Flat it may be, but dull it's not. North Co Dublin is a region which casts a very special, small-scale spell. Its appeal is about the gentle interplay of land and sea. No better place to verify this than the Donabate peninsula, whose arrowhead shape gives it two distinct east-facing coastlines and two large inlets of low tidal water.

The Dublin-Belfast railway line cuts the peninsula off from the rest of the north county. Once you go east of the line, the clock slows, the roads become less purposeful, the meadows quieter, the air more still. Come by train and start at Donabate village. Potter round for half an hour: there's a very handsome red-brick Catholic Church and, on the other side of the rail line, the little Church of Ireland church and graveyard, rude forefathers of the northern Pale sleeping soundly therein no doubt.

East out of the village, a nice three-kilometre road brings you past mushroomy fields to the Martello, Balcarrick Tower, at the point of Donabate's arrowhead. Off to the right the dunes run all the way to Malahide estuary. To the left, there is the brown-red Victorian sprawl of St Ita's asylum hospital.

At the Martello, take the north coastline along one of Dublin's best kept secrets, our own little C⌠te Sauvage. Inlet after inlet opens itself, some sandy, some stony. Little promontories offer grassy tops with caves below, if you know where to look. And all about, gulls lord it.

The rocky coast runs for just over a kilometre, as far as the Portrane Martello and a low-slung terrace of coastguard houses. Just before you meet the road, turn your back on the sea and there, beyond the car-park, is one of the peninsula's highest points, marked by a round tower which wears its years very well - this is because, unlike most round towers, it is not medieval. The tower was erected by a grieving and evidently well-endowed 19th century widow in memory of her departed husband. It bears the coat of arms of the Evans family. Head west now, making your way back to Donabate by the way of Portrane, the ancient port of Lambay just off the coast - the name is a corruption of Port Reachrainn, the port of Reachra, as Lambay was called before the Vikings arrived in these parts.

If you maintain a decent pace, the round trip will take a morning or afternoon.