Ireland day 0363. Monday 26 September 2022- Sutton
Today’s summary | Spent the morning doing paperwork and making lunch then walked down the coast to Sutton in the afternoon. Aspiring to crisps and red wine for dinner(?!) | ||||
Today’s weather | Overcast with occasional sunny intervals and light showers. Strong north westerly wind. About 15C | ||||
Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route) |
Close-up location (The green 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): Sutton walk via the coast |
Commentary
Do you sometimes have days when what you really want to do is sit around eating crisps and drinking red wine? Well perhaps if you’re perfect in every way you don’t but I’m clearly not perfect because sometimes I do have days like that and today was one of them.
Val’s work didn’t start till the afternoon so we were able to have a relatively easy morning. That gave her plenty of time to go on a run and me plenty of time to catch up on some paperwork and make a super healthy lunch of “smashed” (what a ridiculous word but it’s what hipster cafés use so I am copying them) avocados on toast with a rocket salad followed by fresh pears. So the day started off well but I am afraid it went rapidly downhill after that.
In my defence I did start the afternoon with the best of intentions – to walk down the coast to Sutton – one of my favourite excursions on foot from Malahide – and then to catch the bus back. But the rot started when I decided that I ought to carry emergency rations with me so I packed two packets of crisps and a large slice of lemon drizzle cake (half price from Tesco) just to make sure that I wouldn’t starve if stricken by an emergency en route.
Funnily enough, an emergency did strike down towards the southern end of Portmarnock beach, just where the path heads off through the dunes to the car park. Actually it wasn’t so much an emergency as just me feeling a bit peckish. But I decided not to take any chances so I found a sheltered spot out of the wind where I had my cake and ate it. And my crisps.
Eventually I did manage to summon the willpower to slog the rest of the way down the coast to the terminus of the trusty 102 at Sutton station, pausing only to inspect a couple of interesting drains along the way. I did enjoy the walk very much, actually, and was fortunate to dodge the showers which had been threatening ever since the sun went in shortly after I left Malahide.
The 102 trustily turned up soon after I arrived at Sutton so in next to no time I was speeding back to Malahide and the flat. But as luck would have it, the bus deposited me right outside SuperValu so before going to the flat I took the spontaneous decision to pop in on the off chance that there might be some useful double sticker bargains I could pick up. As it turned out, there weren’t, but they did have a decent looking bottle of Merlot on special offer at €7 which believe me is cheap for Ireland. So I wisely picked up a couple of bottles – and some crisps (and some chocolate biscuits for later) confident that a red wine and crisps evening was well within my grasp.
Sadly, Val had other ideas so as soon as I finish this blog, I am under some moral pressure to stir myself and create something a bit more healthy. Luckily we have some salmon in the freezer which will go nicely with new potatoes and peas, and then perhaps some stewed apples for dessert. But that bottle of Merlot and the shamrock crisps are sitting on the worktop looking at me rather forlornly, so before I start I think I might just have to avail myself of some empty calories and alcohol, thus fulfilling the dream which has tantalised me ever since I woke up this morning.
So a thoroughly enjoyable day, when taken in the round, but I will have to pay the price tomorrow. It’s back to the gym.
Today’s photos (click to enlarge)
Interactive map
(Elevations corrected at GPS Visualizer: Assign DEM elevation data to coordinates )
Max elevation: 14 m
Min elevation: -1 m
Total climbing: 127 m
Total descent: -134 m
Total time: 02:46:10