Ireland day 1182. Monday 23 December 2024- Xmas Mayo 3

Today’s summary	Drove back to Malahide to pick up the Canadian family contingent from the airport. Dinner at the Greedy Goose then overnight in the flat and back to Mayo tomorrow. James and Katie have 24 hours of parent- free time in the cottage!
Today’s weather	Rain in the morning then heavily overcast and thick drizzle all day. Moderate south westerly wind. Appx 12c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

After just 45 hours in An Teach Ban (our cottage – featured in the banner image at the top of the blog) it was time for Val and I to pay a flying visit back to Malahide. We are picking up Rob (our younger son) from the airport on his arrival from Canada via London.

So we had a morning all together in the cottage, then James and Katie set off to explore Westport while we jumped back into the Yaris and headed off down the N5 and N4 to Dublin. The drive was straightforward though much busier than on the way out. The traffic, rain and general gloom made it quite hard work in places. But we were back by about 5pm so Val nipped out to the shops while unpacked the car. We had discovered there was quite a lot of stuff that we had taken to the cottage that we didn’t actually need, so we brought it back to save effort and space when we return to Malahide the next time, at the end of our holiday.

We just had time to fit in a cup of tea, then it was off to the airport to pick up Rob. We have a table booked at “The Greedy Goose” for 9pm, and I’m sure we will find time for some quick refreshment beforehand too. So lots to look forward this evening, before we flit off once again to Mayo in the morning for the main Christmas celebrations. Onwards and upwards!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Looking south to where Croagh Patrick should be. It wasn’t there today..	This unassuming shed in the back garden is the well-house. Inside is all the equipment for drawing fresh water into our cottage. When we arrived, we soon discovered that there was no water in our cottage so a bit of engineering investigation was required to sort out the problem. It turned out that the water pump had been switched off in the shed – once the switch was flipped, normal service was resumed

View over Stonehenge north to Clew Bay this morning. Much more murky than yesterday, but the sea also looked a lot calmer



Staunton’s – our local pub, just 100 metres from the cottage