The Dublin Community Blog

Yay, the long-awaited long May weekend is almost upon us. And if you’re still looking for something to do over the weekend, we are here to help. You could try these things:

First of all there’s the SoGo Arts Festival in and around South Great George’s Street all weekend. This 3 day bonanza kicked of today, but there are loads of activities and things to see over the next 2 days as well, like “The Best of Busking” featuring the Mighty Steph, a screening of “Once” in Walton’s music store and a flea market on Sunday.

Next on the list is the recently opened Glasnevin Museum – a museum on Dublin’s most famous graveyard, dedicated to Irish heritage & genealogy, and the history of the graveyard itself.

If a proper Indie rock festival is more of your liking, you could also head to Balbriggan on Saturday, where the Sibin Festival officially opens the Irish open air-festival season. For those of you who prefer electronic tunes, you can either keep on partying or start your own festival season on Sunday with the Yes Festival down in Clontarf.

And if this is too much activity for you, you can always relax in one of Dublin’s beer gardens – the weather permitting…

Image via

It’s been a shocking long while since I’ve posted here or anywhere else for that matter. However I have a very good excuse – I’ve been busy increasing the population of Dublin!

Since I started contributing to Dublinblog.ie I have been meaning to write reviews of playgrounds. (Picture, left, is the playground in Marlay Park, which I will review in the future.) As a parent this is the kind of information I would love about a city I’m living in or visiting. There’s nothing like a playground to retrieve some of your sanity when you’re hanging out with kids. You can sit down with a book or a coffee and they can vent their energy. However it can all go wrong if you rock up and all the equipment looks perilous for your little darling. I am also always interested to hear about developments in parks in the city because, recession or no, there has been some interesting developments in Dublin parks recently. No doubt they were planned and paid for before things began to slide. Swings and roundabouts eh? (Expect much more playground wordplay ) Also, as your kids grow, certain playgrounds lose favour or playgrounds that were once too challenging are now just challenging enough. I’ll also try and include some essential info for parents (proximity of hot beverages, picnic tables, benches etc.; y’know essential!) Please, as always, share your thoughts or comments because I may not notice what you might notice about a playground.

The only possible problem with the series is that I’m a southsider and with 3 small children it will definitely be the summer before I make it to any northside playgrounds, if I make it at all. If you are based on the northside and have children and would like to contribute please leave a comment below and we’ll get in touch. Also I refer to my children as Nipper 1.0 (Boy, 6ish, kind of cautious), Nipper 2.0 (Boy, 3ish, bonkers) and Nipper 3.0 (Girl, Shiny, shiny, new, new!)

With no further ado I’m going to kick off with Rathfarnham Castle Playground. (Map) This was discovered by Nipper 1.0 when he and his classmates were brought here by his school. He was mad keen to revisit so we have been back a couple of times since then. The playground here seems to be very new and unlike many in Dublin does not use bark chip as a weed suppressant/ falling child catcher. The ground directly under the various equipment is covered with a soft rubbery, faux tarmacadam and elsewhere a bright hard tarmacadam like composite. I understand the attraction of bark chip but it gets very messy when wet and while it hasn’t rained for a good while in Dublin this is not the norm. But more about bark chip when we get to it!

When we were at Rathfarnham castle today it was quiet enough. Last time we were there during the Easter Holidays and it was busier. What I like about this playground as a parent is that while it is sizable enough so that you are not sitting on top of the other families that are there, it is still small and flat enough to see from one side to the other, thus allowing you to keep an eye on the kids without shifting from your seat. Also the fact that it is big enough means that the equipment isn’t packed together so it is easy to see around it. I forgot to take photos today but future posts will include more. (And if i’m back in the meantime I’ll add photos. Obviously I have to be careful not to include other people’s kids so it can be a little challenging if the playground is busy!)

There are about 5 main pieces of equipment and then a variety of swings and, for want of a better word, twirlers. The five items include a spiderweb style rope climbing frame that rises in a pyramidal shape to about 15ft. This is quite a challenging item although Nipper 1.0 told me today that a girl in his class climbed to the top and got in trouble when they were there with the school. He wouldn’t dream of doing this but I would say it’s only a matter of time before Nipper 2.0 is shouting at us all from up there. There is a piece of equipment that involves stepping stones on springs, balancing and reaching, which would be suited to older children. There is set aimed at toddlers and ambitious wobblers with bridges, platforms, steps and slides all placed at a lowish level. Finally there is a large castle with rock-climbing style walls, slides, steps and various games, tables, windows, a portcullis (non-operational boo hiss) and the ground also includes blue fauxmacadam in the shape of a moat. It is attached by a rope bridge to the spiderweb rope frame. The castle appeals to both the nippers and because it is accessed by steps and has wide bridges and large platforms it is very easy for parents with toddlers to use it as well. As mentioned there are a variety of swings including a large disk into which a number of children (or adults, I daresay!) can fit. Also I recommend you give the twirlers at the gate a go. You hold what is for all the world like a steering wheel that is nearly parallel to the ground but about 6ft up and place your feet on a disk that is also skewed off the horizontal and the next thing you are spinning. The pic right are the nippers twirling on the bottom part. A lot of the playgrounds have variations on these clever twirlers and they can be great fun until somebody pukes!

There are also quite a few simple but not uncomfortable red benches and enough bins. I think it’s a pity that the benches aren’t two sided so you can face either way and so capacity is increased. I also noticed that there isn’t a bin beside the gate into the playground which is always handy so you can dump your rubbish as you leave. You might laugh about me commenting about the bins but this can be an issue in some parks. There are no picnic benches i.e. benches with tables, which is a pity but this is not a deal breaker for me. We were there for about an hour today and could easily have stayed longer without the boys getting bored. The park itself is very simply landscaped and of course contains Rathfarnham castle itself. There are tearooms in the castle but at the time of writing and during my previous visit they were closed. Rathfarnham village is just across the road and through the archway. We were there on Good Friday so trading was a little funny but there’s a good sized Spar where you can get takeaway coffee or ice cream for the kids! I think there are public toilets available in the castle as well and will confirm on my next visit. There is parking available just off Rathfarnham Rd. directly after the traffic lights. It is 50c/hour, max. stay 3 hours. According to DublinBus.ie you can take the 15n, 16, 16a, 17, 48n, 74a or 75 to Rathfarnham but do check their site to find the most convenient bus for the park.

Also housed in the park grounds is the Tree Council of Ireland. You can read more about Rathffarnham on Wikipedia.

It looks like there are big changes coming to the Dublin Bus route network over the next few months.

Dublin Bus plans to “increase efficiency and frequency, with a five-minute waiting time between services”. Good, though my bus is scheduled to run every 20 minutes and in the evening waits of an hour to an hour and a half would not be uncommon. There is a big difference between aiming to run a bus every 5 minutes and achieving it in Dublin traffic. I fear that the solution Dublin bus will opt for in some areas is to avoid traffic bottle necks completely which would remove the current bus service from many parts of Dublin. I’d rather have a bus that serves my area every 30 or 40 minutes than a bus every 5 minutes but with the bus stop miles away on the N11.

“The overall number of routes is to be increased, but some existing routes will be straightened out with fewer diversions off quality bus corridors, while others will be combined.” Sounds good again in theory but as with my previous point does this mean that many busses will run on main routes only and will not divert into housing estates or down side roads as they do at the moment? That actually reduces the service for many people especially the elderly or those with mobility difficulties.

Finally “A real-time passenger information service will also be rolled-out later this year”. Very good and I hope Dublin Bus have the sense to make this freely available online and to open up the API so that developers writing applications for iPhones and other smartphones will be able to write apps to allow consumers to look up the location and timing of different busses at home and on mobile phones without having to go to bus stops.

Most people will have noticed the posters with a pair of bloody hands around town by now – yes, the Abbey Theatre puts on a new production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

Over 400 years after it was written, Shakespeare’s dark depiction of ambition, guilt and murder continues to send a shiver down the spine.

Macbeth’s sword is still wet with blood when he returns victorious from battle, a loyal servant to his King and a hero amongst his comrades. But when three weird sisters cross his path with mysterious prophecies, Shakespeare’s fearsome tragic hero comes face to face with his most fierce opponent yet – his destiny.

Swayed by promises of greatness and the demands of a power-hungry wife, Macbeth swathes his way to power – and moral decay.
Rooted in the Irish landscape at the time of Cromwell, this muscular new production from director Jimmy Fay (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Playboy of the Western World, Ages of the Moon) lays bare the darkest side of human nature.

Running since last Wednesday, the play is on until the 15th of May; and the Abbey Theatre also offers assisted performances for the visually impaired – so there’s almost no reason not to go if you’re at least a bit into good old William.