Ireland day 0501. Saturday 11 February 2023- Broadmeadow again *

Ireland day 0501. Saturday 11 February 2023- Broadmeadow again

Today’s summary	Val was at work again so I took advantage of the phase of the moon to walk round the Broadmeadow lagoon to Newbridge whilst keeping dry feet. Spent the evening reviewing the beer bread I made yesterday and concluded it was OK but nothing special
Today’s weather	A nice spring-like day – overcast but bright with high cloud and no rain. Hardly any wind. Appx 10C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue 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): Broadmeadow Flood Road

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

Val was at work (she’s doing 5 days in a row at the museum at the moment). So once packed lunches were made, Val was despatched and I’d done some Spanish homework, I decided to try another walk round the Broadmeadow lagoon. It’s one of my favourite excursions and the tide chart showed that we are in the midst of a series of neap tides at the moment and that if I left about 11 am, I’d get to the section which is normally flooded about 2 hours after low tide in the outer lagoon.

This seems to be the most propitious time for getting round with dry feet and indeed that was the case today, so I made it right round to Donabate without having to paddle. Lots of spring flowers bursting into life making the walk quite colourful in places. Once round the lagoon, I walked on into Newbridge for a sandwich lunch then headed on to Donabate to catch the train back to Malahide. There was just time to get a coffee and cake (!) from the station café, which rounded off the outing perfectly.

(By the way the bread I made yesterday was “ok” but not outstanding. There was absolutely no flavour from the beer so there was no advantage in using it rather than water. Also the bread was a bit dry and floury. But OK for sandwiches and toasted with marmalade)

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Hellebores – they seem to thrive round Malahide	Snowdrops just passing their best now. But still looking attractive

Primula at the bottom of Yellow Walls Road	Viburnum of some sort, on Kilcrea road

Today’s tide cycle. The previous high tide was relatively low, which seems to create the best chance of the Flood Road being passable	Newbridge House – an elegant spot, currently seemingly undergoing some fairly major renovations.

Indeed, the Flood Road was more or less passable for most of its length (and where it wasn’t, there is a path on the embankment above it that you can use to stay dry)