There’s a great magic to urban walking

This week’s Irish Mediahuis regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

I can still remember sitting with my father one morning in our car, waiting for my mother to return from shopping. We were playing ‘I spy with my little eye’. Dad would see something, give me the first letter of it and my job was to guess the object he had seen. 

It was great fun. I must have been six or seven. While we were playing that game we also did some ‘people watching’ and Dad would comment on a random passer by. One man passed and Dad thought he was dressed exotically. It all seems like yesterday to me and let me tell you it was a long time ago.

I thought of all that as I was walking along the Liffey some days ago. I was travelling on the 09.00 Heuston Cork train and had arrived in Dublin City Centre far too early so I decided to walk from the Millennium Bridge to Heuston Station.

I had done it some weeks earlier and had been intrigued with the experience so I decided to give it another try. A warning; never underestimate or tut-tut the phenomenon of urban walking. Of course the hills and the open country are the best places to walk but there is another magic walking the streets of cities and towns.

I got off the 14 bus at the end of South Great George’s Street, walked through a quiet Temple Bar, across the Millennium Bridge and set sail along the northern quays. It was approximately 8.10am and the traffic was bumper-to-bumper all the way from the bridge to Heuston Bridge. 

Every shape and size of car, every car too with people of every shape and size, young old, some smiling and laughing, others looking tired, some looking terribly serious. 

I saw a number of women putting make up on. People using their phones. All of human life was there. They all had one thing in common, they were all travelling extremely slowly. 

At one stage a white van was stopped, the window was open and three young men were chatting away with one another. I was right beside them. I looked in at them and the words just came out of my mouth: ‘Lads, what’s it all about’. They heard me. For a microsecond there was silence and then all four of us laughed. The chap  furthest away from me laughed the most. Off they moved. No time to say another word. But it gave me a great laugh and I’d say it was a conversation piece for them all along the quays.

The Four Courts is always pleasing to the eye,  that is unless they are taking you court. I was surprised with the number of buildings in a state of disrepair and I’d imagine there are many empty rooms along those quays. Why not repair them and help solve the homeless problem? 

The fabulous Croppies’ Acre, now a public park, contains a memorial to the dead of the 1798 rebellion. It was designed and laid out in 1998.

And then to Heuston Bridge, called after John Heuston of 1916 fame. It so happens his brother, Michael was a Dominican priest, a wonderful and eccentric man, highly intelligent too, with whom I had the great privilege to live.

A slow 35-minute walk to Heuston Station, a charming building, a place I love. Great start to the day.