Ireland day 0989. Thursday 13 June 2024- Summer Storm

Today’s summary	Started the day with a webinar on carbon dioxide storage then after lunch walked over Paddy’s Hill to the coast in a wild summer storm. Relaxing evening in the flat, trying to eat healthily.
Today’s weather	Overcast, wet and stormy. Some sun in the evening. Gale force south easterly wind. Appx 16c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue 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): Hills of Howth walk

Commentary

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

We decided to have a day off today, after a month of active travelling. So we allowed ourselves a lie in until I had to join a webinar on carbon dioxide storage at 10am while Val got on and made some focaccia bread.

The webinar was quite interesting and I learned about a new technology known as “CEEGS” (a way of storing energy as compressed CO2 underground in geological formations). It over-ran by nearly half a hour though, which was a bit frustrating.

By the time the bread was made and the carbon had been stored, it was lunchtime. As we are now officially on a healthy eating plan after the excesses of North America, we had a chicken salad and fruit, which was actually quite enjoyable though I was starving again within about an hour.

The day had started off stormy and wet and we had hoped it would clear up later in the day. But it didn’t and we felt the need to go out anyway. So we did a simple walk – up Paddy’s Hill and back along the coast. It certainly blew the cobwebs away. At some points the wind was so strong that we could hardly stand up – and there were broken tree branches everywhere. Not like June at all.

After doing some shopping in Malahide on the way back, we spent a quiet evening in the flat eating healthy food. Quite a novel departure.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


A complex nerdy (and interesting!) excerpt from this morning’s webinar	It’s that time of year again when we enjoy the delights of Take That, Rag ‘N Bone Man and Arcade Fire from the comfort of our living room (whether we want to or not)

A carpet of storm-blown leaves making it feel more like November than June, up in the demesne woods	Brilliant Echium in someone’s front garden on Seamount Road

Getting blown away on the top of Paddy’s Hill	Lone windsurfer braving the elements and enjoying the south-easterly

*Cheerful pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) brightening up the meadows beyond Robswall. There were quite a few of them in bloom today – a joy to see*