Ireland day 1107. Wednesday 09 October 2024- Indulgence

Today’s summary	Decided to continue the theme of low-key existence today, so stayed in Malahide. In the morning, Val went on a run while I had a video call with a friend in France and dealt with an unexpected financial matter. Then decided to go to the Grand Hotel for lunch and followed up with a stroll round the Talbot Botanic Gardens at Malahide castle. Vegetarian rolls for dinner and some TV later in the evening
Today’s weather	Overcast but dry. Light northerly wind. Appx 12c

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): Indulgent hotel and garden walk

Commentary

This morning I received a letter which could be deemed as either depressing news or exciting, depending on your viewpoint. As a spoiler-alert, I decided to take the more positive approach.

But before I come to that, I started the day with a nice video call with a friend in France. He moved abroad just a few months before we did, so our foreign immersion trajectories – dealing with bureaucracy, making new friends, and integrating – have a lot in common. He does have the additional challenge of having to do it all in a foreign language but he did also admit that living somewhere that was dry 90% of the time was “rather nice”. Ah well, I’m sure Ireland is a lot greener.

Moving on. My equivocal postal message this morning had been sent to me by the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions. It announced that, as I am to be sixty six in December, I will shortly be entitled to an old age [UK] state pension. Payback I suppose for those National Insurance contributions I made all the years I was working. But as I am currently living outside the UK, the process doesn’t happen automatically, so I needed to call the Department to set it up.

I rang the number in the letter and after an admittedly quite a lengthy period on-hold, I got through a very nice Agent (it turned out she was just up the road, in Belfast, actually) who sorted everything out for me. All being well, I should start getting paid next February. The whole thing was a bit of a surprise, I suppose, as I never really think about myself being “old age” and so entitled to a pension. Nevertheless, I guess it will come in handy as inflation seems to be eating away relentlessly at all our other income streams.

Buoyed up by this early birthday present, we immediately set off to the Grand Hotel to start spending it. OK I know I don’t actually get anything for months yet, but there’s nothing like taking the waiting out of wanting. We had a light (aka healthy) lunch and lingered over our coffee while watching the world go by as “old age pensioners” are supposed to do.

But that was only good for so long – we soon started to get itchy feet so we paid the bill, left the hotel, and marched off down the road towards the Castle. We felt in need of a bit of warmth and floral colour, as the temperatures start to fall and leaves drop all around us. So we went up to the Visitor Centre, where Val had a long chat with her occasional colleagues (she’s working up there tomorrow, incidentally) and then entered the Talbot Botanic Garden. We wanted to have a look round the gardens and to immerse ourselves in the faux-Mediterranean climate of the greenhouses.

It’s only relatively small for a botanic garden, but it’s nicely laid out and was largely the work of the last Lord Talbot (who died in 1973 in “mysterious” circumstances – but that’s another story) and his sister Rose. There are lots of rare specimens from the southern hemisphere – a nod to the Talbots’ other main residence in Malahide, Tasmania.

We particularly enjoyed the flowers and butterflies in the greenhouses, and the peace and quiet as there were hardly any other visitors today. In fact I think the gardens were looking as nice as I have ever seen them in the three-plus years that we have been visiting. Eventually, by the time we had finished mosey-ing around, it was nearly 5:30 so we left hastily lest we were accidentally locked in (mind you an overnight in the beautifully warm butterfly house wouldn’t really have been a hardship!).

Once back in the flat afterwards, we finished off the Seeni Sambol vegetarian rolls, then settled down to watch “Chef’s Table” on Netflix. So, all in all a bit of a day of lazy indulgence, with a big surprise thrown in along the way. But all in all, very enjoyable.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Checking out the menu in the Matt Ryan bar at the Grand Hotel. I think this is what we retirees are supposed to do for lunch	Looking south down the rail line. Iarnród Éireann have been reballasting the tracks at night for the last two weeks and are scheduled to continue work until the end of October. It does sometimes wake us up but usually we can sleep through it with earplugs. I do wish they would hurry up and finish though. Memo to self – never buy a flat near a railway (much less a railway station)

Here we are in the Talbot gardens. Large as life and twice as lovely, in our matching blue waterproofs	Seed pods of Stinking Iris (iris foetedissima). It’s a bit of an unfortunate name, really, as the plant has beautiful blue flowers in the early summer and the “stink” comes from the leaves which when crushed actually smell like roast beef. In fact it’s sometimes called the roast-beef plant, which is altogether more generous

There’s an impressive array of Sarracenia (trumpet pitcher plants – they are insectivorous) in a locked greenhouse. In fact I think it might actually be the national reference collection. They are originally from America but some have escaped and have set up home in the Irish bogs. I’ve never seen one though.	Malahide castle standing solid in the grey-on-grey evening light

Beautiful passionflower in the old Peach House in the Talbot Botanic Gardens. There are several species and varieties of Passiflora which look like this and I am not certain exactly which one this is