Ireland day 1086. Wednesday 18 September 2024- The Island

Today’s summary	Lovely to have Val back so we spent the morning chatting and catching up on the news. In the afternoon we drove over to the other side of the estuary first to look at Jones’ Garden Centre (for a cup of tea) and then on to Portrane Peninsula AKA Corballis Beach AKA The Island. Took a refreshing loop walk round the peninsula then came back to enjoy fish for tea. A really relaxing day – will definitely aid recovery
Today’s weather	Dry sunny and bright. Light easterly wind. Appx 17c

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): Corballis Island Portrane

Commentary

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

Well I suppose I better start with the routine shingles update. Actually there’s not a lot to say. Everything is pretty much the same as it was yesterday – including the painful night which miraculously still allowed me to get three hours continuous sleep. Anyway, I’m going to discontinue these updates for the time being, as they are dispiriting to write and read. I’ll add a report when anything notable happens. By the way, my chin is healing well and I have the stitches out on Friday, which is partial progress, at least.

The main feature of today was that Val was back and it’s been great having her to chat to and to make me far more delicious meals than I seem able to produce on my own. So we spent the morning catching up on the news and discussing the future. By the time we’d finished, it was lunchtime and we enjoyed some nice (and healthy) sardines on toast while the sun streamed in through the French windows.

We have both decided to dial-down our activities for a few days -the past weeks have been busy and we both needed to catch up a bit – quite aside from me recovering from my various ailments. So after lunch, we took the car out and Val drove us over to the other side of the Broadmeadow estuary where we called in at Jones’, which is just about the only garden centre in the area that we haven’t visited. We bought some bird food for our new balcony adornment, and of course had a cup of tea in the café.

From there we drove on to the end of the end of the Balcarrick Road and parked up by the Shoreline Hotel. That was the starting point for our walk along the shore of what is variously known as Portrane Peninsula, Corballis beach, or The Island. There’s a nice easy route which runs to the end of the peninsula before looping back through the dunes, and we decided to follow that today.

It was thoroughly enjoyable and perfect for recovery – lots of fresh air but not too strenuous as it’s completely flat. There were very few people about and the tide was out, so it felt like we had virtually the whole of the beach to ourselves.

Suitably exercised, and not too wind-blown, we returned to the car and drove back to Malahide. It’s more fish for dinner and then perhaps another episode of “House of the Dragon” to round off the evening. Then, if I can’t sleep later on, Val has brought a pile of interesting books back with her which I’ll look forward starting. We are really doing our best to make the best of everything!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Lambay hovering, as always	Really nice to have Val back again (note the wounded chin!)

The people on the other side of the stream are three hours walk away. Yes, really (look at the map)	*There’s a lot of sea-holly (Eryngium maritimum) growing at the end of the peninsula. This was a particularly attractive example*



Jones garden centre, just off the Hearse Road near the M1 junction. Being of a certain age, we had to visit of course