Ireland day 1226. Wednesday 05 February 2025- Howth Recce

Today’s summary	Spent the morning cleaning and tidying the flat, and preparing dinner. Then took the bus to Sutton and recce’d a walk round Howth that I’m leading this Sunday. Once back in the flat afterwards, I finished off making dinner and then went to the airport to meet Val. Lovely to have her back! Spent the evening having dinner and watching “Mad Men”
Today’s weather	Brilliantly clear and sunny all day. Light westerly wind. Appx 8c. A perfect day.

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): Howth Medium Walk recce

Commentary

There’s nothing like having your wife coming back home to galvanise you into action! So, as Val makes her grand entry into Malahide this evening, I was up early this morning, busily cleaning and tidying a generally trying to make the flat look respectable. I also started preparing the vegetables for tonight’s dinner (no pop pop meals today!) and got the lamb ready to go in the oven. I’m very slow at peeling and chopping, so I thought I might as well get started in the morning, to avoid a last minute rush later.

Eventually all that was done. So I sought out my OAP travel pass, and headed down to the bus stop to await the arrival of 102. On the way, I dropped down to the recycling machine in the SuperValu basement, and disposed of all our bottles and cans so I could cash in the deposits. Almost enough to pay my bus fare! (Well it would have been if I didn’t already have a free bus pass).

The bus turned up more or less on time and sped me on my way to Sutton. My objective today was to recce the route of a walk I’m leading for the Club on Sunday.

I got lucky with the weather today. And after being soaked and battered on the last recce (Glenbride on Sunday), it felt well earned. I really enjoyed the walk today. There was hardly anybody about, the views were spectacular, and the path was in reasonable condition.

My original intention had been to go right round Howth headland on the Cliff walk, but after checking out the route and thinking about the likely walkers on Sunday, I devised an alternative route to complete the loop for the return leg to Howth. This route avoids some of the steeper and more exposed sections of the cliff path, as well as being a few km shorter.

It worked out well. My route was about 12km and took just under three hours. On Sunday, I’ll cut off the leg back to Sutton, and finish the walk at Howth station. That should just about be right for a Club “medium” walk.

Once back at Sutton , I had a 20 minute wait for a bus – which was fine by me as it gave me long enough to get a coffee and croissant from the station café.

I called in briefly to Tesco once I got back to Malahide, then beat a retreat to the flat and finished off dinner preparations. Then, after a quick shower and a cup of tea, I drove over to the airport to pick up Val. It was great to have her back! We spent the evening catching up on all the news from the last couple of weeks, enjoying our roast lamb, and resuming our viewing of “Mad Men” on Netflix.

An altogether excellent day all round.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The start of many good walks – the no 102 at Sutton Station, alongside the coffee shop	On the top of Shielmartin Hill, overlooking the Sutton Tombolo.

Heading through the golf course and watching out for Identified Flying Objects	Is it a pub? Is it a railway station? Actually it’s both – you access Howth DART stationby walking straight through the (gruesome-ly named) Bloody Stream pub

Ireland’s Eye and Burrow Beach looking a bit Hockney-esque	This felt well-earned at the end of the walk!

This cow blocking the path didn’t seem in the least bit perturbed by my presence. I’m sure I could just have pushed it out of the way! (But I took the rather safer approach of walking round)