Ireland day 1214. Friday 24 January 2025- Videocalling

Today’s summary	Stayed in the flat most of the day while Storm Éowyn battered the outside world. Had a succession of video calls to four separate friends in the UK and also a couple of calls to Val. Went on a short walk in the evening to assess storm damage (one tree down and rail line closed) then another video call (with family) in the evening
Today’s weather	Stormy with occasional showers. Cleared and calmer in the evening. Storm to severe storm south westerly winds. Appx 7c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The orange 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): Checking on Eowyn

Commentary

It’s been a bit of an unusual day today. With Val being away, and Storm Éowyn keeping everyone indoors, it could have felt rather solitary. But, by accident rather than by design, I had arranged to chat to no fewer than four of my friends back in the UK, so I had the best part of six hours of back-to-back videoconferencing to fill all the morning and half of the afternoon. We are certainly getting value for money from our internet connection! In between it all, I also checked in with Val a couple of times too. Then, to top it all, three friends from the Walking Club separately got in touch to ask me to help them recce walks, and another friend in the UK asked me to fix up a video call in a week’s time. So I didn’t feel isolated at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

But Storm Éowyn appears to have been wreaking havoc in the British Isles, and particularly here in Ireland. The strongest wind in Irish recorded history was measured in Co. Galway in the early hours of this morning, and thousands have suffered power, water and internet outages. We seem to have got away lightly here – I was fully expecting to waken to a power cut this morning, but all was working normally. Apart, that is, for the railway which was strangely quiet. I later learned that all railway lines in Ireland were closed until noon today, but the east coast line through Malahide didn’t reopen until later this evening, while fallen trees were being removed.

The wind was really getting up when I went to bed about midnight last night, but when I awoke briefly around 2 am, it was uncannily quiet outside. Yet this morning when I awoke, the wind was raging again. So I guess the calm interlude last night was when eye of the storm passed right overhead. All very meteorologically interesting, even though I was indoors for almost all of it.

By late afternoon, the winds had dropped and I felt the need to escape the confines of the flat. I wandered down to the shops – which were mostly open again now – and managed to pick up a half price pop-pop boeuf bourguignon which I had for dinner. After the shopping, I walked over the “secret” hill to see if any storm damage was in evidence – and indeed there was. One of the large evergreens near the pathside had blown down and was completely blocking the route (fortunately I managed to walk around it). It was a big tree, and it must have been quite a spectacular collapse. A bit of a shame, though, as it was a nice specimen. But everything has its time and place, I suppose.

Once back in the flat and when I’d had my “boeuf”, I had another quick call with a family member in Canada, spoke briefly again to Val, and then finished off the evening with my book. A very unusual but interesting day!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Railway station shut up and in darkness this afternoon. There were two Iarnród Éireann engineers on the platform who told me the line was “completely blocked” by fallen trees which were expected to take “quite a long time to clear”. The line eventually reopened in mid-evening	View from the top of the “Secret” hill looking over towards Dublin Airport

The path over the “secret” hill was completely blocked by this fallen tree (the same one, from a different angle, is in the banner image at the top)	Signs like this appeared on shops and offices throughout Malahide town centre today – this one was at Tesco



Two heavy-duty repair engines appeared to be hard at work doing something to the tracks on the Dublin side of Malahide station. I couldn’t tell exactly what they were doing from my viewpoint on the bridge, though