonetheless some examples are the statue of Jim Larkin leader of the 1913 general strike outside the General Post Office (1818). This rebellious nature resulted in Ireland gaining independence in 1922.

Another key figure in Ireland’s history was Daniel O’Connell who organised huge rallies over a 5 year period leading to The Emancipation Act of 1828 which gave (some) Catholics the right to vote. One of the uprisings resulted in much of O’Connell Street being destroyed and most of the angels in this statue sport real shot wounds. One of the lasting statistics in my mind is the great famine in 1845 – 8 resulting from the complete failure of the potato crop. Over 1 million died and many fleed to North America. As a result the 8 Million population was halved to 4 million by 1900 which remains the current population figure.

A popular statue is that of Sweet Molley Malone selling Cockles and Mussels. She was also a lady of the night and appears to be dressed more for this activity than selling shellfish.

By stark comparison The Monument of Light (a Millennium statue) is a 120 metre stainless steel needle which is the largest free standing structure in the world. It is another example of a love it or hate it feature. We travelled round Dublin using open top hop on hop off buses and it was interesting to hear how the various guides described the needle. Some were not too praiseworthy.

However, we were really in Dublin to savor the drink and where better to start than the Guinness factory? After running a small brewery in the country Arthur Guinness moved to Dublin in 1759 and leased land and water rights for £45 pa. He must have thought he would live for ever as he signed up for a 9000 year lease when he was 34 years old. This is the original manuscript set in the floor of the original brewery building (now a heritage site).

There are some wonderful old barrels and copper kettles. I was taken by this copper lid which is so similar (features and size) to the porthole and storm cover that hangs outside our house (except ours is brass).

The self guided tour takes you through the barley preparations, hops, water and yeast (without the very secretive ingredients) and is well done. The only Guinness brewery outside Ireland is in Australia as the draught has only a 10 day shelf life. The brewery makes 4,000,000 pints per day half of which is exported. This means that 2M pints are consumed within Ireland. As the total population is only 4 million then either some are drinking quite a bit or the children have a problem!

You can even take lessons in how to pour a pint and gain a certificate of competency!

We decided that we would cut to the chase and went to the 7th level bar where Seamus (how could he be called anything else) poured us a pint each with a Shamrock on the head.

It was a lovely pint and with a panoramic view over the city on a brilliantly sunny day it was as close to heaven as a mortal can get.

Now that we had a taste for Guinness we decided to take in a show with an Irish band and Irish dancing (and of course another pint). The energy of these four dancers to hold a half hour show was quite amazing and obviously they had been raised on Guinness (it gives you strength if you believe the advertising). It probably does as Arthur’s wife had 21 children.

The lead in the Irish band encouraged requests from the floor and there were chits that you could fill out with your request. When he read Helen’s he apparently had not heard of Canberra. This caused a little banter from the floor and it turned out there were another 6 people from Canberra in the audience and some 15 or so Aussies in the 100 strong audience. Small world.

Unfortunately we did not have sufficient time to go around the Jamison distillery which is Ireland’s best known whiskey. Apparently the reason Jamison’s is so smooth is due to it being distilled 3 times as opposed to Scottish whisky (without an “e”) which is distilled twice. Both of course are superior to the single distillation process used in the American Bourbon.

One of my favourite drops is Kilkenny so a trip down to that fair city was essential. We went to the brewery and asked the security guard when tours occurred as we enjoyed their drop. The reply took us aback. Oh, it is not brewed here. Our brewery is Smithwicks which was thought to be hard to pronounce overseas so exports were branded as Kilkenny. It has been bought out (as with Guinness) by the Diagio group so who knows where it is brewed!

Rather disillusioned we had to settle for a trip to the castle with its huge park. In the centre is the top of the spire of St Canice’s Cathedral which is about 1km beyond the castle. The castle is unusual as it is three sided with one of the sides slightly splayed out.

The town also sits on the river Nore where the ongoing theme of colourful flower displays continued.