Ireland day 1248. Thursday 27 February 2025- Back!

Today’s summary	Settling back into life in Ireland. Trying to stick to the early to bed and early to get up routine. Did the unpacking and some other chores then light lunch of soup. In the afternoon went on a stroll round the demesne with Val and had mushroom aioli and focaccia tapas for dinner. Watched “Mad Men” in the evening.
Today’s weather	Dry bright and sunny. Light north westerly wind. Appx 9c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Back round the demesne

Commentary

Today was a day of adjustment – the contrast between warm dry and sunny Fuerteventura and cool, wet and windy (but green!) Ireland is quite marked and takes some accommodating. But we did get off on a good note by getting up having just one cup of tea in bed, then getting up before 8 am and – later in the day – by going to bed earlier than our normal habit. Let’s see how long we can manage to keep this post-Fuerteventura resolution up!

Once we had finished virtue-signalling our early morning to each other, we got on with the normal post-holiday jobs. Unpacking, washing, cooking (in Val’s case) and dealing with a mountain of paperwork (in my case). Eventually, that was all done and we marked the midpoint of the day with a bowl of soup and some oatcakes.

Later, in the afternoon, we went out for our usual stroll around the demesne. In complete contrast to yesterday’s disastrously bad weather on our arrival, today turned out to be nice and sunny. Plus the fact that the sun is setting at least 90 minutes later now than it was at midwinter, so it was an altogether pleasant sojourn.

For dinner, in a throwback to Canarian times, Val made a delicious mushroom-and-focaccia tapas, with fabulous aioli sauce. A perfect light accompaniment to a light day – now to be rounded off with some light viewing on Netflix. Probably actually the last episode of the first series of “Mad Men”, which we are enjoying enormously.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Cherry blossom at the entrance to the demesne. Not Japanese in quantity but pretty nevertheless	Someone feeling happy on the perimeter path!

Unfortunately the stag’s head carving up by the castle seems to be succumbing to a fungal infection. Looks like it could do with some urgent treatment	*Flowering quince (Chaenomeles japonica) by the Avoca courtyard entrance. It’s related to the fruiting quince, from which membrillo paste is made*



My favourite tree, standing high and mighty as usual, in the autumn sunshine. Nice to see some green, too, after a fortnight of desert!