Ireland day 0720. Monday 18 September 2023- Preparations *

Ireland day 0720. Monday 18 September 2023- Preparations

Today’s summary	Val non-working day. We went on a walk round the demesne and over Paddys Hill to the beach then had lunch in the Grand Hotel. Shopping in Clare Hall Tesco in the afternoon, ready for guests arriving tomorrow
Today’s weather	Bright and breezy with plenty of sun and only a light shower in the afternoon. Moderate to strong north westerly wind. Appx 15C

Today’s overview location (The grey 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): Coast walk for lunch

Commentary

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

We have guests arriving tomorrow, and staying with us till the end of the week. Val’s off for the next three days, so that works quite well.

Our first task was to start tidying up in anticipation of our guests arrival, and getting the sheets on the spare bed changed. There was plenty more housework to do but as it looked so nice outside, we decided to put that off and do something for ourselves instead. Which today was to be a walk round the demesne, up the hill, down to the coast, and then – a major treat – lunch at the Grand Hotel on the way back.

The walk went straightforwardly – I hardly ever think about my hip anymore now – and indeed we extended it a bit with some twiddly bits in the demesne. Everywhere was looking lush and green, though a bit wind-battered and pre-autumnal in places. The wet weather had got the fungi growing again, and we saw a particularly impressive example of a Jelly Ear fungus (Auricularia auricula-judae) sprouting from a crack in the trunk of a fallen tree deep in the woods (you can see a bit of it in the banner image at the top). A bit further on, I found that one of my favourite bracket fungi had fallen as the tree it was living on had succumbed to old age and rot, and collapsed taking the fungus with it.

We hiked over the hill and down to the shop on the beach where we bought some crisps (low fat variety) and ate them on the beach. Then we hot-footed it back up the coast to Malahide, and made a bee-line for the Grand Hotel.

We don’t often go out for lunch so this was a bit of a special occasion. But we thoroughly enjoyed it and came away feeling that we’d had a decent meal at a reasonable price (€22 for two teas, a bowl of soup and two sandwiches – one of which we took away with us to have for dinner).

Once back, we resumed our preparations for the visitors and headed out in the Trusty Yaris to Tesco Clare Hall to get all the supplies we would need to keep us going for the next few days. It was not a low cost trip, but by judicial purchasing I found you can keep the costs down a bit. For example that a box of “posh” granola came in at an eye-watering €5.30 whereas a box of Tesco own-brand fruit and fibre, which was nearly twice as big, cost a mere €1.00. So clearly it pays not just to shove the first thing you see which looks vaguely suitable into your trolley, as you speed round as fast as you can in your bid to escape the retail mayhem.

Eventually we were back, and after a light dinner we resumed out cleaning, tidying and cooking preparations. One good thing about having visitors is that it definitely makes you get your house in order!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The railway looking north from the Back Road overbridge. Iarnród Éireann are doing protracted engineering on the sidings at the top of the picture, which do their best to keep us awake from 2 to 5am when they are doing the night shift. It’s supposed to be finished in six weeks or so – still it’s not quite as bad as last year’s epic with the station bridge	Pre-lunch treat by the bathing shelter on Portmarnock beach

The sun was well and truly out when we started north up the coast from Portmarnock back to Malahide	One of the highlights of Autumn – beautiful nerines flowering in someone’s front garden on the upper Coast Road

Grand Hotel – where we treated ourselves to lunch..	..which in my case was super-healthy

I’d noticed the impressive bracket fungus on this tree a few weeks ago. But whether the fungus was cause or effect, the tree was clearly rotten as it had spectacularly severed at the base and fallen gracefully into some scrubland, narrowly missing both the demesne footpath and the road on the other side of the perimeter wall