Howth Castle and Environs

There is an off-road cycle path that runs along the coast from Dublin Harbour to the north so I dusted the residual mud from the Irwell towpath from the Airnimal and set off to Howth in the sunshine with our bus driver Simon. This being a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon and St. Patrick's day to boot, the charm of Howth itself was undermined by the curse of private motor car ownership as twice as many people as the place could accommodate desperately looked for places to abandon jalopies that were now surplus to their immediate requirements.

We weaved through the tailback and set off around the Howth Cliff walk which Simon reckoned was cycleable (but he keeps his 29er on the bus—it turned out to be only just do-able on the Airnimal but we got round with out mishap). The loop around of Howth and back to Dublin passes the gates of St. Fintan's Cemetery. No one who watched every transmission of Top Of The Pops from 1972 until 1979 (and only ceasing then because I left home to a flat in Glasgow with no television), no one who had a guitar in 1972 and dreamed of being able to play it one day, but didn't dare to dream of ever playing it in a band (never mind actually on Top Of The Pops on day) could ever pass here without stopping to visit the final resting place of Philomena Lynott (1930-2019) and her son Philip Paris Lynott (1949-1986) who, tragically, Philomena had to lay to rest a mere thirty six years after she had brought him into the world. When we visited Elvis' grave in Memphis in 1990 we were as camp and ironically disrespectful as Gracelands seemed to deserve. On the outskirts of Dublin on this Sunday afternoon in a lawn graveyard serenely devoid of statues and headstones, chatting to people who had buried their parents, partners, children and friends here, and knowing the story of Philomena and Philip without ever having known them: here it really make think that I might be `not worthy'.