A breath of fresh Eire
TONY McINTYRE discovers the delights of a recharged Dublin offering something for every taste
WE gazed down from our craggy outpost on Bray Head across the glistening waters of the Irish Sea far below us. To the north lay the village of Bray itself, the broad sweep of Dublin Bay, the Howth peninsula and Dalkey Island.
To the south was the village of Greystones and the distant wonders of Eire fading away into the haze.
But I couldn’t help glancing at the steep incline behind me; sheep on either side flanking a rutted, fern-lined track as it twisted its serpentine route up the hillside.
Had I cycled up that? I could barely believe it...
Well, maybe I should confess I had cheated slightly. This was Fatbike Adventures, on the Belmont Demesne estate in County Wicklow.
And this was not just my first taste of mountain biking, but also of e-biking, where an electric motor supplements pedal power and helps propel even the rustiest cyclist to magnificent viewpoints.
The £2,200 bikes are called “fat” because they come with chunky, 4½-inch tyres capable of tackling even the toughest terrain.
After a demonstration by instructor and Fatbikes co-founder Ian Boltt, I soon got to grips with the gears and the electric motor controls, which cover every level up to Mach 5 (sorry, that should be max 5!). The return route down was a challenging descent, taking in twists and sharp turns.
The Fatbikes tour days are typical of the ‘try anything’ entrepreneurship remarkably prevalent in modern-day Ireland.
Yes, of course there are worries about a post-Brexit future, but the resurgent Celtic Tiger is still purring.
And it is so convenient to visit, just a comfortable trip across the Irish Sea on one of the luxury Stena Line vessels sailing out of Holyhead, Anglesey, and with a great choice of hotels in Dublin Port.
We stayed in the striking
£47 million Marlin Hotel, a four-star, 300-bedroom, triangular new arrival in the St Stephen’s Green area, which specialises in the “hotelroom-as-pod” concept.
Rooms are comfortable but ineffably “functional” with the huge 2m x 2m bed (you choose your own sleeping alignment each night) dominating every room. The breakfast buffet is pretty much the same size, too, as I found to my delight each morning.
Dublin’s thriving Grand Canal Dock and Custom House Quay dominate a docklands area that has been re-energised, with additions such as the 14,000-capacity Three Arena, the Convention Center Dublin, the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, the Luas (Gaelic for speed) tram and light rail system and the
EPIC Irish Emigration Museum, awarded the top museum prize in Europe for 2019, and still jostling for the world title.
Founded by Downpatrick-born former Coca-Cola chairman and chief executive Neville Isdell, it tells the story of the millions who left Eire in troubled times in search of a better life in the UK, the USA, or wherever, brought to life by incredible, interactive technology.
There’s even an in-house genealogist at the close of the tour, able to pinpoint, with computer-assisted accuracy, the prime location of every Irish surname from the past and flesh out the story of every family.
The area is a mecca for food-lovers, too, as Ireland seeks to spread its appeal to gastronomes and reinforce its reputation for careful, locally produced “slowfood” cooking.
We had lunch at the Ely Bar and Grill, housed in subterranean dockside wine vaults dating back to 1821, featuring a range of 1,200 wines and a menu with the very best of Irish cuisine.
The enthralling story of Irish foods was brought vividly and tastily to life when we joined the Fab Food trail, covering everything from pungent and intriguing Eire cheeses such as Crozier Blue, Gubbeen and Coolea in Sheridan’s fabulous cheesemongers (it says “Don’t worry... Brie happy” over the door) to ice cream prepared with liquid nitrogen at the Three Twenty Ice Cream Lab, plus traditional Dublin pubs and Irish whiskeys.
We visited The Swan, one of the dozen or so traditional Victorianera pubs still remaining in Dublin, and learned that many city taverns from that area always bore the names of birds or animals, because back then the pictures on pub signs could always be identified by those unable to read or write.
We also sniffed and sampled the whiskey on a tour of the George Roe & Co distillery, housed in a former Guinness brewery power plant, which only this year resurrected the enterprise of the same name which once produced two million gallons a year (twice as much as the now better-known Jamesons nearby), but closed in 1926.
Irish whiskey producers – note that essential letter “e”, denoting the magical liquid’s Eire origins – take great pride in their output, pointing out that they nearly always tripledistil their spirit, as opposed to the double-distillation process that almost always applies to Scotch whisky, and believe it renders an improved finished product.
In County Wicklow, outside Dublin, we enjoyed another tour, at the Powerscourt Distillery, Enniskerry, conducted by guide Adam Holt. The distillery produces Fercullen premium brand whiskeys under the ever-watchful nose and
tastebuds of master distiller
Noel Sweeney, whose expertise in the field is currently all but unrivalled.
The 75-minute, €35 tasting tour features a visit to the warehouse containing 2,800 casks of the amber nectar, and the sumptuous aroma as gallons and gallons of whiskey mature in the oaken barrels, is alone worth the admission price.
Alongside is Powerscourt House, a magnificent stately home and estate named by National Geographic as No. 3 among the best ornamental gardens in the world.
The place is truly stunning, featuring delights such as the Triton Lake with its 100-foot fountain, the Italian and Japanese Gardens, the Dolphin Pond and the Pets’ Cemetery, the final resting place of so many much-loved residents of Powerscourt, including Eugenie, the Jersey cow who had 17 calves and produced more than 100,000 gallons of milk.
The estate’s history can be traced back to medieval times, when a castle stood on the site, but, in 1730, the 1st Viscount Powerscourt wanted to make his mark in the district by building the grandest of elegant mansions.
In 1961, the Slazenger family of sports kit fame bought the estate from the 9th Viscount Powerscourt, and embarked on a long-term project of restoration and development work to enhance the area as a visitor attraction, but, after completion in 1974, a devastating blaze took hold of the top floor and reduced the main building to a roofless shell.
Sadly, explained current head gardener Alex Slazenger, his grandparents subsequently went off to live in the Isle of Man, and never recovered from the disaster.
Today, however, it is impossible to see the joins, following a renewed building
programme and the reopening of the estate in 1997 by then-Irish President Mary Robinson.
Twenty miles away, at Ballyknocken, in Ashford, County Wicklow, TV chef and third-generation B&B proprietor Catherine Fulvio (née Byrne), who runs a cookery school on site, had us all developing our catering skills in ways we never thought possible.
As a veteran hack, I have long hacked onions in the only haphazard way I knew. Once we had donned our aprons, Catherine and her chef, Edel Proctor, showed us the correct, efficient way of doing it. I cried tears, I think, of joy at this eye-watering experience.
Then it was on to the complicated stuff: Irish Guinness soda bread; carrot and cumin and spinach soups; beef and stout cobbler; herby champ; green salad with honey and lemon dressing; and Baileys Irish Cream truffle torte with roasted honey plums and orange cream.
Catherine, who has appeared on Saturday Kitchen and NBC’s Today programme as well as her own cookery show in Ireland has made a special art out of Italian cuisine with a Celtic edge to it.
Her ingredients couldn’t be fresher – the kitchen garden at Ballyknocken, lovingly tended by gardener Mark Smyth, provides a comprehensive range of vegetables and salad leaves, and our self-prepared salad was garnished with edible borage, marigold and calendula flowers. Food tastes so much better when you have done it yourself and acquired new skills in the process.
Much more of that, however, and I will definitely need my own “fatbike” on a permanent basis.