Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, and I have the great

fortune to be looking at the Irish Sea from Scaries Beach, north of Dublin, and the northernmost

point of the Dublin Coastal Trail. Yes, there is such a thing and no it's not anything like as expansive

as the Wild Atlantic Way on the western side of the island of Ireland, but it is pretty impressive

considering that the centre of Dublin is probably 20 miles or so to the south.

And the Dublin Coastal Trail takes you along a whole series of beautiful places,

which are time and again, rewarding by the way that the light changes.

And I'm speaking to you with a low sun behind me. It's soon going

set in the west this afternoon. Ahead, there's a whole series of islands, tiny ones like

Rockabill Island with a little lighthouse on it, Colt Island, Inish Patrick, which is reputed to be the very first place that St Patrick

sent foot on his return to Ireland as a missionary. It used to be the case, and I can just make out the

ruins of a 12th century church, that there was actually a monastery there. And you can hear the sea life and also over on the far island,

which is Schenic Island, a good place for roosting birds.

And also it has a Martello Tower, which are very much a punctuation mark

all the way along this coast,

built at the start of the 19th century to guard against Napoleonic invasions.

There's one actually to my left, and I'm going to be walking along towards Skerry's Harbour

as I speak to you.

The clouds are creating their own work of art above me.

The sky is kind of merging from deep blue to silver and it's a fine time to be here.

But let me tell you more about the other end of the coastal trail.

It goes down to a place called Killing-E, but I'm not going to take you that far because

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