Ireland day 0663. Sunday 23 July 2023- Summer Guests 1 *

Ireland day 0663. Sunday 23 July 2023- Summer Guests 1

Today’s summary	A very wet day. Visitors are arriving in the late afternoon so spent the morning cleaning and shopping and looking at the Family Fun Day, then walked round the demesne in the afternoon. Val still in UK.
Today’s weather	Rain all day, heavy in the morning but a bit lighter in the afternoon. Moderate northerly wind. Appx 15C

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The orange 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): Wet demesne

Commentary

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

I did feel a bit sorry for the organisers of the Malahide Family Fun Day today, as they really couldn’t have picked a worse day for weather. Cold, windy and very wet, it felt like a poor day in February. Anyway, the valiant stall-holders were doing their best when I took a look this lunchtime, and the punters were heroically doing their best to look like they were having fun. The children seemed to be enjoying jumping in the puddles, at any rate.

The main event today for me though, is the arrival of two visitors – the son and daughter-in-law of longstanding friends in the UK. They are staying in Malahide for a couple of days before embarking on their holiday round Ireland (I do hope the weather perks up a bit for them). But the good thing about having guests is that it forces you to get your act together, and do all the domestic chores that you have been putting off for ages. So most of the morning was spent washing and cleaning and doing the shopping. Anyway the flat now looks transiently spic and span – hopefully it will still be that way when Val and I return from our travels to the UK the week after next!

Once the chores were done and the Fun Day investigated, I allowed myself to escape the fumes of the cleaning products briefly, and headed off into the demesne to complete my favourite loop walk round the perimeter. Fortunately the rain had eased off a bit, so I didn’t get soaked. So now I’m back in the flat, doing the last bits of tidying up, and then I’ll turn my mind to preparing something for dinner. (Actually – I’m going to cheat. Val made a big pot of chilli con carne before she returned to London – so my main job is to get it out of the freezer, heat it up, and cook some rice. So I think even my limited culinary skills shouldn’t be challenged too much!).

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Everyone doing their best to have fun at the fun day, despite the miserable conditions	*The so-called “Smooth Hydrangea”, Hydrangea arborescens, outside the Avoca courtyard*

*Cape Fuchsia, Phygelius aequalis, also outside the Avoca courtyard*	Doing my best to look chipper notwithstanding the weather

What I call Tree Fern Avenue – though I’m not sure if that’s its real name, up in the castle demesne. Real tree fern weather lately	There are a lot of language students in Malahide at the moment, many of them Spanish. I try to eavesdrop on their conversations – not because I am nosey (well I suppose I am a bit) but more to try and practice my Spanish. I reckon I can understand about 1 word in every hundred they say. I have a very long way to go and its all a bit depressing

Mediaeval battle competition in full swing, complete with mediaeval weather