Ireland day 1303. Wednesday 23 April 2025- CCUS

Today’s summary	Spent the morning working on tax and updating myself on Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS). Finished off the monkfish for lunch then in the afternoon walked down to Howth. By chance separately met and chatted with two friends from Spanish class along the way. Returned by DART and bus. Half prize pop-pop meal for dinner then went to the airport at 10pm to pick up Val from her London flight.
Today’s weather	Dry with some sun in the morning and light cloud in the afternoon. Persistent chilly south easterly wind. Appx 12c

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): Short route to Howth

Commentary

With Val being away until the evening, I had pretty much the whole day to do as I pleased. So I decided I’d start on a high note by paying our (Irish) tax. As a fun entertainment it ranks right up there with root canal work, but at least it’s done now so now I just need to start on our UK returns. But that can wait a few weeks I think. There’s only so much fun you can have, after all.

Once I’d got that out of the way, I spent a few hours reading up on Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS). It used to be an area worked in, so I’m always curious to keep up in developments. Progress does seem to be getting made, but it’s painfully slow.

By this time, I was ready for lunch so I reheated the leftover monkfish tail from yesterday, and served it with some salad. Very wholesome.

The weather was looking quite good outside (in other words – it wasn’t raining) so I thought I’d go out and make the most of it. After thinking through my library of “walks from Malahide to suit all occasions” I chose a quick excursion to Howth, taking a route over the hill and down through Portmarnock, Baldoyle and Sutton. It’s a reasonable leg-stretch without being so long as to take up the whole day, and there’s a decent mixture of a hill climb and a flat coastal sections.

I really enjoyed the walk, despite the cold headwind that accompanied me for much of the way. Aside from being intrinsically quite interesting, and especially so in the spring, by chance I separately bumped into two friends from the Spanish class along the way. Both were, like me, enjoying the bright afternoon, and I stopped to have a chat with them. Largely, I have to admit, to decry the unnecessary complexity of the Subjunctive in the Spanish language. Anyway it certainly added a bit of fun to the walk.

Eventually, after a couple of hours, I made it to Howth where I treated myself to a cup of coffee and a slice of tea brack at Insomnia. Once re-charged, I returned to Malahide via the DART and the 102 bus. I dropped into SuperValu as I passed, and was back in the flat soon after 6pm.

I was hungry again by now, so I defrosted a half-price Tesco pop-pop sweet and sour chicken meal that I’d had in the freezer, and rounded it off with some yogurt. And now it’s time to put my feet up for a few minutes, before setting off out again. I’m heading back to the airport to pick Val up from her London flight, which lands at 10:15pm. It will be nice to have her around again!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


On the recently re-lined playing fields near the top of Paddy’s Hill	Down on the Baldoyle Greenway – you might just be able to spot a heron in the middle of the picture, by the pond

Development seems to have stopped on this construction spanning Burrow beach at Sutton. Engineers have been working on it for the last several weeks when I’ve walked by, but I still have no idea what it is	Refreshments at the end!



*First of the Lords-And-Ladies (Arum Maculatum) to make it into thermogenic mode this year*