Ireland day 0211. Wednesday 27 April 2022- Sunshine
Today’s summary | Visited the Citizens Information Service again this morning to talk to their tax expert. Then phone call with UK accountant over lunch and a walk round the demesne in brilliant sunshine in the afternoon. Going to the Mountains on Stage film show in Dublin this evening | ||||
Today’s weather | Another dry bright day with full sunshine in the afternoon. Still quite cool. Moderate easterly wind. About 11C | ||||
Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route) |
Close-up location (The green 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): Malahide castle walk |
Commentary
I have to admit that the main focus of today was to try and make some more headway on our tax. But I have already gone on at great length about tax in previous blogs and I really don’t think that anyone reading this wants yet another episode in the saga. Suffice it to say that after a return to the Citizens Information Service to see their tax specialist, and a chat with our other accountant in the UK – we both felt a great deal more confident that the whole thing is more manageable. We just need to keep an eye on time – the deadline for submitting our 2021 Irish return is 31 October 2022. It would certainly be a lot easier, too, if the UK and Irish tax years were the same. Still, we are beginning to get a grip on what we have to do now.
After making headway of sorts on tax, I took a step backwards on my credit card application. The application hasn’t been rejected, which is good, but the bank want additional proof of my PPS number, which you can only get by providing a copy of your tax return (see above) or of your medical card (which neither of us has). To get a medical card you have to go through a labyrinthine application process and quite frankly I am sick of paperwork so I am getting close to the point of thinking that the reward might not be worth the effort. I’ll see how I feel in a few days time.
Anyway, once all that was out of the way and we’d had lunch, we decided it would be a crime to spend any more time indoors while the sun was shining so brilliantly outside. So we took the easy option and decided to go on a short walk round the castle demesne. With the changing seasons, it never gets boring even though we’ve done it several times before – and then we thought we’d drop into the castle gardens. It was a joy to be out in the sun and amongst the emerald green trees and lawns, and what made it even more fun was bumping into one of the other students on my Spanish class, and also one of Val’s colleagues from work as we were out and about. We had to stop for the inevitable chats which was enjoyable and which really helped us to feel that we are staring to fit in here.
The castle gardens themselves were a riot of colour and perfume. The butterfly house – where the banner image at the top of the blog was taken – has just been re-stocked and was full of magnificent fluttering Lepidoptera. We’re back in the flat and Val has just made delicious pancakes for tea. And now we are about to head out again – round to the cinema at Clondalkin – for a “Mountains on Stage” filmshow. There’s nothing like a bit of armchair travelling to brighten the day, and I’m really looking forward to it!
Today’s photos (click to enlarge)
Interactive map
(Elevations corrected at GPS Visualizer: Assign DEM elevation data to coordinates )
Max elevation: 26 m
Min elevation: 9 m
Total climbing: 93 m
Total descent: -94 m
Total time: 01:50:51