Leave Dun Laoghaire DART station by the north exit facing the waterfront, and walk with the station on your right to the roundabout. On your left is Dun Laoghaire harbour, Ireland’s major ferry and freight port. Take the first turning on your right, Marine Road. Walk across the road and up the left-hand side for one block, past a dull modern shopping centre on your left, to George’s Street Upper. Without crossing the street, turn left and walk two short blocks to Adelaide Street. Turn left here, walk to the end of the street and turn left to enter the National Maritime Museum of Ireland. The museum’s key exhibits focus on the life of local hero Captain Robert Halpin, master of one of the world’s first great steamships, the Great Eastern. Designed by the pioneering English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the ship was, in its day, at the leading edge of Victorian information technology. Under Halpin’s command it laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1866. Considering the newly invented technology available, this was some feat, and it heralded the dawn of a worldwide communications revolution. Suddenly, news travelled between Europe and America in minutes instead of days or weeks. Other exhibits include another piece of technology that was revolutionary in its day, the The Baily Optic, a giant lens, rotated by clockwork from the lighthouse on Howth Island, north of the Liffey.

Retrace your steps to George’s Street Upper and turn left. Pass Mellifont Avenue on your left, then turn left onto Park Road and, with the small green space of People’s Park on your right, walk towards the sea. At the end, cross by the traffic lights to Queen’s Road and then cross to the seaward side and turn right. On your left are the waters of Scotsman’s Bay and ahead is the small headland of Sandycove and its small harbour. Continue down the esplanade for under half a mile (0.8km), along Marine Parade to Otranto Place, and turn left, past a small park. On your left are the waters of Scotsman’s Bay and ahead is the small headland of Sandycove and its small harbour. Continue down the esplanade for under half a mile (0.8km), along Marine Parade to Otranto Place, and turn left, past a small park. To your left is Sandycove’s small harbour, where the working fishing boats are outnumbered by yachts and cruisers.

Follow Sandycove Avenue round the harbour, with the harbour on your left, then follow it left over the headland above the village. When you reach the east side of the headland, look out for a flight of steps leading down to a small bathing cove hemmed in by rocky slopes. This is Forty Foot Pool. So called not because of its length, but because officers of the 40th Regiment of Foot, garrisoned here in the 19th century, used it as their private bathing spot, where they enjoyed swimming naked. It continued to be an all-male nude bathing preserve long after the 40th left for England, but is now open to women as well, if they are brave enough to face the chilly water of the Irish Sea.

Turn right, with the sea on your left, and after a few yards turn right to enter the squat, decidedly military-looking round stone building that overlooks the sea. The James Joyce Museum is housed in one of a string of miniature fortresses, known as Martello towers, which were built along the Dublin Bay Coast in 1804 against the threat of a French invasion. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, these little forts became redundant, and some were converted into homes. A century later, one of the tenants was the poet, author and friend of James Joyce, Oliver St John Gogarty, who rented this tower for the princely sum of £8 a year. In September 1904 Gogarty invited Joyce to spend a week with him here, and the experience inspired Joyce to set the opening chapter of Ulysses here and to fictionalize his host as one of the book’s chief characters: ‘stately, plump Buck Mulligan’. In 1962 the round tower, which is just 40ft (12m) high, was turned into a museum dedicated to Joyce’s literary career. Left much as it was, you can see Joyce’s living room and an eclectic collection of his possessions, including Joyce’s guitar, one of his ties, his wallet, walking stick and the cabin trunk which accompanied him into self-imposed literary exile in Italy, France and Switzerland. 

Leaving the tower, return to Sandycove Avenue and continue, with the sea on your left, to a right-angle bend. With the sea at your back, continue back to Sandycove Road. Turn left, and follow the road along the coast for approximately a mile (1.6km) until you reach Dalkey. This small seaside town, which was the setting for Flann O’Brien’s surreal novel The Dalkey Archives, has long been a sought-after residential area, and the stylish 19th-century villas that line its winding streets command high prices. Palm trees and other subtropical plants growing in many gardens give it a distinctly Mediterranean atmosphere (at least on a sunny day). Dalkey was nicknamed the ‘Town of Seven Castles’ because of the fortified tower-houses built by Anglo-Irish families during the turbulent times of the 15th and 16th centuries, when Ireland’s rulers had perpetually to be on guard against attacks by Irish rebels and their Spanish allies. One of the surviving towers, now known as Archibald’s Castle, can be seen on the corner of Dalkey Main Street, just south of Dalkey sports ground.

From the town centre, turn left to walk downhill on Harbour Road to Dalkey’s Coliemore Harbour. Clearly visible less than a mile (1.6km) offshore is Dalkey Island. The island is a seabird sanctuary where the only signs of former human habitation are a Martello tower and the shell of a medieval Benedictine chapel. In the 9th and 10th centuries the island was a Viking lair, and in the 18th century it was the venue for an annual crowning of the make-believe ‘King of Dalkey’ and his mock-parliament by a group of Dubliners. By the time of the French Revolution in the late 18th century, this ceremony, originally carried out just for laughs, had acquired political overtones which worried the authorities, and in 1797 – just a year before the French-backed rising of the United Irishmen, led by Wolfe Tone – it was banned, only to be revived as an annual fun event in the late 1970s. In summer boat trips are available to Dalkey Island. Retrace your steps to the centre of Dalkey and the DART station (which is clearly signposted) to return to Dublin.