Ireland day 0557. Saturday 08 April 2023- 10k Walk *

Ireland day 0557. Saturday 08 April 2023- 10k Walk

Today’s summary	Val was at work so I did a 10k walk over the hill and back from Portmarnock along the coast. Hip feeling good. Weather feeling almost summery
Today’s weather	Bright, dry and sunny until late afternoon, when it clouded over. Strong southeasterly wind. Appx 12C

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): 10k Walk to Sutton

Commentary

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

Once again Val was at work today so an early start was called for, to get breakfast and lunches ready. Once that was done and Val had headed off to the museum, I had a glorious whole day ahead of me with nothing scheduled in the diary. I love days like this.

I couldn’t even go to the gym, as I only have a cut-price weekday membership. But since the sun was shining and it had the promise of staying dry at least until the evening, I decided to build on my new-found proficiency with trekking poles and see if I could push my post-operation walking distance a little further. So far I have maxxed out at around 8km, and I wanted to see if I could get a bit further when using the lightweight poles rather than the heavyweight crutches.

I thought I would head out through the demesne, then up Seamount Road to Paddy’s Hill and onwards along the coast through Portmarnock and Baldoyle. The advantage of this route is that most of the way, it runs close to the 102 bus route, so if anything went wrong I could easily get back. In the end, I made it all the way to Sutton station, which very pleasingly came in at almost exactly 10km. So it turned out to be my longest walk since the operation five and a half weeks ago, and left me feeling smugly satisfied.

I will admit that I was a bit tired, too – the trekking poles aren’t a zero-sum gain because while they reduce the effort required by your legs, they increase the effort required by your arms to an equal and opposite extent. Also, the strong south easterly headwind which I was walking into all the way made it feel a bit harder than I had expected. But the sun shone, the sky was blue, the flowers were beautiful and the coastline looked almost summery. So all in all a great day out.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


I was going to sit here and have my lunch – in the meadow near the Sluice river, overlooking Howth and Ireland’s Eye, but it was in the teeth of gale and freezing cold. So I thought better of it and didn’t.	Beautiful clumps of cowslips were scattered across the windswept meadow

On the Baldoyle Greenway. It seems to go on for ever and is well engineered. I just wish there was a grassy bit at the side to walk on, as the tarmac isn’t very good for hips (as I found out to my cost in 2014). From the engineering works going on at the north end, it looks like it may shortly be extended to Portmarnock DART station	The centre of Portmarnock – or perhaps not. I’m not really sure if Portmarnock actually has a centre

Edmund D Livingston was Ireland’s second balloonist. On this particular expedition he set off from Drumcondra, near the Botanic Gardens, with the intention of flying across the Irish Sea to Great Britain. It seems he only actually made it as far as Baldoyle. But a significant achievement nevertheless	Sutton station signalbox. I arrived just as a no. 102 arrived to whisk me back to Malahide. A perfect way to finish the walk.

Doing my best – it’s all you can do!