Ireland day 0750. Wednesday 18 October 2023- Exploring from Home *

Ireland day 0750. Wednesday 18 October 2023- Exploring from Home

Today’s summary	Val was at work so I went into Dublin with our guests to visit the Botanic Gardens. Very slow rail journeys both ways, but a very enjoyable afternoon looking round once we got there. Managed to dodge the worst of Storm Babet. Went to see an Antarctica photo exhibition in the evening in Malahide, then a tapas dinner at the Greedy Goose
Today’s weather	Overcast but mainly dry until mid afternoon. Strong easterly wind. Appx 14c

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): Botanic Gardens Glasnevin before the rain

Commentary

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

Our Beara travel companions don’t return to the UK until tomorrow, so while Val was out at work, the rest of us enjoyed a leisurely breakfast making plans for the rest of the day. Arrangements were slightly complicated by the anticipated arrival of Storm Babet – which we had last encountered yesterday in County Cork but which was expected to reach Dublin sometime this afternoon, as she continued her leisurely journey north east.

Anyway, as it was dry this morning and it didn’t look like the rain would arrive until later in the day, we decided to go into Dublin and to take a look at the Botanic Gardens. So we headed over to Malahide station to catch the DART, which was due in about five minutes. Unfortunately the train was cancelled, as was the following one. So we had to get the late running diesel from Drogheda, which was already packed by the time it got to Malahide, so we ended up having to stand the whole of the (slow) journey to Connolly.

Anyway, eventually after taking a LUAS from Connolly and then the no 4 bus, we made it to the gardens by just after lunch. We decided to take advantage of the dry interlude and have a look round the outdoor parts of the garden first, leaving the greenhouses and café for later on, when it might be raining.

As it turned out, it stayed dry while we looked round, and even while we were in the café enjoying a late lunch. But by the time we were back at the bus stop waiting to go return to town, the rain arrived and then as we made the short hop across from the D’Olier bus stop to Tara St station, we came close to getting soaked. Nevertheless, we caught a DART back fairly promptly and were back in Malahide just before six.

While we were out, Val had managed to established that there’s a photographic exhibition about Antarctica being held at the nearby community centre. So we are going to go and have a look at that before going on for tapas dinner at the “Greedy Goose” to celebrate the formal end of our holiday.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Stunning dahlias appeared to be right at their best in one of the south facing flowerbeds	Astonishing Mexican Pine – each of the needles is about 20cm long and the branches look a bit like bottle brushes

The temperate house – possibly my favourite place in Dublin, especially in the winter	*A particularly attractive rhododendron in the temperate house. This is probably Rhododendron* subgenus Vierya, a tropical form of this ubiquitous plant**

Hundreds of colourful coleus plants in the temperate house	Slow journeys both into and out of Dublin owing to bad weather, signalling problems and “operational difficulties”. ‘Twas ever thus

This was an art installation, apparently, though it had to be disentangled from a nearby tree before it could be appreciated properly