Wet Path

Mount Merrion, also known as The Deerpark, is a little wood crowning a hill above Dublin city, in the heart of the southside suburbs. We used come here when we were teenagers. The name dates back to the 14th century, according to Wiki, when Merrion Castle was built here by a Norman family, the Fitzwilliams. Centuries later Richard, the 5th Viscount Fitzwilliam, selected 100 acres on which he built Mount Merrion House. There's a nice little anecdote (on the same Wiki page) about their 'Scottish gardener' in a book, 'Merrion The Old', written by a 20th century army officer, Sir Neville Wilkinson:

Between the Convent of Mount Anville, above Dundrum, and the broad high road which leads to Stillorgan, rises the wooded hill of Mount Merrion, the centre of the landscape over Dublin Bay, which gradually becomes defined as the opalescent mists of the Irish sunrise fade away. It is a landscape known to every visitor to Ireland who has stood on deck as the Holyhead mail steamer passes the Kish lightship. Around the wood some 1.2 km² (300 acres) of the richest grazing land in County Dublin slope gently to the high stone wall which surrounds the demesne. To the south and south-west the horizon is bounded by the swelling outline of the Wicklow and Dublin Hills. To the north the long low line of the Mourne Mountains, 100 kilometres (60 mi) and more away, are clearly visible when recent rains have left the washed air clear, while the islands of Lambay and Ireland's Eye give an added beauty to the sea-scape which lies beyond the wind-blown causeway which leads on and up to the rhododendron covered slopes above the ancient castle of Howth. A double avenue of beech trees shades the roadway which runs, straight as a rule, for a full quarter of a mile to the entrance gates on the Stillorgan Road. This roadway, whose immaculate pebbled surface was raked daily, had a broad border of century old shaven turf, the pride of the Scottish gardener; so tended, brushed and rolled was it in those days that the most careless visitor would have hesitated to sully the velvety perfection of the surface with a profane foot. Yet the gardener, his voice, with its rich Highland brogue quivering with fury at the bare recollection, would tell how a distinguished citizen of Dublin, having ridden to pay his respects to his lordship, had, on departing, cantered gaily down the sacred border, divots flying from his horse's heels; so that the whole length was scarred and pitted with hoofmarks, as though the plague had passed over it, and it was only after months of patient labour that the unbroken serenity of the surface was restored.

Both driveway and 'shaven turf' have long gone, probably well before this became a suburb in the 19th and 20th centuries. The path above is merely a little walkway through what's left of the deer park; some very old trees, including a wonderful arching oak which I only noticed in the last few years when I began to take our son to the little adventure playground on the edge of the wood; its fence enclosed this tree whose giant canopy dwarfs the dinky slides, swings, etc. Perhaps the Scottish gardner planted it.