Ireland day 0154. Tuesday 01 March 2022- Poolbeg2

Ireland day 0154. Tuesday 01 March 2022- Poolbeg2
Today’s summary Took the DART to Lansdown Road then Val and I walked through the Sean Moore park and out along the South Bull Wall to Poolbeg Lighthouse and back.   Spanish in the evening.
Today’s weather Brilliant sun almost all day.   No rain, little cloud.   Light southeasterly wind, much stronger on the breakwater.   About 9C but much colder in the evening
Today’s overview location
(the red green line shows where we walked)
Close-up location
(The blue mark shows the location of our route)
(Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected):
Poolbeg again
Commentary

I’m going to keep this brief as it’s gone 11pm and I’m getting tired.   In fact I’ve only just got back from Spanish and finished enjoying a very nice roast lamb dinner that Val pulled together while I was away.   So I’d really much rather be chilling out than hammering away at the computer!

Anyway – to cut a long story short, today was a glorious day.   The clearing of the air that happened after yesterday lunchtime’s rain seems to have persisted into today, and it turned out to be a beautiful spring day.    (After all, 1 March is the meteorologists’ first day of spring – even though it is a full month after St Brigid’s day, and three weeks before the vernal equinox).   The spring flowers were out in force and the daffodils were looking stunning.   Their cheerful bright yellows made, for today, a poignant and apposite contrast with the clear blue skies above.

As Val hadn’t been with me when I last visited the Poolbeg lighthouse at the far end of the South Bull Wall, I thought it might be a good idea to pay a return visit today.   So after a leisurely breakfast, we hopped on the DART as far as the Aviva stadium at Lansdown Road, then followed the course of the Dodder river down to the coast near the Sean Moore park.  I’ve already gone into detail about the breakwater at Poolbeg – known as the South Bull Wall – so I won’t repeat everything here.   Suffice it to say that it was constructed between 1717 and 1795, is built from the same Dalkey granite as Dun Laoghaire Harbour, is 3km / 2 miles long, was built to stop silting up of Dublin Bay, and was for a long time the longest sea wall in the world.

Today we enjoyed the same clear sparking weather as the last time I’d been there, meaning that the sea and sky were vivid blue, and the brightly coloured lighthouse at the end was looking spectacular.   Although it was calm when we left Malahide, the wind picked up as we walked out along the wall and as it was a strong south-easterly (as opposed to the more normal westerly) wind, the outbound walk was extremely bracing.   Of course for the return journey we felt like we were being jet propelled.   The only sensory downside today was caused by the low tide.   The resultant mud-flats were heating up nicely in the sun and as a result were very smelly.   And I have a sneaking suspicion that they may also have been adorned with a layer of outfall from the nearby sewage plant.

As I had to get back in time for my Spanish lesson in Portmarnock this evening, we didn’t linger for long – plus the fact that it was quite cold and hard to find anywhere out of the wind.  So we hot-footed it onto the return DART and made it back to Malahide well before 5pm.   Then at six I left to walk down to Spanish and, for the first time since I started classes last October, it was actually light as I walked down the road.   Hooray!

Well that’s it for now.   I’m going to put my feet up for a bit now, then go to bed.   Good night!

 

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

This is the inside of a DART train.  As far as I can tell from my extensive investigations, there are four designs of varying ages.   The oldest have opening windows, heaters under the seats, and emit an irritating loud whine.   The newest have no heaters, no opening windows, air conditioning, and are pretty much silent.   The other two have varying combinations of windows, air con, heaters and noise Here we are on the path alongside the river Dodder, as it makes its way out to Dublin Bay.   Much of its length in these parts was artificially constrained when the new breakwater at Poolbeg was built
A bit further down the Dodder.   Looked lovely in the sunshine today This exotic destination is the sewage treatment plant at Poolbeg in the foreground, and the waste incinerator in the background.
On the South Bull Wall, heading out to infinity Looks like an empty fuel oil tanker being escorted out of the harbour by the Dublin Port pilot boat
Been her34e before but it’s still impressive – the Joycian-themed Poolbeg lighthouse at the far end of the South Bull Wall
Interactive map

(Elevations corrected at  GPS Visualizer: Assign DEM elevation data to coordinates )

Total distance: 13969 m
Max elevation: 13 m
Min elevation: -2 m
Total climbing: 168 m
Total descent: -167 m
Total time: 03:34:16
Download file: Poolbeg2 corrected.gpx

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