Ireland day 1423. Thursday 21 August 2025- Overloaded

Today’s summary	Val still away. I spent the morning doing more Spanish homework then after coffee and a few oatcakes, walked over to Portmarnock to do some shopping at Dunnes. Bought far too much and had to carry it all back in my rucksack. Had refreshments on the beach then had pop pop linguine for dinner and some TV afterwards.
Today’s weather	Dry and bright with warm sunshine in the afternoon. Light easterly wind. Appx 18c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue 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): Dunnes Portmarnock overload

Commentary

Yesterday was pretty full-on, so I was actually looking forward to today being a bit more low-key.

As Val is still away, I allowed myself a bit of a lie-in this morning before getting up and starting my deberes de español. We’re reading the lighthearted detective novel “Lola Largo” at the moment and today I had two very long chapters to get through and then to answer questions on.

By around midday I finally managed to decode it all but I was still only halfway through this week’s load of work. My original plan had been to try and tackle it all today, but by this stage I was fully Spanished-out, so I put the remainder to one side and decided to finish it off tomorrow.

Instead of working, I thought I’d get out and enjoy some fresh air. Especially as, by this stage it was looking quite nice outside – incidentally quite conclusively dispelling my fears from earlier this week that summer had come to a premature end.

As I needed to do a bit of shopping I thought I could neatly combine a hill-and-coast walk with a trip to Dunnes in Portmarnock to get what I needed. So I had a quick cup of coffee and some oatcakes, then got my things together and set off.

It was as nice outside as it had looked – plenty of sun and pleasantly warm. There was a breeze, of course, because there always is, but it wasn’t too intrusive.

Once I got to Dunnes, I ended up buying far too much (and spending far too much) so had to struggle back to Malahide with a heavy and bulging rucksack on my back. But I did manage to make time to drop down to the beach to enjoy some refreshments. But, having eaten rather too many pastries and biscuits lately, I exercised a bit more discipline this time and limited myself to a banana and some kefir.

Eventually I made it back to the flat and, resisting the temptation to do some more Spanish, I made myself a couple of cups of tea and then thought about dinner. I had a pop-pop linguine ready meal in the freezer that I’d bought half price at Tesco a couple of weeks ago, so I defrosted that and then zapped it in the microwave.

Finally for the evening, I finished off the linguine and then spent an entertaining couple of hours watching Leslie Nielsen in “Naked Gun” on Netflix. An oldie but a classic.

Later on, I had a quick video call with Val in Bristol (she’s having a lovely time) before finally retiring to bed.

A nice relaxing day – just what I think I needed.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


This acorn had dropped off one of the oak trees overlooking the cricket pitch. It’s heavily infected by the Knopper Oak Gall Wasp (Andricus quercuscalicis) and so more likely than not it can never germinate. Still, it’s great nourishment for the wasps (and they are important pollinators, apparently)	I have no idea what was going on here. A “tree surgeon” was using what looked like a pneumatic drill to inject fluid from a tank in a nearby pickup truck into the ground around the roots of this lime (Tilea) tree. I guess it was probably fertilizer, or insecticide or fungicide, but the tree looked pretty healthy to me Post Script: I was so curious about this that I asked about it on an “Irish Trees” group on social media. Below are two of the more helpful answers I received: From M.P.: “Terraventing, to relieve compaction in the soil around the tree, given how near to the path it is there a high likelihood of a high degree of compaction, The benefits of terraventing were discovered following the Michael, ‘There will be no be hurricane’ Fish hurricane, trees in Kew gardens which prior to the hurricane that had been struggling and in some cases nearly dead were found in following years to have a new lease of life, they all had experienced ‘heave’ because of the wind, the soil around the root plate had loosened and allowed oxygen and nutrients in around the roots, prior to the hurricane the soil had become very compacted with visitor activity” From A.S.: “Hello all.. l’ve just been made aware of this a few minutes ago. I am the culprit in question doing the work. We are, as explained above, relieving soil compaction caused by the concerts. We use a blast of compressed air to fracture the ground followed by an injection of liquid biochar and seaweed. please visit my website www.groundbreaker.ie for further information”

Lithostrotion beach! Maria McNamara would love it	Sailing boat race of some sort in progress off the coast of Ireland’s Eye



Spot the giant backpack!