Massy’s Wood and The Hellfire Club
Just hop on the 15 bus, get out at the last stop and trek up Montpelier Hill and there you go. Two glorious locations for the price of one, though the latter listed is much more frequently frequented than the other - worth it all for the historical interest of the mysterious and legendary building, as well as the gobsmacking god's eye panoramic view one can obtain of the whole of Dublin city and environs, encompassing everything from Chapelizod to Sandymount, Tallaght to Dollymount, Howth Head to Killiney - and the uphill climb is an excellent way to work up a thirst, the perfect way to earn one's indulgence. Massy's Woods is the true curio - a veritable lush and deeply green forest in which you can genuinely get lost and envisage camping, as night steals in and the sun sets and the day grows chill and breezy. Rubber tyres and branches dangle from the tree branches, inviting one to loll and swing and feel thirteen again. Horseriders clop by upon occasion and the lush streamlets and rivulets are so fast flowing and frothy that their turbid browns recall no less than the hue of a Beamish. It'd make anyone salivate for sauce, and the total lack of any spoilsport police presence makes one's canned consumption trebly comfortable.
Especially notable is a ruined building on the estate which seems to have once housed the groundskeeper or caretaker, wherein a forward-thinking Andrew Stephens once cooked us up some excellent bacon and fatty broth on a puny Primus stove. No less than the Hellfire Club itself, the whole place is highly redolent of the 'Blair Witch Project' (and also witnessed the birth of Hatface, an eponymously hatted phantom who stalks the Dublin foothills and has since popped up in Cork). Massy's was the very first outdoor location we visited in March 2020 when the pandemic first struck Ireland (and several times we went back since and damn fine and fun each occasion was, even in the depths of a damp and freezing winter) - and let it be noted that, while we scrupulously binned and bagged our empties upon leaving the property, on the way back down Montpelier Hill, we paused for a last roadside can while surveying the scarlet sunset - whereupon, from downhill, came a squawling Garda car. Panicking, we dropped our half-drunk cans in the grass and made a show of our empty hands (the cop car didn't give a hoot, just drove past unheeding). This marks the only occasion that we have ever ever littered in the whole course of our outdoor antics - funny that this bit of low-key criminality was only prompted by the presence of a polis! (Our mildewed cans were still there at the edge of the field where we dropped them, when we returned months later and checked the spot to see, ignored by the horses whose home was this field...)
DISCLAIMER: The contents of this blog represent personal opinions and perspectives only. Read more.