Ireland day 0717. Friday 15 September 2023- To Ireland *

Ireland day 0717. Friday 15 September 2023- To Ireland

Today’s summary	Dealt with remaining admin issues and met a friend in the morning, then returned to Gatwick and on to Dublin in the afternoon
Today’s weather	Warm dry and sunny in the UK. Light southerly breeze. Appx 23C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where I walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

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

This morning, Val was back at work over in Ireland while I was still enjoying my brief sojourn here in the UK. I had an enjoyable meeting with one of my friends – a former colleague – in the morning. We had the usual conversation that men of a certain age have – ailments (briefly!), politics (even more briefly!) and future life plans. The latter are always more interesting, especially as he and his wife are contemplating making a major life transition, just as we have.

Eventually they had to leave and I had to go and sort out some health service matters. They were all successfully resolved, I’m pleased to report.

With the health service issue and with friends visiting, that didn’t leave much time for anything else, apart from a quick lunch (Caesar salad, courtesy of Marks and Spencer) and a look around the town. It was putting its best foot forward today, and it looked good with all the flowers and the sunshine.

Most of the rest of the day was taken up with the journey to Dublin . Train, tube, train, plane and car. It’s a familiar sequence now, and at the same time I need start thinking about tomorrow I’m leading a club walk up Slieve Foye and am keeping fingers crossed for a dry day. It might be a forlorn hope!

Post-script – it was a bit touch-and-go whether I would actually make it back to Dublin or not, as there was some damage to a taxiway at Dublin Airport which necessitated emergency repairs. Anyway, eventually the work was done and I left Gatwick 3½ hours late. Ryanair generously gave me a £3 refreshment voucher(!) but more to the point I was just very glad actually to depart at all, given my walking commitments on the Saturday. The plane landed in Dublin bang on midnight and Val heroically came out to meet me. I was in bed and asleep about half an hour after we touched down!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


It’s good to see the idea of pollinator beds here in the UK as well as in Ireland. I don’t know how effective they are at attracting insects, but they are nice to look at	Metallic bees in the pollinator bed. Perhaps they help attract their living doppelgangers

Here’s the bee hotel, just in case the do set up home here	The high street – quite busy actually, mainly with school children out buying their lunch

Waiting for the Victoria Line. It’s very hot down on the Tube network at the moment!	My flight back to Dublin (second from the top on the departure board) was over 3½ hours late leaving Gatwick, which was a bit nail-biting given my walking commitment on Saturday

I heard from a friend in Scotland that there was a good display of the Northern Lights last night. I happened to be out on my walk last night and took the picture above of the Plough – and you can indeed see some sense of a coloured area on the northern horizon. I think it’s most likely urban glow, as I am probably too far south to have seen the aurora down here. But it would be nice to think I had.