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 | ||||
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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)
Interactive map
(Elevations corrected at GPS Visualizer: Assign DEM elevation data to coordinates )
Max elevation: 22 m
Min elevation: 0 m
Total climbing: 98 m
Total descent: -98 m
Total time: 01:46:12