Ireland day 1050. Tuesday 13 August 2024- Ordinary Day

Today’s summary	A fairly “ordinary” day in that in the morning we listened to a podcast, then Val did some housework while I got on with admin. After soup for lunch, in the afternoon we walked out to the Centra store at the end of Yellow Walls Road for a cup of tea and then in the evening had beef stir-fry and watched some TV
Today’s weather	Overcast all day but dry and mild. Constant westerly wind. Appx 20c

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): Walk to Centra for Tea

Commentary

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

We have relatively few “ordinary” days, so perhaps when we do have one it would be better labelled “extraordinary”. Anyway, whatever the name, today I think we had one.

We started off the morning by listening to a podcast (something which we haven’t done for a while, and we enjoyed catching up) then while Val decided to embark on a voyage through the ironing, I switched on the computer and resumed my admin work. Tedious, and requiring careful concentration, but manageable when it’s time-boxed.

Once we had finished our respective chores, we had a light lunch of soup and nuts (OK yes some cake as well) then decided to take a short walk out to the end of the Yellow Walls Road and our favourite Centra store. Actually, there isn’t that much to distinguish this store from a million other mini-marts just like it, except for the hot drinks machine. It serves up excellent cups of Barry’s tea, which is an Irish speciality and reliably good. Today, use an Irish expression, to go with the Irish refreshments we availed of the machine and got a couple of cups to enjoy from a bench overlooking a nearby rose-garden.

Once back at the flat, I had a video call with a friend in the UK who’s just bought a small-holding. It was fascinating catching up on the details of his project – it’s undoubtedly a major challenge, but I can see that it will be very rewarding.

Anyway, now the day is winding down so we’re going to enjoy a Kerrigan’s beef stir fry (I think we are rapidly becoming one of this Malahide fixture’s best customers) and a bit of TV to finish off with. Not quite sure what we will find to replace the Olympics, but with a million channels to choose from, I’m sure we will find something. At least we will have fun searching.

Back tomorrow with another enjoyably “ordinary” day, hopefully!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Our view over the rose garden as we enjoyed our teas	Black-headed gull, midway between its summer (black head) and winter (white head) plumage

Lots of activity underway on the new Malahide to Donabate greenway viaduct	The viaduct is the white line in the middle of the picture. So far as I could count, about eleven of the spans appear to be in place, with only two or three remaining to be installed



A fascinating rose bedeguar gall on a wild rose up in the demesne. The red thing is actually a gall, caused by a hormone imbalance in the plant initiated when the Gall Wasp (Dipolepsis rosae) lays its eggs in an unopened leaf bud