Ireland day 0363. Monday 26 September 2022- Sutton

Today’s summary	Spent the morning doing paperwork and making lunch then walked down the coast to Sutton in the afternoon. Aspiring to crisps and red wine for dinner(?!)
Today’s weather	Overcast with occasional sunny intervals and light showers. Strong north westerly wind. About 15C

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): Sutton walk via the coast

Commentary

Do you sometimes have days when what you really want to do is sit around eating crisps and drinking red wine? Well perhaps if you’re perfect in every way you don’t but I’m clearly not perfect because sometimes I do have days like that and today was one of them.

Val’s work didn’t start till the afternoon so we were able to have a relatively easy morning. That gave her plenty of time to go on a run and me plenty of time to catch up on some paperwork and make a super healthy lunch of “smashed” (what a ridiculous word but it’s what hipster cafés use so I am copying them) avocados on toast with a rocket salad followed by fresh pears. So the day started off well but I am afraid it went rapidly downhill after that.

In my defence I did start the afternoon with the best of intentions – to walk down the coast to Sutton – one of my favourite excursions on foot from Malahide – and then to catch the bus back. But the rot started when I decided that I ought to carry emergency rations with me so I packed two packets of crisps and a large slice of lemon drizzle cake (half price from Tesco) just to make sure that I wouldn’t starve if stricken by an emergency en route.

Funnily enough, an emergency did strike down towards the southern end of Portmarnock beach, just where the path heads off through the dunes to the car park. Actually it wasn’t so much an emergency as just me feeling a bit peckish. But I decided not to take any chances so I found a sheltered spot out of the wind where I had my cake and ate it. And my crisps.

Eventually I did manage to summon the willpower to slog the rest of the way down the coast to the terminus of the trusty 102 at Sutton station, pausing only to inspect a couple of interesting drains along the way. I did enjoy the walk very much, actually, and was fortunate to dodge the showers which had been threatening ever since the sun went in shortly after I left Malahide.

The 102 trustily turned up soon after I arrived at Sutton so in next to no time I was speeding back to Malahide and the flat. But as luck would have it, the bus deposited me right outside SuperValu so before going to the flat I took the spontaneous decision to pop in on the off chance that there might be some useful double sticker bargains I could pick up. As it turned out, there weren’t, but they did have a decent looking bottle of Merlot on special offer at €7 which believe me is cheap for Ireland. So I wisely picked up a couple of bottles – and some crisps (and some chocolate biscuits for later) confident that a red wine and crisps evening was well within my grasp.

Sadly, Val had other ideas so as soon as I finish this blog, I am under some moral pressure to stir myself and create something a bit more healthy. Luckily we have some salmon in the freezer which will go nicely with new potatoes and peas, and then perhaps some stewed apples for dessert. But that bottle of Merlot and the shamrock crisps are sitting on the worktop looking at me rather forlornly, so before I start I think I might just have to avail myself of some empty calories and alcohol, thus fulfilling the dream which has tantalised me ever since I woke up this morning.

So a thoroughly enjoyable day, when taken in the round, but I will have to pay the price tomorrow. It’s back to the gym.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The Green in Malahide, looking still very verdant. The Anna Livia (ammonite lady) statue us the dark object in the shade of the tree at the left.	Near the coast road, looking back to the marina. It was actually quite pleasantly sunny – if a bit blowy – when I set off to the beach.

I think these may be the very first Grey-Bellied Brent Geese, just returned to Ireland after their epic migrations from northern Canada via Greenland and Iceland. But someone correct me if I am wrong as they were a bit far away and not easy to identify	Coming down to the Velvet Strand in Portmarnock. The sun had gone in by this stage and the wind had picked up, blowing spindrift-like wisps of sand over the beach. Quite a melancholy sight

Deserted concrete base for the seasonal lifeguard station which monitors Portmarnock beach. The temporary stations disappeared a few days ago in a clear signal that summer has well and truly ended 🙁	I know many readers have been missing the inclusion of manhole covers in recent posts, so here’s one I spotted today in the pavement near Baldoyle. From the trademark – PAMETANCHE – and design I am guessing that it was made at the same foundry as the other two that I have recently come across. I have also learned that the “PAM” in “PAMetanche” stands for Pont a Mousson, a town in north east France which is where the headquarters of the Saint Gobain drainpipe division is located. This particular range is made of cast iron and is “designed for areas at risk of increased loads due to high water levels, flooding or other incidents”. So now you know.

These engineers look suspiciously like they are gearing up for another night drilling and hammering on the footbridge. Please please don’t let it go on too late. It would be nice to grab at least a couple of hours sleep tonight