Ireland day 0279. Monday 04 July 2022- Interlude

Today’s summary	Spent the morning working on financial matters then went on relaxing walk round the castle demesne and Robswall in the afternoon
Today’s weather	Dry and bright with sunny intervals. Moderate westerly wind. About 18C

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): Demesne and Robswall easy walk

Commentary

There is a rumour going round Ireland at the moment that “the weather is going to get better next week”. That seems to be an almost perpetual state of affairs – a triumph of hope over expectation – but looking at the isobars it does look a bit like there could actually be some high pressure heading our way soon. Let’s hope it makes it as far as Dublin and we do get a bit of summer warmth.

But for the time being, it was business as usual in the weather department. Decent enough, but quite cool and windy. Still, there was some pretty reasonable sunshine on offer, and it stayed dry. I’ve been out and about quite a lot recently, so today I decided to stay closer to home and enjoy a bit of down-time in the sun before embarking on any more long distance adventures. Besides, I had some of those pesky financial matters to deal with first in the morning and I wanted to get them out of the way before I started on anything else.

Once these irritations had been put to bed for the time being, I made up a packed lunch and decided to try and find a sheltered spot in the castle demesne to have my sandwiches. It was actually quite pleasant out in the sunshine. There were a few people around in the castle grounds but basically it’s so huge that you can easily get away from the rest of the human race in there. I had a look for the remains of the concert venue but pretty much every sign had disappeared. It was as if those massive 20,000-plus crowd events had never happened. I’m almost looking forward to the time they come back next year – Covid permitting – as it felt like a positive, forward looking harbinger of the summer.

There’s a good spot in the castle gardens themselves (the bit you have to pay to enter) which is almost always in the sun, so I headed over there to enjoy my sandwiches and read the Financial Times. I do enjoy glancing through its salmon columns, though I have to be careful not to overdo it as its editorials rarely cheer me up.

Once I had ingested my sparing dose of news and finished the sandwiches I headed off out of the castle and up to Robswall Hill. It was nice on the top, but I didn’t stop for long before dropping back down to the coast near Lithostrotion beach. Since the schools broke up last week, there were quite few families and kids out on the beach, and a few braving the water too. The whole place had an agreeably summery feel to it, only slightly marred by a couple of large dogs which had been let loose on the beach by their owner and which certainly alarmed some of the smaller humans trying to enjoy the afternoon.

By this stage I was almost in Malahide so I stopped to buy some milk – and was shocked to see the price had risen from 85¢ to €1.05 per litre over the weekend. I make that a 20% increase and doubtless a herald of more belt-tightening to come. However, since we watched the disturbing “Cow” film some months ago, we haven’t been drinking as much milk so I was relieved to see that the price of soya had remained unchanged (at 85¢ a litre).

That just about rounds off the day. I have started watching “Stranger Things” while Val is away and although it’s a bit juvenile, I’m actually quite enjoying it. So I’m going to log off now and see how the saga of the flea and the acrobat turns out.

Back tomorrow!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Out in the castle demesne – looking like a well kept meadow, now that the concerts have been dismantled	More of those wild flowers. They’ve been looking impressive for nine months now – well I have been impressed, anyway.

the first I’ve seen in Ireland!	I popped into the butterfly house as I was passing through the demesne – because that’s really the only place you can see butterflies here in Malahide (see below)

The greenhouse in the castle gardens. It’s a real oasis of calm. A great spot for reflection	Buddleia Davidii again. It is often known as “butterfly bush” but since coming to ireland, despite the shrub being abundant, I haven’t seen a single butterfly on any plant anywhere. Not one. I have no idea why there are seeming so few butterflies in Ireland – well this part of it at least

Yes I will, probably. I am getting the feeling I can’t put off the evil hour for much longer now