Secret Fishing Village? OK!

Anyone who has spent much time in Ireland will tell you that Dublin isn't quite like the rest of the country. For one thing, Dublin is the largest city in Ireland. At about one million people, it is significantly larger than Galway, Belfast or Limerick (for the sake of argument I'm including a N. Irish city). Likewise, besides a few large cities most of Ireland is still centered around small villages. So, the countryside has a remarkably different feel from Dublin. And even Galway, the next largest city, has a radically different atmosphere than Dublin. So, any trip to Ireland that also doesn't include a jaunt out to the country is missing an integral part of Ireland.

The same, I imagine, can be said of nearly any place in the world. Living in Los Angeles (or a suburb nearby), I imagine if someone visited California but only went to LA they would have a very different idea of what California was than someone who went to LA, San Fran (and/or Napa), and Sequoia (or one of the other national parks). The same is true of my home state, Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Madison, the two largest cities, are not the same at all. Madison is home to the largest college in the state and so has the feel of a college town (it is also the seat of government and is on the whole more liberal). Milwaukee is a blue-collar big city. It has a history rich in manufacturing, and it is the home to Miller beer. The rest of Wisconsin, however, is largely small towns and deep woods. It's a beautiful state (I'll talk more about it later). But anyone spending time in only one of the cities would miss part of what makes Wisconsin what it is. But I digress...

My point in discussing the merits of visiting the countryside are not only to encourage everyone to go off the beaten tourist path (which they should!), but to show what makes Howth so awesome. My friends had been suggesting Howth as a day trip for a better part of two years. And, due largely to my failure to understand the DART, I finally went this past fall. Howth is only a half hour train ride outside of Dublin, so it's ridiculously close to the city. And because you can take the DART it's easy to get there and come back (especially for someone who prefers not to drive on the left side of the road). But Howth feels like it's several hours outside the city.

The above picture is of Howth Harbour and the houses nearest the water. It looks like a fishing village. It doesn't feel like a suburb of a major city at all. I really felt like I was stepping into a large(ish) village along the coast of Ireland. There isn't too much to do in Howth besides hike around the peninsula/island and eat seafood (both of which were good enough for me).  But if you don't really like to hike or don't like seafood (or both) you might be bored. There aren't any shops, and there's not a tour bus around the island. There is a golf course, and you can take a local bus to some of the places around the island, but really, it's a good place for hiking and for seafood.

I decided to do the 6km hike around half the island (there was a lighthouse, a bog, and a fort on the trail so it seemed like a good bet).  I equipped myself with a map of is the island (so I would have a general idea of where I was going) and set out. This is the beginning of my hike. Howth is rather hilly (not very hilly, but hilly enough) and it makes for some beautiful pictures. The day I was hiking it was a little chilly, overcast, and windy. I shot all my pictures in color, but I definitely got the feel from a lot of them that they would be better in black and white (it was just the feeling I got from looking at them). But more on that later.

The trail at Howth is well marked. The trails are even color coded with mile (or kilometer) markings on them. Being used to ill marked trails, I thought this was wonderful. And it was one of the easiest day hikes I've had in a long time.  

Because of all the hills on Howth there are a lot of cliffs along the water. The cliffs aren't very high, maybe 50-100ft (not compared with the Cliffs of Moher), but even still you don't want to jump in.  The colors while I was walking around Howth were really beautiful. There were a few purple flowers still hanging on, and the ferns were beginning to die so there was a beautiful mixture of green, yellow, and brown covering the hillisides. The first picture gives you a little glimpse as to what they looked like. The second picture is oddly shaped, because after looking at the original shot, I decided this was the most interesting part, so I cropped it way, way down. Now, it looks almost panoramic but not quite.

My Howth pictures were a little difficult because of the overcast sky. It was still bright out, but with the sky being overcast, in a lot of the pictures it disappears unless there are definite layers in the cloud cover (like in picture two). A lot of photographers use filers or special types of flashes to get around this problem, but I don't have either of those gadgets (if I want a filter I'll use a pair of sunglasses), so I'm usually just stuck with whatever natural light I happen to get. This used to really bother me, and sometimes it still does, but now I try to work with what I have rather than alter it. I think it's all right that my sky disappeared in the above picture because the sky isn't the focal point of the picture, the cliff is (and the water provides a contrasting background). 

The picture I use as my profile picture was taken on this hike, and it is of Bailey Lighthouse. I worked really hard to get as close as possible to the lighthouse, but short of ignoring a "No Trespassing" sign and walking through a helipad in direct view of the house or wandering around the edges of some cliffs in strong winds, there was no way I was getting as close as I wanted to the lighthouse. Signs and I have a love/hate relationship, I normally try to obey them especially when someone's privacy is at stake. However, if it looks like a sign is merely there as a half-hearted deterrent I'll take it more as a suggestion (more of this will be discussed when we go to the Cliffs of Moher). Anyways, I wasn't about to risk my life to get some shots of the lighthouse, so I didn't go any closer than this (the helipad was at the top of the hill on the right edge of the frame). I took a lot of pictures of the lighthouse, and when I discuss my photography attempts I'll show them to you and we'll discuss them. As well as some of the photoshop tricks I tried (and am still trying) out with them. 

 Bailey Lighthouse was really pretty. Although it would have been prettier if I could have gotten closer to the lighthouse, but I still had a bog and a fort to see before I went to find the castle so I continued on. The trail went along the coast for another hour and a half or so before it turned inland along a golf course.

The following four pictures document the progression of my hike along the coast. The first one is, obviously, a picture of the Howth coastline. The beaches along the coast aren't particularly large because of the cliffs (I assume). The beaches are also very rocky, although from what I gathered in my Howth brochure this is a big family destination during the summer months. A lot of families will head up to Howth and play at the beach. In the distance of the first picture you can see "mainland" Dublin stretch out against the Wicklow mountains (where Braveheart was filmed).

I added the second picture for aesthetic reasons. I like this picture because my horizon line is high, my tree hits the rule of thirds, and the empty space makes the picture interesting. I'll talk more about all this later. Also, I like how solitary this picture feels. I was mostly alone on my hike. There were some other people on the hike at the beginning (when the long trail I was on was still connected with the three shorter trails), but pretty soon it was just me. I used to hate doing things alone, as though that somehow made me a pariah, but now that I've properly lived alone in a foreign country I don't mind so much. So, I like this picture (and sometimes that's the most important thing).

The third picture is of the "trail" I was on. I think trail is a rather loose term because it was so well kept and well marked that I hardly felt like I was hiking. I felt like it was more of a wilderness walk on an unpaved path. Anyways, it was a lovely path that eventually wound through some people's yards, so that was neat to see (and I also felt like I was somehow invading their privacy).

This last picture is a close up of the beach (or at least one of the beaches it was easy to get close to). Most of the beaches were tantalizingly close. Just a steep twenty feet away. And while I was certain I could get down, I was less certain about getting back up again (all I had with me was my camera, a book, and a scone). A lot of the beaches were quite dirty, it looked like kids would go down there at night and would leave their garbage. The trails never close nor are the trails part of a larger park that can be locked up, so I imagine they have to work hard to keep people from getting into trouble at night. Anyways, this was a little beach I finally got to, and it was really quite beautiful. I made it black and white to keep with the feel of the other pictures (although if you've noticed by now, the black and whites aren't all the same).

At the risk of writing an epic blog entry, I am going to conclude my adventure in Howth for the moment when the hike turns inland. Meaning I still have some bog pictures and a castle, as well as an aesthetic discussion about my pictures before wrapping up this one day jaunt into the countryside of Dublin. Howth is a wonderful village, particularly if you are only in Ireland for a day or two (on an epic tour of Europe). You get a great feel of the countryside without having to travel for several hours in a car. But, we'll talk more about that later.