Ireland day 0859. Sunday 04 February 2024- Coastal Potter *

Ireland day 0859. Sunday 04 February 2024- Coastal Potter

Today’s summary	Joined the Walking Club at Sutton station for a short easy walk up the coast to Portmarnock. Very sociable and nice to catch up with the news from friends. The weather was decent once again. Caught the 102 to and from the start and end. TV dinner in the evening!
Today’s weather	Generally bright and breezy but only brief glimpses of sun and a bit of drizzle around noon. Strong westerly wind. Appx 13c

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): Sutton to Portmarnock potter DWC

Commentary

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

We rejoined friends in the Dublin Walking Club today for a short, easy stroll up the coast from Sutton to Portmarnock. The Saturday and Sunday walkers are generally two different crowds – Val and I are just about the only people who attend both. It’s nice, actually, to have two different groups of friends to chat to – and today we had lots of new things to talk about, despite having spent all day yesterday with the Saturday walkers.

The Sunday walks are generally less demanding than those on Saturday, and today was just about as easy as they come. For us, the start point at Sutton was particularly easy to get to – just a 15 minute ride on a convenient 102. Then the walk itself was easy – just a short (9km) stroll along the coast up to Portmarnock – retracing, in reverse, much of the route that Val and I followed when we walked to Howth on Thursday. Just a short extra bit tacked on through the old Baldoyle Racecourse, which adds a bit of interest.

After lunch in the Strand Road park, a few of the group went off to the pub while those of us with more willpower pressed on over through the dunes and onto the Velvet Strand. Once we had made it to Portmarnock promenade, we said our goodbyes and the group dispersed in various directions to find buses home. We popped into the local Spar shop to get a cup of tea, which kept us warm as we waited for the 102 to take us back to Malahide. In the end it arrived in just 5 minutes so we didn’t really have the opportunity to get cold.

A nice relaxing evening is in store – with a bit of box-set binge-watching accompanied by beans on toast. What a lot of “b”s!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Healing north along the promenade from Sutton towards Baldoyle. Why couldn’t the tide have been out like this the last couple of times we wanted to walk on the shore?	Perennial wallflowers in colourful bloom alongside the Baldoyle Racecourse Community Garden

Gorse burgeoning into bloom everywhere. Kissing must be in fashion, again	Young bovine and his fanclub

Val striding purposefully to the lunch stop on the Strand Road Park (where the Brent geese hang out) in Portmarnock	Heading for home – on the drifting sands of the Velvet Strand

Heading into the scrublands where the old Baldoyle Racecourse used to be located. Looks like prime development land to me, though perhaps a bit prone to flooding.