Ireland day 0951. Monday 06 May 2024- Malahide Admin

Today’s summary	Spent the morning and early afternoon applying for International Driving Permits and doing some shopping at Swords Tesco. I took a short walk round the demesne in the evening while Val watched “Chloe” on RTE Player
Today’s weather	An overnight shower then overcast but bright and dry for the rest of the day. Light northerly breeze. Appx 14c

Today’s overview location (The green 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): The usual demesne circuit

Commentary

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

When we were in Aberdeen last week, we hired a car. When going through the hire car booking process, I noticed that, as we no longer have UK driving licences, we “might” be asked to produce an International Driving Permit alongside our Irish driving licences. In many years of hiring cars I have never been asked for such a thing but I thought it might be useful to have one to hand for any trips we might make outside Ireland in the future. You just never know.

So the first task this morning was to download and fill in the forms, which was fine, except that a passport photo was also required – and it had to be a hard-copy picture, on proper photo quality paper. This meant we had to seek out a Photo-Me booth that would be open on a Bank Holiday (today is May Day bank holiday in Ireland, as it is in much of Europe).

Eventually a suitable facility was located – in Tesco at Swords, which was quite handy as we also had some domestic shopping to do.

So we trundled over to the supermarket after lunch, duly got our photos for the princely sum of €6, and also did our shopping. We managed to complete the paperwork in the car, find a post box, and get them posted off to the AA (who process applications on behalf of the Government), then drove to Malahide for a very welcome cup of tea (we are trying loose-leaf Tesco Finest Assam at the moment, for a change).

Val had been on a long run this morning while I had been fiddling around with the forms, so once tea was drunk, I decided to partially emulate her and go for a walk round the demesne in the early evening while she was watching “Chloe” – a thriller on RTE Player. It was quiet and calming up by the castle – and I noticed that the cricket pitch was in use for what I think must be one of the first times this year. The covers were just going back over the carefully manicured sward as I was finishing my walk.

Cold lamb and salad for dinner rounded off a quiet but productive day.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The first elderflowers of the season	*Cow-Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris)*

*Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum)*	Allium re-growing in the bed by the entrance to the demesne



The wild flower bed in the big field by the castle seems to have been ploughed up – hopefully it has also been re-sown with a new batch of meadow plants