Sat 26 March 2022.

This was our 11th excursion since 2017, and our first this year. The participants tell us it was an enjoyable and happy event. We were helped by brilliant sunshine from start to finish. We had 10 volunteers (plus 4 children), six of whom were joining us for the first time. We had 39 guests, including 20 children, many of whom were also with us for the first time, from Pakistan, Syria, Afghanistan and Albania. 

Sadly, Muhammad could not come on this trip due to his testing positive with Covid-19, but he gave invaluable help preparing the event and advising us online during the day. We also had other cancellations due to illness. 

Kate and Brenda brought Mosney residents on the bus, while Andrew and Grainne picked up other families living elsewhere. 

We all met at the lecture theatre of the Chester Beatty at 11am, where Brian O’Neill, a volunteer guide at the museum, gave us a very interesting introduction to this remarkable man and his collections of precious books and artifacts. We all then visited the exhibitions in our own time, with volunteers and Chester Beatty guides available to answer questions. Our adult guests found much to enjoy and fascinate them from many cultures as they made their way around the displays. 

The children spent about 15 minutes looking at the exhibits, enjoying in particular the scroll books, which Kate compared to contemporary cartoon art and frames in animation films. They then joined two art classes, one led by Kate about how to tell a story in ‘picture book’ form – no matter how short, and one led by Michelle in the creative centre. 

We then gathered in the Dubh Linn park to enjoy the snacks very kindly provided by Brenda. 

Our next stop was the Ashtown Visitors’ Centre in the Phoenix Park, where Helen Cunningham of the Phoenix Café had organised a great soup-and-sandwich lunch, with pizza as an option for the kids, in an ideal space beyond the café yard, which meant the children could play safely in sight of their parents among the adjacent trees. Helen and her staff made us feel very welcome, and the café lived up to its reputation as ‘best in Ireland’.

In our own time, we visited the little history and natural history museum adjacent to the café, learning about the birds and animals of the park, and its human history stretching back to the Stone Age, and its significance as a gathering place in Irish political and social life.

Some of us also visited the exterior of nearby Ashtown Castle, and learned how it had been ‘discovered’ when the big house that had grown up around it was demolished. The Victorian Walled Garden, and the playground beyond in particular, were also popular.

We moved on to the Furry Glen, where Paddy led a nature walk through the beech and pine woods and down to the lake, up open spaces of the 15 Acres, and into a mixed woodland adjacent to American Ambassador’s Residence.

Paddy asked us to look for one flower, the lesser celandine, one bird, the buzzard, and two animals, squirrels and deer.

The celandine was easy to find, just coming into its spring glory it was flowering at our feet from the outset. The children made interesting comparisons with buttercups, and with daffodils, both yellow spring flowers. In the pine woods, it was the children who found the squirrels first, causing great excitement. Down by the lake, the mallard and the moorhens attracted their attention also.

As we walked across the 15 acres, we broke up into small mixed groups of guests and volunteers, in an easy, relaxed and friendly conversational atmosphere.

And then someone spotted a deer in the distant woods, and we finished the day with the children leading a stalking expedition among the trees, getting quite close to the deer. We explained that this is the real skill, to get close, but not to disturb or to chase. We were not helped by a family who approached from the other side, offering the deer carrots and photographing themselves feeding them, against park regulations for the welfare of the deer.

Most people thought finding the deer in the woods was a highlight of the trip, and there was much talk about them as we returned to the bus in the sunshine, where the ever patient and helpful Brian from Kierans Bus Hire waited to take most of our guests back to Mosney. Thanks Brian!

We are also very grateful to Chester Beatty staff, especially Jenny Siung, Justyna Chmielewska and volunteer Brian O’Neill, to Helen Cunningham and the staff of the Phoenix Park Cafe, to our partners in Sonairte and Meath Partnership, and especially to the Communities Integration Fund Grant from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. And we say a big thank you, of course, to our great volunteers, veterans and newcomers, and to our guests who make the day so special.

Kate Kavanagh Trish Long Andrew Leonard Donika Gega Tusha Enkhbolor Choijamts Nicola Winters Sonairte Meath Partnership Michelle Woodworth Simon Woodworth Phoenix Park Cafe Chester Beatty The Heritage Council BirdWatch Ireland

Thanks to Kate Kavanagh also for the photos that accompany this post