Ireland day 0304. Friday 29 July 2022- UKSummer2202

Today’s summary	Walk with an old friend in the Colne Valley in the morning and lunch, then with family in Bucks in the afternoon. Another nice warm day, good to be out in the countryside
Today’s weather	Dry and bright, long sunny spells earlier on, clouded over a bit later in the day. Hardly any wind. About 26C

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): Ebury Way and Grand Union Canal Rickmansworth

Commentary

A pleasant day out in Buckinghamshire. Spent the morning catching up with an old friend at Rickmansworth then a walk in the country and by the Grand Union Canal, enjoying the good weather and the abundance of public footpaths. It was nice to spend a morning with someone I’ve known for years – very easy conversation. But I think I have caught the Irish disease as I found I couldn’t stop talking! Bacon sandwiches and cups of tea for lunch – what could be better?

In the afternoon, family arrived so plenty more catching up to be done, then some shopping for tomorrow’s gathering. Val arriving from Dublin after a shift at the museum, later this evening.

A nice, relaxing, day catching up with friends and family who I hadn’t seen for a while.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The Ebury Way runs along an old railway track between Watford and Rickmansworth	Looking chocolate box nice on the way out of Rickmansworth

Absolutely parched out in the fields. The heat and drought seem to have been relentless	Boat maintenance marina. The big crane appears to be able to lift barges clean out of the water

Amazing blackberries – loads fully ripe (quite early) and they tasted delicious	George Michael tribute graffiti. He came from this part of the world

This is the Rolls-Royce battery unit charged by regenerative braking which is being worked on in parallel with Iarnród Éireann. Will be interesting to see if it really does improve fuel efficiency and more particularly reduce fumes and noise at Marylebone / Connolly