Ireland day 1136. Thursday 07 November 2024- Back To It!

Today’s summary	Back into the Irish routine today. Cups of tea as usual first thing then shopping and odd jobs before an early lunch of a Tesco meal deal. Val started back at “Wonderlights” at noon and I went back to the shops to get the ingredients for a beef casserole. Prepared it and got it in the oven then had a 90 minute video call with a friend in Houston. Then moved on to the Spanish homework and had a quick walk before returning to heat up left-over Thai meal for dinner. Val back at 10pm
Today’s weather	Overcast with a few spots of rain in the morning but otherwise dry. Light south easterly wind. Appx 14c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Evening Malahide Hidden Hill walk

Commentary

Well we’re back in Ireland now and have hit the ground running.

We started in time-honoured fashion with a couple of cups of tea in bed, then got ourselves up and set about our various tasks. Val got some washing on then I made the first of three trips to the shops to buy a couple of Tesco meal-deals for lunch (neither of us had time or inclination to start making sandwiches). By the time we had eaten, it was already late morning and Val whizzed off on the Brompton folding bike that I’d serviced earlier, ready for her first rendezvous back at “Wonderlights” at the castle at noon. She’s up there 3 or 4 afternoons and evenings a week from now until mid December. I am full of admiration for her steely determination to keep on working, especially on these cold dark Autumn nights.

Once Val was off to work, I made the second of my trips to the shops – this time to Kerrigans and SuperValu to get the ingredients for a beef casserole I’m making. The idea is to have a big vat of ready-made dinner on standby, to save the effort of having to make everything from scratch all the time. Once back and armed with my shopping, I set to and prepared the casserole and got it in the oven. If it turns out OK after a long slow cook, I might make another one tomorrow.

As soon as the cooking was underway, I started a video catch up with my friend in Houston. We spent at least 90 minutes chatting, and as always it was a very therapeutic session, and a great opportunity to put the world to rights.

As soon I’d finished that, I started on the first part of my Spanish homework. I tackled the audio – always the hardest section – today and left the written exercises till tomorrow. It took me fully an hour to do it, even though my ear was supposedly attuned to Spanish after having been immersed in it for the last ten days. Sigh. I guess learning a language is just sheer hard work and takes a very long time.

Eventually, deberes was despatched and I felt the need to liberate myself from the computer. So I headed off on a short walk in the evening darkness, up over the Hidden Hill, and back through the town. As I passed by the shops, I dropped in for the third time, to pick up lunches for tomorrow (you have to plan ahead) and some potatoes to accompany the casserole.

Anyway, the casserole is for tomorrow. Right now, it’s going to be reheated Thai takeaway left over from last night for my dinner tonight. So I’m going to get the microwave pinging then perhaps catch up on a couple of travel YouTubes before Val reappears at 10pm. I think we shall both soon feel like we are in need of another holiday!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Beef casserole – should keep us going for the next few days!	Autumn colours in full swing now, but in a few days it will be winter-bare

On the way up St Margaret’s Road – the back route to Church Road	The secret is out! This is how I spend the evenings (by the way I was shocked at the price of potatoes – €4.15 for 2kg: seems a bit excessive to me)



From the top of the Hidden Hill. The new blocks of flats certainly have great views though I don’t know anything about the quality of the build