Ireland day 0009. Thursday 07 October 2021- Skerries

Ireland day 0009. Thursday 07 October 2021- Skerries
Today’s summary Drove 20 mi / 30 km east to the coast at Skerries (free parking!) and spent the day checking out the coastal walks, the windmills, and a couple of potential places to live
Today’s weather Rain at breakfast time, then cloudy but dry and very mild with a moderate breeze for the rest of the day.  About 18C
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Today’s overview location
(the red cross in a circle shows where Val and I are at the moment)
Close-up location
(click the button to download a gpx file of our walk):
Skerries gpx
Commentary

When you are getting ready to go and live in a foreign country, you prepare a mental packing list of all the things you will need when you get there.   Passports, money, and the rest.   But the one thing you probably need more than anything else is a printer.   We have access to one here, which is fortunate as we seem to be using it constantly to print out a million and one documents and the other bits of miscellaneous paperwork you need to prove your identity to anyone (like letting agents and Government authorities) who might need to know who you are.   So note to anyone contemplating following our footsteps: don’t forget the printer, and equally important – bring a forest’s worth of paper with you too, as you are sure to need it.

Once we had cleared the morning’s paperwork ritual, we set off about midday to the coast at Skerries, which is more or less due east from here.   We had targeted it as possible place for longer-term residence, largely because of its proximity to what looked like an interesting coastline, and also, it has to be said, because it has a good railway connection to Dublin.

We were pleasantly impressed with the town.   Like Malahide and Trim, it’s clearly doing well, judging from the number of smart cafes and bars on the harbourfront.   Many of which seemed to be populated with a certain set of ladies who lunch this afternoon.   We scouted out a couple of roads where there were houses were let, and concluded that at least one of them would be OK.  So we have put our names down with a couple of estate agents and we will have to see what happens.

Housing crisis in abeyance, at least temporarily, we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring and managed to find time to get a cup of tea at the Skerries Mills complex visitor centre (a complex of mills that is, not a visitor centre that is particularly difficult to understand).   Walking through the town you get a general impression of the place and it seemed to be largely clean and tidy, and with a lot of well behaved and good mannered schoolchildren out on their lunchbreaks.   One of the things Ireland seems to do well – at least in the bits we have seen so far – is giving its kids a decent education and a good grounding in the skills of civilization.   Other countries might care to follow their example.

Anyway, enough of the philosophising.   We drove home just as it was getting dark and rather than lighting the fire – a bit of a thankless task given the huge chunks of damp incombustible wood we are trying to ignite – we decided to retire to Bennett’s for a quick beer before dinner.   Unexpectedly we met Colm – our landlord – over there, so it turned out to be an extremely enjoyable three hour multi-pint stay, rather than the brief refreshment we had anticipated.   The main consequences of this unfortunate episode for me were that I am having to write this blog through a confounding haze of Guinness, and possibly more important I have to figure out how to get a clear head before our first official property viewing – a flat in Malahide – tomorrow.

To find out how we got on, I’m afraid you’ll just have to tune in to this channel at the same time on Friday evening.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

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Sculpture commemorating Skerries’ achievement of the “tidy towns” 2016 award.   Features plantlife, the built environment and water (uisce in Irish Gaelic – from which the word “whisky” is derived) among other things The storm in a teacup teashop.   Alluring in a pink and white building sort of way
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Setting off for a coastal saunter down the path from the parking lot on the Red Island peninsula The beach on the sheltered western side of the landspit to the peninsula was popular with swimmers, even in mid October
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Curious five-bladed windmill on the outskirts of Skerries.   There are two mills here, built in the 1800s.   But flour has been milled here since the 12th century Martello tower – there are two in Skerries, and a total of around 50 on the Irish coasts.   They were built by Britain in 1804 when it was feared that Napoleon might decide to invade Britain via Ireland
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Skimming in Skerries.   A happy throwback to childhood.  Maybe I never left
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