Ireland day 1112. Monday 13 October 2024- Chores and Walk

Today’s summary	Spent the morning on tax and other admin matters then after a super healthy lunch of roast chicken and tomatoes, we went on our usual walk over the hill and down to the beach for a cup of tea from the Spar shop. Beans on toast for dinner
Today’s weather	Dry bright and sunny most of the day. Almost no wind. Appx 13c

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): Hill Coast and Tea

Commentary

If I got a cent for every time I had moaned about tax in this blog, I think I would have earned enough to pay off my tax bill in its entirety by now. Anyway, today was another of those days when tax preoccupied me. I tried to figure the problem out and only partially managed to solve it. Hopefully a full resolution will eventually be achievable over the coming days.

There was also some other admin to be dealt with this morning once I’d taken the tax as far as I could, and by the time I’d finished it all, it was already lunchtime. Val pulled together a tasty and healthy chicken salad, which we both enjoyed greatly. By the time we had finished, it was still sunny outside so we decided to delay no longer before going out and enjoying the day.

We didn’t have a specific route in mind when we set off but we soon gravitated to our “go to” hill and coast walk, which today we enhanced with a cup of tea from the Spar shop at Portmarnock. We enjoyed our refreshments sitting in the sun on the beach, marvelling at the fact that today, as only happens very rarely, there was almost no wind.

Eventually, evening started to creep up on us so we got up, and set off back up the coast to Malahide. Along the way, I was delighted to see that the new toilet bock on Malahide beach appeared to have been finished a last – well at least the temporary fence surrounding it had been removed. You can see the finished result in the banner image at the top of this blog. Anyway, as an early adopter I felt compelled to try out this amazing new facility. But you can imagine my sense of disappointment at finding, on closer approach, that the cubicle doors were all locked shut, with small “closed” notices stuck onto them. Ah well, I will just have to save that pleasure for another day.

The rest of the walk was uneventful, just punctuated by a brief stop at SuperValu to buy some bread. Now it’s time to make the beans on toast for dinner, before hopefully finally settling down to catch up on some more inoffensive but enjoyable Chef’s Table videos on Netflix.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Sun in our eyes! On the hurling field just across the road in the demesne	Thousands upon thousands of razor shells washed up in a cove at the north end of Portmarnock Strand. They crunch when you walk on them – which I don’t like at all!

Rocky strata exposed by the low tide	Looking back on Portmarnock beach. Tragically, a swimmer was drowned here last Monday afternoon. I was actually on the beach at about the time it must have happened, which makes it doubly shocking

Val striding out with the Martello in her sights	Val identified this small, smart bird as a Meadow Pipit. Exactly like a cross between a robin and a thrush

Healthy lunch (plus remote control)