Ireland day 1279. Sunday 30 March 2025- Sunny Tolka

Today’s summary	Went into Dublin with Val this morning. She went to Grafton Street to do some shopping and I met up with Walking Club friends at Ashtown for a coffee. They went off to do a different walk and I went down the Tolka Valley park to the Botanics via Glasnevin cemetery. Met Val at the Botanics for roast beef Sunday lunch. Bus and train back to Malahide then some TV and light snack for dinner
Today’s weather	Sunny and dry all day. Light north westerly wind. Appx 14c

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): Ashtown to Botanics via Tolka Valley

Commentary

What a difference a day makes! It might at least have been gratifying if today was as grotty, weather wise, as yesterday. That way, I wouldn’t have felt quite so cheated when I woke up this morning and looked outside. But it wasn’t to be. The sky was clear blue and the sun was shining (despite the loss of an hour’s sleep because of the clocks change). So I was denied the simple satisfaction of knowing that if we we had gone to the Cooleys a day later, the weather would have been just as bad.

Anyway, you can’t miss a good day in Ireland so once we were organised, Val and I jumped onto a train and set off to Dublin. Val was going over to Grafton Street to do some shopping, and I was off to Ashtown to join some Walking Club friends for a coffee.

I met up with the group at the Douglas and Kaldi café, near Ashtown station, and caught up on all the news for a few minutes. But today, rather than walking with the group, I had decided that I wanted to walk down the Tolka Valley, through the park and via Glasnevin Cemetery, to the Botanics.

The Tolka Park was looking sparkling today, with spring greens and an azure sky. It’s a long, relatively narrow park , and always seems a bit under-used. But for me, that was great as I had pretty much the whole place to myself as I walked down-river. Maybe it was a bit quieter than usual today because it was also the Dublin half marathon this morning. Though I think that should have been well finished by the time I passed through.

After the park, I made my way through the cemetery – though I didn’t linger as cemeteries are not my favourite places. I sought out the Glasnevin entrance to the Botanics at the far corner and crossed figuratively from the land of the dead to the land of the living. It was busy in the gardens today, which wasn’t surprising as it was a lovely day and the flowers were stunning. The Botanics a great asset for the city and it’s good to see so many Dubliners making the most of it. I inspected the greenhouses, as I always do, then Val texted to say she had finished shopping and was going to meet me in the garden café for lunch.

She duly pitched up soon after, and we enjoyed a delicious roast beef lunch together. We won’t need to eat for a week! After another look around the garden, we caught a no 83 bus to Tara Street and then a couple of DARTs back to Malahide. I say a “couple” because we first took a Howth train and changed at Connolly onto a later Malahide train. In the gap between trains, we escaped to the station Pret take-away to get a couple of cups of tea.

Once back at the flat, we just had snacks for dinner then watched some of the Netflix drama “Adolescence” that everyone is talking about. Not sure what to make of it yet. More on that later in the week, perhaps. Anyway, for now I must stop, as there is TV to be watched and an early start to prepare for tomorrow.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Fascinating sand-based adhesion system on a DART waiting in Malahide station	Entrance cottages either side of the way in to the Botanic Gardens on Botanic Road

This morning’s rendezvous spot. Well actually it was in the “Douglas & Kaldi” coffee shop across the other side of the railway line	Interestingly, the level crossing gates on this busy line are still opened and closed by hand

Strelitzias bringing a Mediterranean flavour to the greenhouse (even though actually they are from Southern Africa)	Trees in the Botanic Garden just coming into bud, with a soothing carpet of anemones at ground level

The Curvilinear Range – possibly my favourite building in Dublin (especially in the winter when it’s cold outside and warm inside)