Ireland day 0740. Sunday 08 October 2023- Catching Breath *

Ireland day 0740. Sunday 08 October 2023- Catching Breath

Today’s summary	We both felt a bit whacked after the last week’s exertions, so we had a nice easy day, did a bit of unpacking, then took a leisurely walk up Paddy’s Hill in the warm October sunshine
Today’s weather	Dry sunny and mild. Almost no wind. Appx 19C

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): Decompression walk up Paddy's Hill

Commentary

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

We had a bit of a recovery day today, a lull between two bouts of activity. Last week we had the house clearance to contend with, then next week we are going on holiday with some friends – more on that over the coming days. And we both felt like we needed a bit of down-time. It was hard work last week, both emotionally and physically. So it wasn’t too surprising that today, as a result of the general fatigue, we didn’t really manage to get ourselves properly into gear.

Nevertheless, after a relatively leisurely morning, we pulled ourselves sufficiently together to empty (most of) the contents of the car and dump it on the living room floor. We spent an hour or so sorting it out and assigning it to new homes. It felt a bit like Christmas actually – even though we had bought all of it ourselves, it was so long ago that we had forgotten about it. Moreover, as we had packed up in a bit of a hurry, we didn’t know exactly what we had, so unpacking was a bit of a voyage of discovery.

But we didn’t finish the job, as it looked too temptingly warm and sunny outside. At this late stage in the season you simply can’t afford to miss any period of good weather. So we downed tools, and headed out for what we had planned to be a longish walk to Portmarnock. As it turned out, we only got as far as the castle before we felt the need to stop for a bag of crisps and a cup of tea, and a long review sitting on a park bench. By the time we had finished, it was getting a bit late so we cut our walk short and just headed up Paddy’s Hill and back again via the coast.

Tonight to make our lives as easy as possible, for dinner we had some leftover chips from last night, with a sausage roll we bought up at the castle, washed down with a beer we had brought back from the UK. Actually, it was tasty, nutritious, warming and quick. Just what was needed at this stage in the proceedings.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


This is about half of the contents of the Trusty Yaris, lovingly brought back across the Irish Sea yesterday!	Up at the Castle – we made it as far as here before we had to stop for our first refreshment

Up at the top of Seamount, there is a huge old house on the left hand side (heading up) with a fine landscaped garden. Or at least there was the last time I looked, which can’t be more than a week and a half ago. Now it’s a building site	October Irish rose – hurrah. In a hedge near the Robswall estate

Couldn’t help just slipping in a quick railway pic!	The old promenade wall, which had been covered by the dunes until only a year ago, is slowly being re-exposed, metre by metre. It’s quite interesting wondering what’s going to appear next. The shifting sands of time and all that.

Lugworm casts. If you look carefully on the beach at Malahide, you can see that each worm cast is accompanied by a small crater-like hole about 15cm away. This shows they were made by blow lugworms (Arenicola marina) which live in U-shaped burrows and suck mud in at one end (hence the craters), extract the micro-organisms out of it for food, then poo it out again at the other end (hence the worm casts). These worms can be up to 30cm long and look disgusting. But fishermen like them.