Hidden beauty right in front of our noses

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

I can’t imagine the damage Covid has caused the airline travel, indeed the damage it has caused everywhere.

Maybe it is that I am growing old and the attraction of non-stop travel is no longer a great priority with me. 

Also, up to some years ago I did my fair share of travel. I was going backwards and forwards to Germany ever before Ryanair appeared on the scene and Aer Lingus may have only had two or three flights a week to Frankfurt-am-Main.

But these days listening to the uproar and almost pandemonium that is being caused because people can’t travel to far-off places, I’m wondering have we lost the run of ourselves.

Again, maybe it’s easy for me to scratch my head when I hear about people travelling to Berlin for a weekend. What can one see of Berlin in two, three days? 

I lived in the city before the Wall came down and know just a little about the enormity and complexity of the German capital. But back in the day, when I was there, it was a divided city, East Berlin being the capital of East Germany and West Berlin, an island city, that attracted all sorts of ‘Refuseniks’ alternatives and the likes of me, but that’s another story altogether.

At the weekend I did two lovely walks. On Saturday I walked along Dublin’s River Dodder from Donnybrook to where the river flows into the Liffey. 

It’s one fabulous walk. One minute you might well think you are deep in rural Ireland. Two kilometres further on you come to that spot where the Grand Canal and the Dodder flow into the Liffey. It really is a piece of engineering wonder.

And just before arriving at that junction my companion and I were discussing whether or not we liked the Aviva Stadium. Such a colossal building plonked right beside family homes. Neither of us is an architect but we both agreed and thought it works. We decided it is a piece of architectural genius.

Then on Sunday I walked around the reservoir at Beohernabreena, just beyond Tallaght. It’s a nine-kilometre walk.

The reservoir supplies water to approximately 35,000 households in the Rathgar Rathmines area of Dublin and was built in the 1880s.

Over the last few months I’ve been discovering places, roads, alleyways that I never knew existed.

There is a wealth of treasure right in front of our noses that we constantly seem to miss or ignore.

It’s only in recent years that I discovered where the sources of water are for the two Dublin canals. And when I was at Grand Canal Dock on Saturday I got talking to a couple. We were joking and laughing, and also talking about the wonder of the place. I asked her in true school teacher fashion where was the source of water for the Grand Canal. She nor her husband had no idea.

Why do we frenetically fly all over the world when there’s so much wonder right in front of our noses here at home?

In every nook and cranny of this island of ours there are extraordinary gems to discover.

These days I’m reminded so often of the old Irish seanfhocal, far away hills are green.