Ireland day 1255. Thursday 06 March 2025- Dunnes

Today’s summary	Spent the morning sorting out some admin matters and on a video call to a friend in France. After lunch walked to Dunnes Portmarnock to return some defective coffee capsules. Returned via the coast then in the evening had a video call with Val, did some more admin and had a half price pop-pop meal for dinner. Finished off with Vancouver mountain videos and a podcast.
Today’s weather	Grey and drab but dry. Strong southerly wind. Appx 11c

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): Dunnes Portmarnock circuit

Commentary

In a way, today turned out to be a bit of a re-run of yesterday, minus the good weather. It was cold and grey-looking outside, so I didn’t have quite the same enthusiasm as yesterday, when I got up to make my cup of tea. But there was plenty to be getting on with, and once I’d surveyed the news over my breakfast, I set about tackling the day.

A mountain of washing seems to have appeared seeming out of nowhere – even though we have only been back from holiday for just over a week. So I put the first (of five!) loads on and then dialled into a video call with one of my friends in France (the call, in fact, that was postponed from yesterday).

That took me through to noon, at which point I was starting to feel hungry so opted to make an early lunch. I enjoyed some salmon cottage cheese and salad on a couple of those fancy crispbreads that I bought in Dunnes yesterday. They were very nice.

Talking of Dunnes, I have been having an ongoing email discussion with their customer support team about some coffee capsules I bought there a few weeks ago, but which don’t appear to work in my machine (despite the capsules being sold as “compatible”). Anyway, customer support agreed to refund me for the capsules (the princely sum of €2.50) but also asked me to return the capsules to my nearest Dunnes so they could test them to see what was wrong.

Anyway that defined the rest of my afternoon and constrained it to look somewhat similar to yesterday. Namely a walk up the hill and then down into Dunnes – where the nice lady on the front desk unhesitatingly gave me my money back and assured me they would let me know when the testing was complete. Whether they actually will or not I don’t know, but at least I have surfaced the problem.

I walked on down to the coast where I got a coffee and croissant at the Spar shop. I had hoped to sit on the beach to enjoy my refreshments but it was so cold I had to seek refuge in the bathing shelter. Even that turned out to be something of a wind-tunnel so I didn’t hang around and was soon on my way again.

One round the coast and back at the flat, I did the final loads of washing, attended to some more admin which had suddenly become urgent, and fitted in a quick video call to Val. Then I enjoyed a half price beef in black bean sauce pop-pop meal that I’d picked up at Tesco a couple of days ago (very nice, actually – especially as it cost less than the tiny cup of coffee I’d bought at the Spar earlier on).

Finally, there was just time to round off the day with another Vancouver mountain film, a podcast, and some of my book. So all in all, a pretty satisfying day, really.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Wheatfield Road, Portmarnock. Leads down from Paddy’s Hill to Dunnes on Wendell Avenue	Dunnes – apart from the slightly dubious coffee capsules, I quite like it. A bit like the UK’s Marks & Spencer, or Waitrose

Bathing shelter at Portmarnock. It was a bit of wind-tunnel, to be honest, so not a particularly relaxing spot to enjoy my coffee and croissant. The eerie complete absence of swimmers should have been a bit of a giveaway	Ireland’s Eye lurking out in the haze. A bit like Schrödinger’s cat, I assume it’s still there, even when I can’t see it

High Rock looking a bit battered. I wasn’t very surprised to see there were no bathers about today – even the hardy were seemingly put off by the cold wind and high waves	It’s back to Brent again!

Cheery celandine brightening up the undergrowth in the demesne woodlands. They are always one of the first of the spring wildflowers to show their colours as the days lengthen.