Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

17 April 2013

One thing I really love, especially on the weekends, is to take the DART, and get off wherever I see something it might be interesting to photograph. Sometimes is that simple, you take the train, stop somewhere, take some pictures, and go back home. But after 5 years, I can say that I've been almost everywhere in the Dublin bay, so here a common but sometimes very underestimated tool enters in the game: Google Maps.
And sometimes with Google Maps you can discover hidden places, or at least not very well known, which you were totally unaware of their existance, and last week I was looking the nice but well known Dalkey, about 15km (I think) south of Dublin, and I was trying to find any interesting cliffs to photograph with my brand new ND filter, when I noticed a tiny place with a very fancy name: Hawk Cliff.


I didn't hear this place from anybody, never heard before, and bear in mind I live in this city since 2008 and unlike most of the people in here, I've been almost everywhere (or at least along the coast), but this place? Never heard. I would be glad to hear from someone "How you don't know that place?? It's freaking amazing", and I would totally agree with him. It's a tiny but outstanding place.
I think it's some sort of boat mooring, and a couple of signs clearly say that you don't have to swim there, even if beside them there is a plate in memory of a guy who loved to swim there, but for me there's no problem, I'm not able to swim, apart the ancient swimming technique called "The Drowned Guy", and this place is clearly not the place I'm going to take swimming lessons. Anyway, maybe to someone else it will look just like some steps ending on the cliffs, but for me it's just an outstanding place, maybe its simplicity is the beauty of this little place, where you can sit and listen to the waves crashing on the cliffs, or maybe because from the road it's totally invisible, and actually when you walk there for a few seconds it looks like you are going to fall down the cliffs, and it gives some sort of secrecy, I dunno, I really can describe this place with words, so I'll do with the way I like, with photos, and down here you can see the pictures I took a week ago.

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Hawk Cliff, Dalkey

Obviously you can find these pictures on my flickr account :-)

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