Winter weekend in Dublin is all about the people

Offbeat experiences and eccentric local characters make this Irish city heartwarming on a cool day, says Harry Green

F or the briefest of moments, I think I’ve walked straight into a soap opera. As the door of the pub swings open and I take my first, tentative step inside, the entire place falls silent. The chatter and the laughter, all the singing and revelry that I could hear outside, stop in an instant. A cluster of rugged faces stares back at me and I almost retreat into the dark evening I’ve left behind.

But this isn’t the Queen Vic in Albert Square, it is the Blue Light near Dublin and the most Irish of welcomes is soon bestowed upon me.

“Come on in,” bellows an old beardy chap clutching a glass etched with the frothy remains of a pint of Guinness. “Find a seat. Do you know any songs?” he adds warmly.

Within a second, the music restarts. In one dimly-lit corner of the pub sit three men, one with a flute and the other with a fiddle.

Together they jam happily, playing old Irish folklore tunes, the rest of us smiling and tapping our feet.

Then the mood takes a more sombre turn as the third man, my new beardy friend, closes his eyes and sings songs from his childhood, his haunting vocals sliding down the stone walls as a respectful silence lingers on every table.

This is probably a typical Wednesday night at the Blue Light, a blink-andyou’ll-miss-it local, up in the countryside that hugs Dublin, and I feel incredibly privileged to have stumbled upon it. But such good fortune doesn’t happen by accident.

I’m on a pub crawl with a big difference. Having returned to Dublin for the first time in a decade and following past visits that left me a little underwhelmed, I’m determined to see the Irish city at its best.

Keen to avoid the Guinness factory and the hop-on/hop-off buses that trundle along the banks of the River Liffey, I enlisted the help of Makemyday, a new company that specialises in original and engaging tours that showcase the real city. Promising a cliché-free experience, they had already set me up for a morning with a local historian, learning all about Dublin’s complicated past and the urban legends that surround Trinity College.

In the afternoon, I went kayaking along the Liffey with a band of musicians who would stop and play old songs under each bridge (the acoustics were phenomenal).

Then, it was time to meet pub guide Shane. Joined by a group of visiting Americans, we set off out of the city and into the Dublin Mountains. The word “mountains” is a tad misleading (more hills, than the Himalayas), but the narrow and twisting country lanes are a revelation.

I didn’t expect to experience such a true sense of rural Ireland so close to the capital. I imagined one would have to travel for hours, down miles of countryside and deep into the very heart of the island, to find such glorious scenery and people... and pubs.

Shane shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Most people come to Dublin and barely venture away from Temple Bar, but the pubs there don’t give a true sense of what it’s all about. To do that, you have to leave the city behind.”

Over the next few hours, we visit three wonderful and very different drinking dens, including Johnnie Fox’s, said to be one of the oldest pubs in Ireland, dating back to 1798 and bursting with antiques and photos from centuries gone by.

Back in the city after one drink too many, Temple Bar – the epicentre of the city’s nightlife – is lively indeed, with tourists drinking overpriced

I didn’t expect to find such a true sense of rural Ireland so close to the capital.