Ireland day 1154. Monday 25 November 2024- Clutch

Today’s summary	Got up early and took the Yaris over to the Tadg Riordan garage in Ashbourne to have a new clutch fitted. Caught the 197 and 102 back to Malahide then did some shopping and walked over to the garden centre to get some potting compost while Val had her second Shingrix vaccination. After a salad lunch of smoked mackerel, we went on a short walk round the Ard na Mara estate to admire the bungalows. Beef casserole for dinner then Val spent the evening recovering from the vaccination and I watched some TV
Today’s weather	Dry and bright with plenty of sun. Moderate westerly wind. Appx 7c

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): Garden Centre and Ard na Mara

Commentary

For some time now I’ve been noticing a peculiar effect when driving the Yaris. You put your foot down to accelerate, the engine revs up, but nothing actually happens. The speed slowly climbs and with the engine straining and whining and sounding rather like an automatic. Even to my untrained ear I could tell something was wrong and it didn’t take much to realise that the clutch was slipping. As we have quite a lot of driving coming up, I thought we better get it fixed, lest it should let us down in the middle of the Christmas holidays and stranded somewhere inconvenient.

So I booked the car into Tadg Riordan Toyota garage in Ashbourne today, and got up early (yuck) to make sure I got it there by 8:30 am. I dropped the car off without problem – only to be left with the happy news from the service desk that the cost was likely to be “well over” €1000 (yuck again). The garage told me the car would be ready later this evening (the actually called about 5pm to tell me I could go and collect it), but I decided to leave it in car-hospital overnight and to go back tomorrow to pick it up.

Getting back from Ashbourne is always a bit of a slow process – the 197 bus to Swords and the 102 from there to Malahide. The whole journey took me about an hour and a half, with lots of very chilly hanging round at cold bus-stops. Anyway I eventually made it back for about 10:15am and, as Val had was out and about in town, I relaxed briefly over a cup of tea.

Suitably refreshed, when Val got back we promptly turned round and went back into town, where Val was getting part 2 of her Shingrix (shingles) vaccination and I needed to get some ingredients for lunch and dinner. Just time for a coffee afterwards, then Val was out again for a couple of hours so I used the time to walk over to the garden centre to get some potting compost. In my gardening extravaganza a few days ago, I had used up all the compost and didn’t have enough to do my lily. So I corrected that today.

When we were both back, Val rustled up a delicious smoked mackerel salad for lunch, after which we decided to make the most of the daylight and go on another walk. This time we walked over to the remarkably bungaoid Ard na Mara estate, and then back via the Yellow Walls Road.

Once we made it back to the flat, Val was suffering a bit from the after effects of the injection, so she put her feet up while I made dinner. We’re having one of the beef casseroles I froze a couple of weeks ago, which should be tasty, nutritious and quick. Then I think Val is going to have a quiet evening recuperating while I pot up my lily and watch some TV. This is all sounding suspiciously like pensioner heaven. Tut tut.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The pitch-and-putt course in the demesne. Today it seemed to be more popular with oystercatchers and pigeons than with golfers	The castle, complete with sharply conical Christmas tree, on the right

Garden Centre – pensioners’ paradise	Val looking chilly at the entrance to the Ard na Mara estate – famed for its bungalows. Also pensioners’ paradise (and so convenient for the garden centre too!)

Cyclamen hederifolium, AKA Cyclamen neapolitanum, popping up under a tree in one of the verges in the Ard na Mara estate. It always surprises me how such delicate flowers can spring up in such seemingly inhospitable places	Lamp posts and bollards in the festive clothing, outside the Londis on the corner of Yellow Walls Road

The Wonderlights Ferris Wheel up in the castle demesne. Apparently, this very wheel starred in the film “Grease”