Ireland day 1178. Thursday 19 December 2024- Unusual Day

Today’s summary	Spent the morning at the funeral of the husband of a friend from the Walking Club. It was held at the Dardistown crematorium, near the airport. A sad occasion. In the afternoon, as soon as we had finished lunch, Val headed off to put in another shift at Wonderlights and I spent time investigating my Locus Maps app then took it on a night hike round Paddy’s Hill. Val back about 10pm then a bit of TV to wind down.
Today’s weather	Dry bright and sunny with a cold wind. Moderate north westerly wind. Appx 6c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The green 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): Paddys Hill following Locus route

Commentary

Today was an unusual day. Mostly because we spent the morning at a funeral. Although it’s the second funeral I’ve been to since we came to Ireland, they are not something I enjoy. But they are an important part of being a community. Today’s funeral was for the husband of a friend in the Walking Club, who died last weekend. It was held at the Dardistown crematorium, near the airport. A reasonably pleasant place, as these things go, and there were quite a few people there who we knew, so it was nice to have a catch up.

We didn’t linger after the service, as we had to get back to the flat so Val could prepare for Wonderlights. I reheated some of my famous frozen chicken casserole for lunch, then she dashed off at about 2:45, leaving me to my own devices.

I decided to use the time to do some more testing of my new Locus Maps / Pixel 8 combination, but before I could do that I had to spend a good hour and a half trying to understand how some of the functionality worked. I spent a particularly long time figuring out route planning – it took me a long time to work it out as it’s not particularly intuitive. But once I got the hang of it, it was reasonably straightforward. I think I just need to practice more in order to become competent. I also had a look at the tracking beacon function but that was too complicated for today so I’ll leave that to later.

Once I had managed to plot a route on the app, I thought I would take my technology out for a test run. I’d created a route over Paddy’s Hill to the beach at Portmarnock, and I decided to follow it. Generally the route following seemed to work well, although I’m not so sure about the spoken instructions. I think I’ll try and find a way of muting them. I do really like the fact that you can access the app, and take photographs, just by pressing on the physical on/off switch. This means you don’t need to unlock the phone to do the two most important things when you’re out hiking, so you can use it without taking your gloves off. A real bonus in Ireland!

I was back in the flat by about 7:30pm and I spent the rest of the evening sorting out my photos and GPX files and sharing them between my Pixel and Apple phones. It’s a shame they are deliberately designed to be as incompatible with each other as possible! Val was back from work at about 10pm, and we spent the rest of the evening chatting and watching a bit of TV

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Grounds of Dardistown crematorium and cemetery. A pleasant enough place, if these places can ever be pleasant	Out on my test walk checking out the art deco stairway, much photographed (by me) leading down onto Portmarnock Beach

Looking over the shore towards the lights of Howth, from the Coast Road	Approaching Malahide

The Green, Malahide	Back at the Casino!

Looking over to the Dublin skyline from the Robswall estate