Dún Laoghaire: the great harbour and the piers
Two granite Victorian arms around a harbour, a bandstand, and the mailboat's ghost. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. The People's Park
Start across the road from the station in the People's Park, a small Victorian pleasure garden with a Saturday market under the trees. A coffee here before the piers is no bad idea; the harbour walk has no shelter once you're out on the granite.

2. The East Pier and bandstand
The grander of the two arms, built from local granite over decades from 1817. Walk it out past the Victorian bandstand to the lighthouse at the end. This is the Dún Laoghaire promenade — half the town walks it on a Sunday, and you should too.

3. The Carlisle Pier / mailboat berth
Back at the harbour mouth, this is where the mailboat to Holyhead sailed for over 150 years — generations of emigrants left from here. The berth is quiet now, the ferries gone since 2015, but the scale of the place still tells you what it was for.

4. The West Pier
The longer, wilder, emptier pier — rough underfoot and far less manicured than the East. Walk it if you want the harbour to yourself and the gulls. You don't have to do the full length; the first bend gives you the view back across the water.

5. The Forty Foot / Sandycove direction
Head south along the seafront past the old Victorian baths site toward Sandycove. The water on this stretch is the colour of the whole east coast — slate and silver. Sea swimmers are in it year round.

6. The seafront baths and back
The derelict-then-redeveloped Dún Laoghaire Baths sit on the front, a reminder of the resort town this once was. Loop back along the promenade to the harbour and the DART. End with a 99 from the ice-cream van that's usually parked near the East Pier.

Dún Laoghaire: the great harbour and the piers