2022 US Trip – Day 32 (Skerries near Dublin and the Train)

I’m moderately annoyed about this photo as I took it to show just how heavy the rain was. I had a fifteen minute walk between the B&B and the railway station and got completely drenched, although fortunately had my coat and bag cover to minimise the water devastation. The photo doesn’t show the torrential conditions that I was facing and it took me around a minute to take it as the rain kept hitting the screen and confusing it.

And that puddle at the railway station is deeper than it looks. I went inside to dry out, although I’m not sure that I did much more than drip everywhere.

My plans to get photos of the railway station didn’t go to plan, that’s the limit of it. There was an interesting poster inside the railway station about the history of the settlement and it appears to have an active history group. Skerries is a coastal town in Ireland with and is believed to have been founded by Vikings in the 9th century, and it has since been inhabited by a number of different groups, including the Anglo-Normans, who built the first castle in Skerries in the 12th century. The town grew as a fishing and agricultural community and became known for its distinctive sandstone buildings and well-preserved architecture. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Skerries remained small, but there were with several windmills and watermills being built to support the town’s economy. The 19th century saw the arrival of the railway in Skerries, which helped to spur further growth and development in the area, as well as allowing it to become something of a tourist destination in the late nineteenth century. That number continued to grow in the 1950s and 1960s, holiday camps opened up in this beautiful location by the sea and it was easily accessible by those who lived in Dublin, but it had a large number of visitors from the north of England.

Then, unfortunately, the Troubles in Northern Ireland came along and tourism to the area collapsed in the early 1970s. Hotel after hotel closed and the tourist numbers haven’t returned to the previous highs, but it’s still a pretty little place. But apologies for the lack of railway station photos, or at least, a lack of photos not of puddles at the railway station.