Ireland day 0680. Wednesday 09 August 2023- Talbot *

Ireland day 0680. Wednesday 09 August 2023- Talbot

Today’s summary	I went to the gym in the morning while Val did some cookery. We had a picnic lunch in the Talbot Botanic Garden up at the castle then walked round the demesne. A bit of admin in the evening.
Today’s weather	Dry and bright. Almost no wind. Appx 20C

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): Talbot garden and demesne circuit

Commentary

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

I hadn’t been to the gym for quite a long time so the first job this morning was to put that right. So I spent a couple of hours sweating on the various instruments of torture, then went for a swim. Once I got back to the flat, it was well past lunchtime so we picked up our sandwiches and decided to head over to the Talbot Botanic Gardens (complete with the fine greenhouse you can see in the banner image at the top) to enjoy our refreshments in the sunshine. Val had made some delicious min-scones I should add, so we had a couple of those to keep us going before setting out.

The botanic gardens were looking vibrant and healthy after all the rain and now with the relatively mild weather to get things growing again. We lingered quite along time amongst the plants and were vaguely aware of a bell ringing in the distance. At first we thought it was Toots, the model steam train, but as it became more urgent and insistent we realised something else was going on so we set off to investigate. Just in time, as it happened, because it turned out that the bell was signalling the imminent closure of the garden and had we left it much later we would have run the risk of being locked in overnight. Still I suppose we could always have bedded down in one of the greenhouses.

Having successfully made our escape, we decided to fit in a quick circuit round the demesne before heading back to the flat. Once back, we had a bit of paperwork to do, then enjoyed the remainder of the colcannon, with some sausages, for tea. Plus a glass of semi-decent red wine that we picked up cheap in an off-licence as we briefly passed through Co Armagh on the way back from Monaghan yesterday. All in all, a nice relatively calm and relaxing day.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Hello from Toots!	Giant Irish Elk roaming outside the castle

Flowers and palms outside the Butterfly House	Hard at work getting the cricket pitch ready for the forthcoming Internationals



Trachycarpus Fortunei (aka Windmill Palm) thriving in the mild Irish climate. It is actually one of the palms with the most northerly range