Ireland day 1259. Monday 10 March 2025- Preparations

Today’s summary	Got up early and went on a walk round the Demesne with Val. Coffee in the Pavilion café at the end. Drove down to Dunnes to do the shopping then snack lunch on return. Later, went on a stroll round the Marina and Val went on a run. More lamb casserole for dinner. TV in the evening and then early night.
Today’s weather	Dry and bright with long sunny spells. Moderate to strong north easterly wind. Appx 10c but cooling later.

Today’s overview location (The green 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): Demesne amble with Val

Commentary

We’ve got friends coming to stay for much of this week, so quite a lot of today was spent planning for their visit, then getting together everything we will need for their stay.

But we started off by getting up early – and for us that means any time before 8am. We were in bed early last night and I think I slept for a solid nine hours, so we were raring to go as soon as the sun showed its face.

After our statutory cups of tea, and before we started on chores, we decided to go out and enjoy the sunshine with a meander around the Demesne. It was very enjoyable and very spring-like, and we decided to finish it off with a coffee and croissant in the sun outside the Pavilion café.

Once back, we drew up a shopping list then drove down to Dunnes in Portmarnock to collect everything on our extensive register. We managed to find pretty much everything (except, strangely, sugar-cubes) then drove back fully laden to the flat. Soon enough, we got everything unpacked and we had a quick snacky-type lunch.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet, then Val decided to go off on a run, and I took a short stroll round the marina and along the shore. Actually – I was hoping to find a tennis ball that might have escaped from Malahide tennis club and ended up on the beach. We needed one, weirdly enough, for when tumble-drying down jackets. But there was nothing doing. It must be the pro’s playing today.

Once we were both back, we had some lamb casserole and mashed potato from the freezer for dinner. Finally, a bit of TV and an early night rounded off the evening. Well, not every day had to be extraordinary, and sometimes it’s quite nice when you have one that isn’t


Here we are – at the start of our walk around the demesne..	..and here we are again, enjoying our refreshments at the end

Val flying the flag for Malahide castle	Rooks seem to have set up home in one of the eucalyptus trees outside the castle

White periwinkle!	Blue periwinkle!

Colourful display outside the Pavilion café