Ireland day 0516. Sunday 26 February 2023- Kilcoole *

Ireland day 0516. Sunday 26 February 2023- Kilcoole

Today’s summary	A Walking Club outing from Kilcoole to Greystones today. Val took a day off to complete her recovery and then we finished off the chicken casserole for dinner tonight
Today’s weather	Dry and bright again. Lots of sun. Moderate easterly wind. Feeling quite cool at 6C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue 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): Kilcoole to Greystones walk DWC

Commentary

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

Another outing with the walking club today.

The trip was originally planned to go from Bray to Greystones, but the cliff path has been closed by a landslide. So after a bit of lateral thinking, the walk was re-routed instead to explore the coastline north from Kilcoole, which is one step further on the railway line, then back up to Greystones. I went on my own as, although Val had the day off work and is more or less better now, she wisely decided to take a day off to relax.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day out – even though it was only a short walk. The extra effort to divert off the route and see the ruins of JP Donleavy’s cottage (see captions below) was definitely worthwhile. The weather was bright, sunny and exhilarating, and I found the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore strangely uplifting. Lots of good chat along the way, of course, rounded off by coffee in an excellent Italian-run café in Greystones. All in all, an excellent day out.

Now it’s time to finish off the chicken casserole from yesterday (which was excellent by the way).

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The train from Connolly departing south to Rosslare Europort. It looks like a tiny branch line but is actually one of the more important lines in Ireland – especially post Brexit	On the path through the woods to the JP Donleavy house. It was a good path, well maintained, and would merit a longer exploration

The ruins of the cottage where Irish-American author JP Donleavy wrote “The Ginger Man” in the 1950s (which sold some 40 million copies, apparently) are down the path just outside Kilcoole station	Kilcoole station. It’s not actually in Kilcoole, but is about a km down the road, but conveniently located right on the coast

Looking south down the coast path to Wicklow Head (left, far horizon). Quite a lot of the path is like this actually, running on concrete blocks sandwiched between the railway line and the rocky coastal defences (the beach itself is pebbly and very hard to walk on – and also parts of it are submerged at high tide)	Arriving at Greystones

The ruins of the JP Donleavy cottage just outside Kilcoole station. Not a lot to see here now