Ireland day 0664. Monday 24 July 2023- Summer Guests 2 *

Ireland day 0664. Monday 24 July 2023- Summer Guests 2

Today’s summary	Walked through the demesne, up Paddy’s Hill and down to the coast with our two guests in the morning. They went into Dublin in the pm and I had the afternoon off
Today’s weather	Dry and bright with sun in the morning, overcast in the afternoon. Moderate northerly wind. Appx 17C

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange 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): Castle Hill and Coast

Commentary

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

After a very enjoyable evening with our visitors last night, I must admit I woke up with a slightly thick head this morning and didn’t really get going until after a couple of cups of strong coffee for breakfast. But by the time we’d had something to eat, and I’d had a shower, I was beginning to feel a bit more human again. So once we had got all our things together, we decided to head outdoors for a bit of on-foot local sightseeing.

I thought a short-ish walk round some of our favourite local sites would give a good flavour of Malahide and its environs, especially so as the sun was shining when we set out and every was looking very verdant. So I led us round our well-trodden route into the demesne, then up Seamount to Paddy’s Hill. We were in luck today, as the rain had cleared the air so we could see well to the north, where the Cooleys were just visible, and to the south over to the Sugarloaf, and beyond.

We dropped down from there to Portmarnock and made the now-obligatory stop at the shop where we bought cups of tea and ice-creams to be enjoyed on the beach. After having done our little bit of summer-holidaymaking, we walked back up the beach, enjoying some decent fossil-spotting on the way, and arrived back at the flat just in time for lunch.

In the afternoon, our friends wanted to go into Dublin to check out the local craic at the Cobblestone but I elected to stay behind and do my packing for my trip back to the UK to join Val tomorrow. Anyway, the packing is done now – I hope I have everything. I just need to start loading everything into the car and then trundle along to the petrol station to fill the tank ahead of the long drive tomorrow. Next update will be from somewhere mid-Irish sea, I think!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


In the castle demesne – looking super-green in the sun after all the rain recently	Looking over the cricket pitch in the demesne

Temporary stadia beginning to be constructed in time for the International cricket matches coming up soon	With friends on the coast path, near the Martello tower-cum-house

*Looking over “Lithostrotion” beach*	*A good example of a well preserved brachiopod down on “Lithostrotion” beach*

The Castle this morning – we were early but there were still plenty of tourists out ahead of us