Ireland day 1294. Monday 14 April 2025- Swords Aldi

Today’s summary	Val and I walked round the coast to do some discount shopping at Aldi in Swords. Had a picnic lunch in the castle then (free!) bus back to Malahide afterwards. Saved quite a lot compared to Dunnes etc. Noodles and beer for dinner, then “Mad Men”, as usual.
Today’s weather	High cloud but mainly bright and dry with some sun. Moderate southerly wind. Appx 12c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue 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): Coast walk to Aldi Swords

Commentary

We got a shock last Thursday when we bought our Marks and Spencer takeaway dinner from the Applegreen petrol station. While €20 for a half price meal was outrageous, it was a much-needed reminder of just how expensive everyday living has become. We have rather slipped into the habit of buying “nice” things from Dunnes and our costs have been creeping up unnoticed.

Anyway, decided to do something about that today and to head to one of the cut-price supermarkets (Aldi in this case) to do our shopping. Unfortunately there isn’t one here in Malahide – one of the nearest is a little way inland, at Swords.

So we decided to combine fresh air and exercise with cost-saving, and to walk along the Broadmeadow coast path to reach Swords by the scenic route.

It was a good choice. The weather was pleasant, the grass was green, and the trees were a vibrant fresh leafy green. A thoroughly enjoyable stroll (although the wind was quite cold). Once we arrived in Swords, we found our way eventually to Aldi (it’s hidden behind a building site) and did our shopping. We also picked up some lunch (almond croissant ¢99 instead of €4 from a café) which we enjoyed at a picnic table in the castle keep.

As the wind was quite chilling (yes I’m still wearing my shorts!) we moved on as soon as we’d finished eating, and walked to the town centre to catch the 102 back Malahide (free with my bus pass!!)

For dinner, Val made a tasty noodles dish from her Meera Sodha cookery book. We washed it down with some Aldi beers (€1.99 a bottle and quite decent) while we caught up on the latest developments with the Mad Men. In between it all we fitted in a video call with family in Canada, too.

A pretty satisfying day. Saving money doesn’t have to be miserable!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Malahide Yacht Club – and judging from the flags I’d say it was probably pretty good day for yachting	Banks of smelly Alexanders lining the estuary coast. It’s rapidly becoming an invasive weed

Pretty alternating pink and white cherry trees alongside the Estuary Road roundabout	Spanish bluebells on the right and native (or more probably hybrid) bluebells on the left. you can quite easily see the difference in size

Aldi was hidden somewhere behind these colourful murals, which were hiding some massive building works between us and the shops	Lunch! (Cut price, of course, courtesy of Aldi)

Entering the Keep