The Village: Dublin's Best Park, Farmers Market & A Beach Walk

The Village Tour

I promised that you'd see local Dublin and this is as local as it gets. This is the village where I live. You're going to see authentic off the beaten track Dublin today.

The Route

Raheny Village 

We start in Raheny Village. Now I confidently can say no other guide to Dublin has ever recommended that you come to Raheny. At first glance, it might look like just another suburb. But that's exactly why it's special. This is real Dublin life, not the tourist version.

These are the places I hunt for when I travel. Where locals actually live. What their houses look like. Village life unfolding from a coffee shop window. Give me this over shuffling past the Book of Kells with a hundred other tourists any day.

Raheny's history runs deep , you just need to know where to look. People have lived in Raheny for 1,600 years. The name means "Fort of the Marsh," and you're standing right where that ring fort once stood. You'll see plenty of ring forts still standing out west in Ireland and on Game of Thrones, but ours got replaced with suburbia.

The Four Churches of Raheny

Step out of the train station and you'll spot three churches. Because it's Ireland. The ruins are from 1712. Your village has 300 year old ruins in its centre too, right?

Dracula author Bram Stoker's parents are buried in that graveyard. Hopefully his fanged fiend wasn't inspired by local characters. These days, it's the young lads in North Face tracksuits not capes you should fear, but at least they helpfully wear this uniform them so we can spot them coming.

The ugly church is of course the new one. And the older still standing one is now home to the Raheny Shamrocks. Makes perfect sense as jogging replaced Mass as the Sunday morning ritual of the middle aged in Ireland.

The fourth church is hidden away because it's a Protestant church in Catholic Ireland. This is where U2's Bono got married. Back when he was just plain old Paul Hewson from the North side of Dublin. Not Lord Bono of Killiney.

Food & Drinks In Raheny

Walk down past the ruin church and you'll come into the main street, all 300 metres of it. It's small but packs a punch.

Bowls Healthy Eating is where I go most often. It does what it says on the sign. Sarah & Andy will feed you well but with healthy food. Some of the Shamrocks could improve their race times if they ate here more often.

Minimal Waste Grocery is down the small lane beside them. This is a no plastic shop where you can bulk buy all your staples. Ireland is good at the auld environmental stuff. A lovely American couple run it, stop in and stock up on a paper bag full of their chocolate treats.

Bread Naturally might be the best bread in Ireland. I heard the South African owner used to bake sourdough for his friends until someone suggested he should do it for a living. Now he has the kind of hours I like, open just four days a week until they sell out. Which they do early.

Perky's Coffee House is so cute. It would be discreetly hidden in a house if it wasn't for the queue that form here at Christmas time for their festive hot chocolate. It goes viral and looks like Will Ferrell whipped it up it while waiting for Santa to arrive. I stray from healthy bowls to unhealthily delicious breakfast rolls here occasionally.

Ireland's Holy Trinity

While you're on the Main Street, stop and look around you carefully. You'll see something that is in every Irish village in the land. A Chinese takeaway, an Indian one, the Italian chipper, the bookies and the pub. This is Ireland's new holy trinity or whatever the five leaf version is. You could be in Ballygonowhere, population 300, and it will have these five things. Essential to Irish life.

We haven't even walked 500 metres and you've already seen all that, maybe Raheny should be in the guide books. Just let me know if it happens and it'll be time for me to move elsewhere.

St Anne's Park

You'll pass by some neighbourhoods as you walk to St Anne's Park. On my guided walk we talk more about them, the housing crisis in Ireland and what led to it.

The Guinness Family Park

The St Anne's Park we have today is thanks to the Guinness family who bought it, got tired of it, and gave it to the city. Based on how much I've contributed to them, I should have a few trees named after me in this park.

It starts with Arthur, the genius behind Guinness. His grandson Benjamin Lee Guinness did what most heirs generally do - spent a lot of it. Though to be fair, he was decent at daddy's business.

"In numbers, sales of his single and double stouts had been 78,000 hogsheads in 1855, which he nearly trebled to 206,000 hogsheads in 1865."

I wish my hogshead sales were that impressive.

He became Ireland's richest man and started buying land here, initially 50 acres, eventually growing to 240 acres. That makes St Anne's Dublin's second biggest park after the ginormous Phoenix Park. Though he also married his first cousin, so there's that.

Next up was Benjamin's son, Sir Arthur Edward Guinness, Lord Ardilaun (a pint of Guinness settles in the same time it takes to say his name). Lord Arthur and his wife were the ones who really created the park we know today, planting the massive trees we still shelter under.

But they had no children, so it went to their nephew, Bishop Benjamin Plunkett. He took one look at the lawn mowing job ahead of him and sold it to Dublin Corporation, keeping a mere 30 acres for himself.

St Anne's Park Today

I walk this park every day and still find new surprises. Here's what you'll find:

Sports & Activities: 35 playing fields for Gaelic football, hurling, rugby and soccer, tennis courts, pitch 'n putt course, zip line, model car race track, two dog parks, community Park Run

Gardens & Nature: Rose garden with 25,000 roses, walled garden, the Naniken River, duck pond, its own microclimate, community garden

Heritage Features: Clock tower, a kilometre long grand avenue, art gallery, Arthur's follies, holy well, archaeological dig site

Community Spaces: Red Stables café, farmers market, summer concert venue, playground

And I've surely left things out. But you get why I love living here.

Gaelic Games

When you enter the park, you'll see the two Gaelic sports of Hurling and Football being played. These sports are only played in Ireland. They are 100% amateur, no trading players between clubs. You play for your home county only. Pure pride. The GAA is the lifeblood of so many Irish communities. Look for the purple tops on the kids and adults throughout Raheny. They're more popular than English Premium League clubs.

If you're on my walking tour, I'll explain more of the rules and tell you why my dad has been banned twice for life from playing Gaelic sports!

The Dark Hedges of Raheny

All the tourists race to Northern Ireland to see the Dark Hedges from Game of Thrones. No one tells them that TV editing is a powerful thing, the real version is more "Grey Saplings" than mystical forest. But here in St Anne's Park, we've got a better tree tunnel. Just watch out for the squirrel chasing dogs instead of dragons.

Park Run

On a Saturday morning, they have the Park Run. I love the concept behind it. It's a 5km run, but it's not about the run or winning, it's about bringing the community together. You can walk it if you like. It's totally free. And you should join in, what better way to learn about a place than temporarily become part of it.

St Anne's Farmers Market

Also on a Saturday morning (see why I suggest coming on a Saturday) is the Farmers Market. I buy most of my groceries here direct from the organic farms. Fruit, veg, apples, cider, eggs, meat, bread, everything you'd need. You're on holiday though and don't want to cook, don't worry, there's about 20 stalls selling hot food. Come hungry, order your food and sit down on the grass with a few hundred Dubliners.

The Red Stables

On other days, eat at the lovely cafe in good old Benjamin's former stable. The food here is really fresh and tasty. Bathrooms here too. There's often art exhibitions on too and you can see a model of the former mansion that was on the estate until it burned down in 1943. Someone wasn't happy with a bad pint of Guinness.

The Rose Garden

During the summer, this is the nicest part of all of north Dublin when the 25,000 roses bloom. Take your coffee to go, silence your phone, and sit awhile here on a bench here. You may look like the Irish Forrest Gump but it's perfect.

Walled Garden & Clock Tower

From there, you'll cross the 1 kilometre long avenue which used to lead to the house on the estate. The route brings you through the walled garden and under the bell tower that was used to summon the workers.

The Nanuken River

This next part of my favourite in the whole park, but it's quite to hard to find. Look for the bell tower, which is not hard to find. Follow the small path to its right and you'll be walking along the tiny Naniken River. As you walk along it, you could be in rural Ireland, not in one of our biggest parks. So peaceful. Just the calming trickle of water.

The Duck Pond

The river leads you to the duck pond, don't feed them bread! They like peas they tell me. And you'll get your first glimpse of Bull Island and Howth in the background. But resist the temptation to go towards it, we're turning right where you'll pass St Anne's Well and along the path until the end of the park.

Now you can see all of Dublin in front of you, shadowed by the Wicklow Mountains.

Bull Island

Back in 1800s Dublin, someone had the bright idea to build a wall into the bay to stop ships getting stuck. Grand plan, worked perfectly except for the tiny detail of nature deciding to dump several million tons of sand behind it. Six kilometers of it, to be exact. Congratulations Dublin Port, you accidentally created an island.

Turns out this engineering mishap became Dublin's greatest happy accident since someone let the Guinness brewery vats ferment too long. The first to notice were thousands of Brent geese up in Arctic Canada, who took one look at their -40°C winter and said "lads, you'll never guess what just popped up in Dublin." Now they fly 5000km here every winter. Imagine choosing Irish winter as your warm holiday destination. But different strokes for different geese.

Bull Island has since collected more titles than the Dublin Gaelic football team: National Bird Sanctuary, National Nature Reserve, Special Protection Area, Special Area of Conservation, and UNESCO Dublin Bay Biosphere Reserve. Not bad for what started as a navigation wall to stop ships bumping into things

To get there, you cross the wooden bridge. Made of concrete. With a dash of wood.

Dollymount Activities

Further along the Bull Wall, you'll find male and female bathing shelters where for some reason people like to go swimming in our freezing water. Those geese who just flew across an ocean must be looking down at us thinking we're bonkers. But it's a very popular thing to do, no matter the season. They do similar over at the Forty Foot on the Southside.

I draw the line at winter swimming, but I do kiteboard here. Dollymount Beach is Dublin's kitesurfing capital. When the wind's right, it's world class. Picture yourself gliding above the waves, Howth Head on one side, Wicklow Mountains on the other. Pure Magic runs the lessons (yes, that's actually their name) and they're brilliant at getting beginners up and riding. Plus you'll meet some proper Dublin characters who think wetsuits are acceptable everyday wear.

If you're not up for getting wet, grab a bench at the end of the wall and watch the kites dance. It's meditation with a sea view.

For those who prefer their seaside sports more genteel, there's always golf. The Royal Dublin Golf Club is exactly as posh as it sounds. They only allowed female members in 2023. Yes, 2023. It's one of those places where the dress code is longer than most restaurant menus.

Or you can just walk the Bull Wall, which is what all the locals do. With views all across Dublin Bay and a brisk sea air. Then enjoy a coffee at the coffee shop in a shipping container, Happy Out. You can visit the other shop on my Sea Tour.

Decisions, Decisions.

Now you have a decision to make. You can do one of three things to get home.

1. Walk back across the wooden bridge where there's a bus stop with frequent buses to bring you back to town.
2. If you want to see more, go back across the wooden bridge, turn left and walk 45 minutes/3.5km further along the seafront to Clontarf Dart Station. It's a nice walk and Clontarf is a posh area with plenty of food options. You could even eat at Clontarf Castle.
3. If you come on my Saturday walking tour, we'll walk along the beach back to Raheny where you can get a bus or the Dart.

Walk Details

• Distance: 8km along paths, park trails and beach
•  Time: 3 hours (including food and stops) 
• Difficulty: Easy - all paved surfaces available
• Start: Take the DART to Raheny Dart Station
• End: Choose Dollymount Bus Stop, Raheny Dart, or Clontarf Dart
• Best Day: Saturday (farmers market day)
• Facilities: Toilets at Red Stables and Happy Out beach cafe
• Guided Option: I run Saturday morning group walks of the Village

My Dublin Walking Tours

I've created 5 different walks to show you the real city:

1. The Cliffs Tour - perfect for Fridays when before it gets too busy
2. The Village Tour - best on Saturdays for the farmers market
3. The Sea Tour - Sunday for their market
4. The City Tour - works any afternoon
5. The Mountain Tour - best midweek when locals are working not hiking.

Join My Guided Walks 

Want more stories, local insights and hidden spots? I run small group walks in Dublin. Think of it as a walking tour with a local friend.

Or book a private tour any day that suits you.

Have Questions?

Leave it in the comments below or on Facebook - I answer quickly on both. (Please note: I can't answer individual emails, I get too many!).