Ireland day 1061. Saturday 24 August 2024- Red Flag

Today’s summary	I spent the morning shopping and cooking (chicken stock, leek soup, jacket potatoes and rhubarb) while Val was working at the castle. Once she was back in the early afternoon, we decided to walk to Portmarnock beach for a swim. But the red flag was up because of poor water quality so we just had a cup of tea instead. Walked home and enjoyed(!) my cooking for dinner. Some TV later.
Today’s weather	Dry, blustery and with sunny intervals. Strong westerly 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).

Val had been called into work a morning shift at the castle today (Ron de Santis, Governor of Florida, was visiting so it was all hands to the wheel). So, as it’s been a while since I prepared anything other than salad for dinner, I decided I would do some cooking while she was out.

We had the last fragments of a chicken, some onions and a carrot in the fridge, so I thought, as a start, that I would convert them into a chicken stick which could form the basis for some soup. That all went well until I realised we had nothing to make the soup with, so a quick trip to SuperValu was called for to get some leeks and various other soupmaking essentials.

Eventually the soup was prepared and cooked, though I must say I find all the vegetable preparation a bit tedious. Once that was done, I put some large potatoes in the oven to cook slowly, and made some tuna and sweetcorn filling to go with the resulting jacket potatoes once they made it to the dinner table. All that remained was to cook up some rhubarb which we could have to to finish off our meal later today.

Once that was all done (I was exhausted!) and Val had returned from work, we realised that as it was a nice afternoon, we could dig out our swimming stuff and walk down to Portmarnock beach for a quick dip.

We took a leisurely walk along the coast road – the tide was in so we couldn’t tread the sands – and quickly reached our destination. But once we got there, we noticed that something was missing. Bathers! We soon saw the reason – the red flag conspicuously flying from the coastguard’s hut. There was no obvious reason for the flag, as the sea was calm and there didn’t appear to be any dangerous rip-tides.

But Val, being more curious than me, managed to learn from one of the coastguards that the cause was a poor water quality alert – probably caused by wastewater outflow after the recent rain. The red flag would remain in place for five days.

Although one or two brave (or foolhardy) swimmers were immersing themselves in the toxic waters, we decided not to risk it and to settle for a cup of coffee and some snacks on the beach instead. We enjoyed the sun for a few moments while we finished our drinks, but there was a penetrating wind which took the edge off any warmth, so we didn’t hang around too long for setting off back to Malahide.

Now we’re in the flat, I’m going to heat up the soup and then serve up the potatoes and rhubarb (not all at once!). And while that’s going on, in a modern 21st century way, we are simultaneously watching an RTÉ documentary about birdsong in Ireland. It’s fascinating but I mustn’t get distracted in case the rhubarb catches fire!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Coast path heading south with Ireland’s Eye on the horizon	Martello tower on the coast path overlooking the beach. Now converted to flats

Nobody in the sea at Portmarnock beach today	Every cloud has a silver lining! (In our case a cup of tea instead of a swim)



“Fish and Trips” in Malahide estuary – this was the boat that took us over to Lambay last year