Ireland day 0540. Wednesday 22 March 2023- High Tide *

Ireland day 0540. Wednesday 22 March 2023- High Tide

Today’s summary	Walked down Hanlon’s Lane to look at the high-tide flooding then after lunch went up to the Avoca café at the castle to meet a walking club friend for coffee. Streamed “The banshees of Inisherin” and video-called some friends in the evening
Today’s weather	Started dry and bright with billowing white clouds and lots of spring sunshine which almost felt warm. Buy mid afternoon it had clouded over and there was a bit of drizzle. Strong, blustery southerly wind. Appx 11C.

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): Hanlons Lane circuit with high tide flood

Commentary

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

It was a nice morning so once we had breakfasted and listened to an interesting podcast in bed, we decided to go out and enjoy the spring sunshine on our old favourite, the Hanlons Lane circuit.

We set off uneventfully, but when we got down to the Broadmeadow estuary we found that our way was almost blocked by an extraordinarily high tide which had completely flooded the coast road. Talking to some locals who had come down to gaze at the spectacle, it sounds as if this may actually have been the highest tide there has been here for at least a decade – and we were there purely by chance, and only just after high tide so we saw it at its most impressive. Studying the tide charts revealed that today was indeed a very high (4.3m) Spring tide (sun and new moon in alignment) and a quick measure of the atmospheric pressure confirmed that it was quite low (990mb). So it looks like the spring tide was probably exacerbated a bit of a low pressure surge.

It was absolutely fascinating to observe, though I did feel a bit sorry for the unsuspecting car owners who had parked their vehicles on the roadside before the tide came in, and which now had water up to their exhaust pipes. So we watched the chaotic scenes of cars trying to execute multi-point U-turns on a flooded and heavily congested road for a while, the completed the walk and returned to the flat for lunch.

Once lunch was finished, we headed back up to the Demesne once again, this time to the Avoca café to meet a walking club friend for tea and cakes. It was great to catch up on all the news. After the refreshments, we went back down to the harbour to observe the now-counterbalancing extraordinarily low (minus 0.3m) tide then back up to the flat for the evening. We spent the evening streaming the Oscar-nominated “Banshees of Inisherin” film, and if you want my one-word critique I’d say “odd”.

Finally, we finished off the evening with a video call to friends in the UK – it was good to catch up with their news, too. A fascinating and fulfilling day all round.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Val setting off from the Casino apartments this fine spring morning	Not the best place to park, with hindsight

The boats bobbing around in the marina didn’t seem to have any problems the high tide	Up at the castle courtyard. (Which is in a separate building – possibly the old stable block – from the castle itself. It’s where the café and visitor centre are)

Rendezvous spot – Avoca run a gigantic café up at the castle and it’s a great spot for meeting friends – the only downside being that the acoustics are lousy so you have to shout to make yourself heard. Oh dear – another symptom of old age perhaps?	Now you see it – now you don’t. The equal-and-opposite ultra-low tide this evening

Flooding on the coast road caused traffic confusion and gridlock in Malahide