Ireland day 1074. Friday 06 September 2024- Slow Progress

Today’s summary	A fairly low key day again. Pain, rash and lethargy slightly improved, but slow progress. Walked down the coast to Sutton with Val then caught the 102 bus back. On return, after a late lunch, I did a load more paperwork then in the evening we finished off beef casserole for dinner and watched some TV
Today’s weather	A beautiful warm sunny dry late summer day. Light north easterly wind. Appx 19c

Today’s overview location (The green 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): Slow sunny walk to Sutton

Commentary

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

The thing about being under weather is that you are meant to be patient while your body heals itself. I suppose that’s where the term “patient” comes from. Well I’m not. I get very impatient when things don’t immediately get better. So I was disappointed to find this morning that my shingles rash had only slightly diminished, that my shoulder and left side still hurt, and I was feeling unusually tired. Still, there are plenty of worse things that I could be suffering from, so I just gritted my teeth, rubbed in some Voltarol gel and got on with the day.

Val bears the brunt of my impatience I’m afraid but she just smiles when I snap, and brings me delicious things to eat. I am immensely grateful and I know her nursing is making a big difference to the way I feel which in turn must be aiding my recovery. So the day started with a fantastic breakfast in bed and went on from there.

Once we had got up and sorted ourselves out, we decided that as it was a lovely day outside, we would take a walk down the coast to Sutton. It’s a reasonably long walk (10km) for someone who’s a bit under the weather, but has the advantage of following more or less exactly the route of the 102, so if fatigue suddenly set in, I knew that I’d be able to beat a hasty retreat.

In the event, the emergency exit wasn’t needed and we enjoyed a beautifully sunny and relatively warm but leisurely walk down the coast. We made it to Sutton in just under 3 hours. We paused en route to enjoy the delights of St Marnock’s Church (ruined) and the local Lidl, then once we arrived at Sutton, we just had time to get a cup of tea and an almond croissant from the station café before the bus arrived and whisked us back to Malahide. Actually, it was a slow whisk as the traffic was very heavy and the journey seemed to take ages. Especially with the new added diversion to Portmarnock station (I was pleased to see, by the way, that this new stop was well used by alighting and joining passengers).

Once back at the flat, we had a late lunch of mackerel on toast, then I spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with some complicated admin matters (including – you guessed it – tax) and actually put my feet up for a while once I’d got through it. I’m please to report though that this time I managed not to fall asleep.

Well that’s enough for now. We were going to have a G&T this evening but I think that adding a hangover to my library of unusual symptoms probably wouldn’t be a good idea, so I’ll have to leave that pleasure, for now, exclusively in Val’s domain. Instead, I’ll enjoy beef casserole for dinner and perhaps a little more TV later on. Hopefully some more slow progress to report tomorrow.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Setting out with the beautiful Malahide Station windowboxes, and St Sylvester’s church behind us.	Brand new picnic tables have appeared alongside the Coast Road. The wood is immensely thick so hopefully robust enough to resist theft and vandalism

On the little path leading from the beach to the Strand Road behind Portmarnock golf hotel	Wild roses still in bloom, as well as being decorated with huge red rosehips (which a group of starlings were noisily chomping their way through)

Inspecting the ruins of St Marnock’s chuck – a little oasis of peace, away from the busy road	The centre aisle of Portmarnock Lidl. It’s always a voyage of discovery finding out what curiosities they have for sale. We were looking for plant fertilizer for our pot plants, but sadly it wasn’t in evidence

Breakfast in bed. My wife is worth her weight in gold