Ireland day 0207. Saturday 23 April 2022- Windy

Ireland day 0207. Saturday 23 April 2022- Windy
Today’s summary Val was at work so I did the cleaning and then some shopping in Malahide.   Had to walk to Swords to get some other bits.   Caught the no. 102 back
Today’s weather Dry and bright all day.   Some sun in the morning.   Cloudy in afternoon.  Strong northerly wind.   About 12C
Today’s overview location
(The blue mark shows the location of my route)
Close-up location
(The green 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 and bit in bus at end removed):
Windy Swords walk
Commentary

The strong northerly wind today, apart from a chill, brought with it two unexpected side effects.   One was the smell.   As I walked along the coast through Seatown Park, I was unexpectedly downwind of the sewage works, which seemed to be going through a particularly odorous processing phase this afternoon.   It was filling the air with sulphurous fumes which seemed to cling to me all the way to the shopping centre at Swords.   And then just as soon as I had escaped the smell, another sensory irritant made itself known in the form of a musician who was playing his electric violin at the entrance to the shops.  Initially I thought he was quite musical, but then I I realised he only knew the first few bars of “When the saints go marching in” and was just repeating them over and over again.   I don’t really know what was worse – the smell or the sound.

Anyway, objections aside, I had a good albeit quite quiet day today.   Val was out at work so I had taken receipt of my list of tasks and once she’d set off, I set about hoovering the flat, renewing the library books and then getting the ingredients for dinner tonight.   I am making a complicated vegetarian recipe and I couldn’t get all the ingredients in Malahide so decided to walk along the coast to Swords to see if I could get them at the larger shops in the Pavilions centre.

Fortunately my luck was in and I manage to get all the missing ingredients (wholewheat noodles and sesame seeds) without too much difficulty – apart from the sewage and the violin.   I headed a bit further down the road to the nearby Aldi – mainly because I wanted to go back to River Valley Park to give it a bit more thorough look over after our cursory visit a few months ago.   It’s not my favourite park, I have to admit – though I can’t quite put my finger on why.   But it is quite extensive, so maybe I just haven’t seen the best bits when I’ve visited the last couple of time.   But I did come across lots of attractive wild garlic (ramsons) – in the photograph at the top of this blog –  which was just coming into full bloom today.   But no accompanying bluebells, unfortunately.

With all the shopping completed, I luckily managed to get to the bus stop just in time to catch the 102 back to Malahide (especially lucky since the next one had been cancelled which would have meant a 1 hour wait).   Now I’m back in the flat and glowing with wind-burn.   Next on the agenda is to try and assemble the noodles and sesame seeds into something edible before Val gets back.   Wish me luck!

 

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

Down on the Broadmeadow estuary there were even some (small) white horses.   The tide appeared to be lower than it was when I was doing my “dry feet” experiment, even though it was only two hours after low tide, when my experiment showed the water level was still falling 4 hours after low tide.   I have pretty much given up on trying to predict when low water in the estuary will actually be. Mr and Mrs mallard making their way to the waters edge
Even the weeds look attractive at this time of year St Colmcille’s Well, Swords.   Sometimes known as St Columba, Colmcille lived in the 6th century AD and along with St Patrick is one of the most significant of the Irish saints.  He also founded the abbey on Iona, Scotland.   He allegedly blessed this well on one of his visits and named it “sord“, which means “clear” or “pure” and which gave rise to the town’s name
Here’s a bit more on the background to St Columba’s visit Down in River Valley Park, by the Ward River
Ouch.   This sounds painful.
Interactive map

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

Total distance: 13718 m
Max elevation: 48 m
Min elevation: -4 m
Total climbing: 266 m
Total descent: -227 m
Total time: 02:45:33
Download file: Shopping At Swords corrected and trimmed.gpx

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