Ireland day 0536. Saturday 18 March 2023- Knocksink *

Ireland day 0536. Saturday 18 March 2023- Knocksink

Today’s summary	Val drove us out to the farmers’ market at Clonsilla where we got fresh vegetables plus coffee and pastries to eat in the nearby Shackleton Garden. Drove up to Knocksink to have a look at the DIAS observatory, though it was closed to the public today
Today’s weather	Overcast with rain until mid afternoon. Then brightened up and it turned into a nice clear evening. Moderate north westerly wind. Appx 9C

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): [Short Shackleton wander

Commentary

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

We both felt we would like to explore a bit further afield than the confines of Malahide today. So after another fairly slow start to the morning (and another futile attempt to understand the Spanish dictation I have been given to translate) we decided to drive out to the Shackleton garden – one of our favourite “hidden gems” in the Dublin area.

As luck would have it, we got there just before the neighbouring Beechpark farmers’ market closed, so we were able to pick up some nice looking organic vegetables while we were there. Perhaps of more immediate importance we also got some coffees and pains au chocolate, which we took along to the garden and enjoyed as a mid-afternoon snack whilst sitting in the greenhouse.

After we’d had a look around the garden, we drove back to Malahide via Knocksink. By way of explanation: as we have been driving along the M50 on our way to the garden, I’d noticed on the left hand side about half way to the N3, a strange looking building on a hill (it’s odd what you notice when you are in the passenger seat). A bit of googling revealed that it was the Knocksink Observatory, an outpost of the DIAS. So we made a diversion up the hill on our way back, to find out what it was all about. It turned out that the observatory isn’t generally open to the public – but a glance around through the gates suggested it would definitely be worthy of further exploration. So I’ll spend the evening trying to find out when the next open day might be.

Right now though it’s time to enjoy some hot chilli salmon with sprout tops (from the farmers market) and then perhaps a bit of Netflix to finish off the day. An excellent and interesting day out, and many thanks to Val, once again, for doing the chauffeuring.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Arrived just in time to buy some massive sprouts and a turnip. (And coffee and pastry). The farm shop is next door to the Shackleton Garden and it closed about five minutes after we left. (The garden was open a couple of hours longer though)	Here’s the coffee and pastry ready to be healthily enjoyed in the garden’s large new Alitex greenhouse

This is in fact the large new Alitex greenhouse. Very smart and an excellent place to shelter for lunch. But could do with a few more plants in it perhaps.	Here we are doing the healthy enjoying

In the garden. Still quite wintry feeling but lots of cheery spring flowers	Sadly the Observatory was closed when we dropped by this afternoon – it only opens on special occasions and today wasn’t one of them. But it was interesting to find out where it was and I’ll do a bit of research to find out when their next open day is.

I love these miniature daffodils!