Ireland day 1212. Wednesday 22 January 2025- Galanthus

Ireland day 1212. Wednesday 22 January 2025- Galanthus
Today’s summary In the morning, walked up to the castle botanic garden looking for snowdrops. Got coffee and cake at Avoca for lunch. In the afternoon Val went for a pedicure and I walked out to Centra. Evening enjoying a nice glass of red wine, finishing off the lentil curry, and watching “Mad Men”.
Today’s weather Overcast and dry all day. Almost no wind. Appx 6c
Today’s overview location
(The blue mark shows the location of my route)
Close-up location
(The blue 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):
Barometer Calibration Broadmeadow
Commentary

Yesterday both of us pushed ourselves to go further, faster in our quests to get fitter again. As a result of my efforts, I woke up with very stiff calves this morning. But my personal physio aka Val told me how to do some stretches – which really helped. So, being keen to keep the muscles going, albeit slowly, as soon as we had finished our cups of tea, we set off on a short walk.

As we hadn’t yet spotted any snowdrops popping their heads up this winter, we thought we would go to the Castle botanic garden and see if the Galanthus had put in appearance up there. Val, through her manifold connections, managed to negotiate us into the garden and – yes, we did see a few of the elusive snowdrops. But not the great drifts you sometimes see, and certainly nowhere near as many as last year. Perhaps they are a bit later this year and more will appear over the coming weeks. After all, it has been relatively cooler this year.

Once back at the flat, Val dashed out again for a pedicure and I, rather less glamorously, got my things together and went on a short stroll to recalibrate the altimeter on my Pixel 8 phone. To do this I needed to go to a spot that I knew was at zero meters above sea level. So I walked out to Centra through the Demesne and then back along the Broadmeadow lagoon. I found a suitable spot on the shore, held my phone at what I guessed was mean sea level, and set the barometric altimeter to zero. Let’s see how we get on.

Later, when we were both back in the flat, we opened a nice bottle of Lebanese red wine, and then finished off the lentil curry for dinner. The wine and curry made a good accompaniment to an episode of “Mad Men” and rounded off an altogether very rewarding day perfectly.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

Val having a joey moment The Talbot greenhouse and parterre
Centra- the home of Many Good Things,  including a nice coffee machine On the Broadmeadow shore – ideal spot to do a bit of barometric calibration
Distant view of the new Broadmeadow greenway viaduct.   Whilst the viaduct itself appears to have been completed, work on the access routes seems to have ground to a halt.   Well at least all the diggers have gone from the Malahide side, anyway.   Hoping it won’t be too long before it’s finished Rather nice bottle of “Musar Jeune”, from the Lebanon.   It’s a nice wine – a shame that the difficult situation over there prevents viticulture really taking off
A few hardy roses were still bravely flowering in a sheltered spot near the café in the Castle botanic garden
Interactive map

(Elevations corrected at  GPS Visualizer: Assign DEM elevation data to coordinates )

Total distance: 7429 m
Max elevation: 22 m
Min elevation: 0 m
Total climbing: 98 m
Total descent: -98 m
Total time: 01:46:12
Download file: Keeping-moving-compressed-corrected.gpx

You can read earlier and later days’ blogs below

Previous day’s blog
Next day’s blog
Ireland home page

 Save as PDF