Ireland day 0883. Wednesday 28 February 2024- Ashbourne *

Ireland day 0883. Wednesday 28 February 2024- Ashbourne

Today’s summary	Spent most of the day taking the car to Ashbourne to get it serviced. Public transport after dropping it off then back when it was ready for collection took ages. But the car seems to be in order and I managed to fit in a video discussion on AI with friends from the Natural History Museum between the comings-and-goings. Short walk and some TV in the evening
Today’s weather	Heavily overcast with thick drizzle or rain all day and no sun. Moderate south westerly wind. Appx 12c

Today’s overview location (The grey mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Rainy Malahide evening walk

Commentary

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

The Trusty Yaris was due its annual service today – which I like to get done at the Toyota garage in Ashbourne where we bought it. As the crow flies, it’s only about 35 minutes drive from Malahide – which is good when you’re delivering or collecting the car, as there is a reasonably direct route.

The problem comes in the gap between leaving the car and collecting it again later in the day. You never know how long the service is going to take, so you have to decide whether to stay at the garage and wait, in the hope that it won’t be too long, or abandon yourself to the vicissitudes of the public transport system to try and get back to Malahide to wait there.

I chose the latter, and today managed to get back to Malahide reasonably quickly – by which I mean about 90 minutes – by taking the 197 bus with just one change at Swords onto the 102. As luck would have it, practically as soon as I got back to the flat, the garage phoned to say the car was ready for collection. But I couldn’t just head straight back out again as I had a video discussion with friends from the Natural History Museum first. Today’s topic was Generative AI – which I found absolutely fascinating.

The return journey to Ashbourne wasn’t as slick as the inbound leg, because the 197 only goes about once an hour and Google told me I would just miss the connection from the 102 in Swords. So instead I took the DART all the way to Tara Street and then changed onto a very grimy 103 bus which slowly plodded its way back to Ashbourne via the R135. It was packed and full of sneezing people and screaming babies but in the end I made it.

The Yaris apparently is in good shape and I sped back to Malahide in next to no time. By the way, in case you were wondering what Val was up to while I was wandering around the countryside – well she managed to fit in a run and then spent the rest of the day rehearsing on her new violin. Impressive dedication.

I rounded off the day with a short walk in the drizzly murk and then after a healthy salad dinner, settled down at last to watch a few more episodes of the Sopranos. Another busy day successfully completed.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Mucky no 103 from Dublin on my convoluted journey back to Ashbourne this afternoon	View through the fogged up window on the upper deck of the 103

Here we go again. More rail engineering works for the next three nights	Rain started sluicing down almost as soon as I started my walk

An explanation about the closure of the “hidden” route from Seamount to Seapark. The good news is that it is supposed to reopen on 1 March (the day after tomorrow). The bad news is that it looks like there is an awful lot of work left to do.

Ashbourne. I don’t know how it got its very non-Irish name, but I have to admit that as a town it’s a bit unmemorable. Or perhaps I just haven’t found the interesting part yet