This week, passengers boarded Dublin's Wheel for the first aeriel tours of the city's landmarks . . . well, the ones that were visible from the edge of town, writes ROSITA BOLAND
NO, IT’S NOT another crane on the horizon. The large round yoke at the end of the Luas line at the Point is Dublin’s newest attraction, a Big Wheel. It’s going to be a fixture on the capital’s skyline for a minimum of two years and it started taking passengers this week. So what’s it like to go for a spin on it?
For half a moment on arrival at the site, I thought I was in Venice, what with all the water nearby and the signs that told me “At busy times, you will be asked to share your gondola.” These were displayed at the base of the lovely big wheel, with all its complex wheely bits and pieces. It would make a fabulous Lego kit. Hell, it probably already is a Lego kit.
It costs €9 for an adult, and there are various family price combinations, depending on the numbers and the ages of the children. I paid my €9 and stepped into my very own gondola, no gondolier in sight. In fact, I was one of the very few gondola occupants. The young lad who showed me into the gondola told me I could press the red emergency button at any time if I wanted to come down when I was “up there”. He also told me I could exit through the opposite door to the one I entered through.
“But not at the same time that I’m pressing the emergency button while I’m up there?”
“Ah no, better not do that,” he agreed.
My gondola could seat eight, but there was only myself and my bag. There were several other buttons apart from the one marked “emergency” set into the ceiling. One said “Speak to Operator”. Another said “Commentary”. I was writing them down when there were movements which started putting the “whee” into wheel.
Up we lifted, slowly, steadily, up to where the more cautious birds fly. I noted that my gondola had no glass ceiling for a person to hit an ambitious career head against. Neither did it have a glass floor. This was a little disappointing. I had wanted the fishbowl experience of feeling suspended over the city in a glass bubble. I once saw a startling photograph of a glass-bottomed swimming pool on the roof of a high-rise hotel in Melbourne, Australia, which was cantilevered out over the street far below. Ever since then, I have wanted to swim in it. Unfair of me as it was to expect the Dublin Wheel to replicate the experience of being in an Antipodean swimming pool, well, there you have it. I was unfair.
What do you see from the Dublin Wheel? Well, to be totally honest, due to the location at the entrance to the port, a lot of what you see are cargo containers and Dublin Bay. You could almost be half asleep coming in to land at Dublin airport, looking out the window. The city itself is too far away to make much of it out in any detail. But you do get a rather wonderful view of the spanking new Aviva stadium and its fabulous glass curves.
Whee. Down we went. Up and round again. Second rotation. This time, I looked in a different direction. Recession or no recession, it’s amazing how many cranes there still are bristling on the Dublin skyline. Oh, there’s Howth. And Sandymount Strand, where the tide is right out. The Gibson Hotel? Never heard of it. Small, distant Millennium Spire. Down again. Containers and portaloos.
In all, the wheel goes round four times without stopping. The fifth time, my gondola stops, very close to the top of its apex. Or rather, the entire wheel stops rotating. I notice, for the first time, daylight between the doors and the floor. I press, not the emergency button, but the button that says “Commentator”. Nothing happens. The gondola rocks in the wind. I experiment with more movement, by getting up and sitting on the opposite bench. It rocks back and forth very satisfyingly. It’s not an Antipodean glass-bottomed swimming pool cantilevered out over the city, but now I know what the baby in the lullaby felt like in her cradle high in the tree-top.
