Ireland day 0323. Wednesday 17 August 2022- Raining

Today’s summary	An admin morning again while it rained, and another attempted fix of the watch. Then walk in the afternoon and call with friends in France in the evening
Today’s weather	Rain all morning then sunny intervals in the afternoon. Light westerly wind. About 17C

Today’s overview location (The red mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The red line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Castle and estuary after the rain

Commentary

I had lots of plans for today while Val was at work. Primarily, I had in mind walking down the coast to Howth to test out a new sports app that I’ve just installed on my phone, called Hiiker. It’s an Irish development and I will need it if i can’t get my watch, with its hiking app WorkOutDoors, going again. But events, as they are wont to do, conspired against me.

First of all, I wanted to have another go at resuscitating my watch. A couple of readers of yesterday’s blog about my horological calamity had suggested that maybe moisture had somehow got inside – in which case the best solution might be to try packing it in an airtight box of rice. The premise being that as the rice rehydrates, it dehydrates the watch. As it happened, we had just run out of rice, so the first task, after making our packed lunches and despatching Val off to the museum – was to go down to SuperValu to buy some more. En route I took a diversion down to the seashore to see if anyone was about – they weren’t – passing the Malahide Mermaid, pictured at the top of the blog.

Once the watch was securely packed in its bed of basmati inside an old ice cream tub I sealed the lid and left osmosis to work its magic. I’ll just have to wait patiently until tomorrow to see if it has worked.

Next up was to arrange some travel insurance. As our old policy has expired, I had to shop around and answer endless medical questions until I finally identified a suitable replacement. €105 for worldwide cover including the USA and Canada for both of us for a year seemed reasonable to me. Especially as it included winter sports and also being rescued off mountains up to 2000m high. OK that’s not likely to happen in Ireland but you never know I might fall out of a helicopter.

By this time it was lunchtime and it was pouring down with rain. As a result, I decided to put my plans to walk to Howth temporarily on hold. So I had my packed lunch in the flat rather than on the beach and then – I am ashamed to admit – I fell asleep for a few minutes. But in my defence I was feeling a bit sleep deprived today as the nearby railway bridge repair works, which started last week and which have been going on every night since, reached a deafening crescendo of hammering and drilling last night. So I didn’t actually get to sleep until 3:30 this morning. Amazingly, though, Val slept right through it. I must try and borrow some of her earplugs for tonight’s performance.

After my old-peoply snooze and fortified by a strong coffee I was feeling considerably more alert. I was delighted to discover that the rain had stopped and the sun was coming out. It was too late to get all the way down to Howth so instead I devised a new walking route through the castle and down to the coast at the far end of Yellow Walls Road. It turned out to be an excellent plan because, after the rain, everywhere was quiet and the grass seemed to have suddenly acquired an almost spring-like iridescence.

I used the outing to test my new Hiiker app. My first impressions were that it was quite a good navigational aid – and I liked the fact that you can use the East-West topo maps of Ireland on it too. But I’m not sure it’s for me. The GPX file functionality doesn’t do everything I need, so it won’t interface with other apps like Strava. So possibly it might have some niche uses, but probably not worth me shelling out €40 a year for.

Once Val was back from work, we had a brief video call with friends in France, then made the dinner and called it a day. I am slightly on tenterhooks to see what happens in the icecream box full of rice, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Until then, the search for the perfect hiking app continues.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The footbridge across the railway is about 100 metres from our bedroom and is being worked on between midnight and 5am every night, starting two weeks ago and finishing in mid October. Last night was a particularly spectacular episode of hammering and angle-grinding. The sleep deprivation is beginning to catch up with me..	Typical summer holiday beach scene! What a contrast with this time last week

Toots was heroically braving the elements this morning and even managed to attract a decent number of passengers. Perhaps because it was a good way of keeping dry?	Mmmm lovely

Then the sun came out! A beautiful afternoon followed the rain – everywhere washed clean and looking bright and fresh. It felt great to be out and about.	The castle’s tree ferns, which were wrapped up in insulating wool for the winter, are unfurling like mad. The morning’s rain looked like it had caused them to grow by a couple of meters in the space of just a few hours. Anyway, they looked spectacular

The tried-and-trusted rice desiccation method for poorly watches. I’ll have to remember to remove it before the next time I make a curry or else we might end up accidentally enjoying electronic jalfrezi