Canal walk in the rain

I was working in my company's city centre office today and travelled in on the LUAS tram from my home. It's great to work in the city from time to time especially now that I don't have to bring the car. The drive into Dublin city centre during the rush hour in the morning, and again in the evening is just painful.

It was a glorious morning so I set off from the house with all I needed, delighted to be able to travel a different commuting route today.

The only down side was that I was leading a meeting and that required me to bring some extra equipment that I'd need to ensure that everything would go well.

So heading from the LUAS to the office I had a laptop in a backpack and my box of tricks with all the stuff I'd need.

It was an interesting morning and it went pretty well by all accounts.

When the meeting was over I came out of the office and immediately saw that it was pouring rain. The exact same thing happened the last time I was in the city office but that time I had an umbrella and just the laptop bag.

I didn't really have any option but to head for the Tram as quickly as I could in the rain.

The walk from the office to the LUAS station follows the path of The Grand Canal. It has some nice paths on its tree-lined sides and the walk offered some shelter under the big trees. On better days the banks are packed at lunchtime with office workers eating and chatting on their breaks. Nobody seemed to have ventured out to enjoy the scene today.


There are some hotels on the banks of the canal and it's a popular place for tour companies to place people visiting the city. The sight of tour buses parked along the canal is common enough.

The canal has a healthy population of ducks, swans and all kinds of other life. The canal was cleaned up really well a few years back having previously been the kind of place in which drowning was the least of your worries if you fell in. There are still canal barges that use it to go up and down the canal. I'm not sure how deep it is though.

There are a number of nice bridges over the canal, with the one in the shot above at Leeson Street.


In the long grass at the edge I noticed a woman throwing breadcrumbs into the grass. There in a little huddle was a mother duck and a number of tiny ducklings and the woman was attempting to feed the group. Just beyond that a group of adult ducks paddled away from the bank into the canal. They were not remotely bothered by the terrible weather unlike me, at this stage absolutely soaked to the skin. Did I mention I was wearing a suit?

Is there anything worse than being soaked, in a suit?

The property in this part of the city is extremely valuable. Some of the properties are really impressive with many converted into office space by small companies.

From time to time you pass little places like the one above. You can imagine what the canal area must have been like when this place was built with no traffic and no worries about parking etc.

This is the view from Leeson Street bridge down towards Leeson Street Lower leading to Saint Stephen's Green. This is one of the "madness" bridges in Dublin where there is 1.5 lanes for cars and a cycle lane. It creates interesting scenarios between car drivers and cyclists at busy times.

There is a canal lock just beyond this bridge and I have memories of crossing this lock with my Father and brothers when I was younger. I never was much of a swimmer and the thought of edging across the canal represented a very courageous act on my part at the time. Nowadays people sit on this lock on sunny days and probably cross the thing drunk without any great difficulty. I'm still not that keen on walking across the narrow planks to get to the other side. Then again there is a bridge about 20 feet from it so I don't need to.

We have a general election coming up on May 24th to elect a new national government or Dáil as we call it in Ireland. There are posters everywhere of the various candidates. In the west of the city yesterday I noticed a few posters had been burned by passers by holding their lighters up to the corners of posters placed too low on poles.

Today I noticed one of the candidates floating face down in the canal. Well not the candidate but their poster. If you believe in voodoo dolls and all that then it might be a bad sign. A few others had the usual moustaches added, teeth blacked out and so forth.

Right next to the LUAS station I noticed a line of Garda cars and a little Garda station house. The Gardaí (an Garda Síochána or guardians of the peace) are the Irish national police force. They have a big national headquarters near here but in all the times I walked this way in the past I can honestly say I never noticed this building before. The cars parked outside are typical of the modern force.

I climbed the stairs to the LUAS station and just 2 minutes later I was on the way home. Trams are great. Hard to believe we a similar service in Dublin many years ago but decommissioned it only to discover decades later that it was exactly what the modern city needs.