Ireland day 1420. Monday 18 August 2025- Familiarity

Today’s summary	A rather unremarkable day today. Spent the morning doing a bit of shopping and on a short walk round the Marina, while Val baked a couple of cakes. After a snacky-type lunch, caught the train into Dublin to go to the cookery shop on King Street South and the Celtic Whiskey shop on Dawson St. Afterwards I went to Spanish class at Cervantes and Val returned to Malahide. I was back in the flat by about 10pm
Today’s weather	Mild and dry with sun in the morning but clouded over later. Light north easterly wind. Appx 20c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Marina and shops before Cervantes

Commentary

Some days have a comfortable familiarity about them, and today was one of those days.

I didn’t have any Spanish homework to do, so once we were up and running this morning, I went into Malahide to do some shopping, and to have a quick stroll around the Marina. Val, in the meantime, got on with some baking and made a couple of fruit loaves which look and smell delicious.

Neither of us felt particularly hungry, so we only had a couple of oatcakes for lunch, to keep us going. Then we made an early break for Dublin. Val wanted to get some key cookery components so first of all we went to “Stock Design” – a homewares shop on King Street South. Fortunately she managed to get the specialist greaseproof paper and butchers’ twine that she needed – I was amazed as I had never even heard of them let alone knew you could buy them in Dublin.

I walked over to “Stock” with her then had to head back to Cervantes for my six o’clock lesson. Val, meanwhile went on to look at the Irish Whiskey Shop in Dawson Street. Which, as Dawson is the home of All Good Things, means that she must have bought something nice. I’ll look forward to finding out what it is later.

My Spanish went well, though as ever three hours 100% in a foreign language is very hard work. Anyway I’m back in the flat now, so going to down tools and find something to eat – and also see what Val managed to unearth in Dublin’s best street!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The new housing development on Hanlon’s Lane seems to be expanding by the day – a new block of flats seems to have sprung up out of nowhere at the far left of the photo	Very low tide down in the lagoon today

A shadowy figure (about 30cm long) was lurking in the crystal clear (!) waters of the marina.	The Green, Malahide – a nice place to relax on a warm day, though you do get quite a lot of noise from people hanging around on there late at night – must be quite annoying for the people who live nearby

Aula nueve! Lots of hi-tech equipment – the electronic screen / whiteboard is impressive

In the Malahide Tesco Metro in a rare quiet moment