Ireland day 1353. Thursday 12 June 2025- UK Visitor Day 4

Today’s summary	Did a few odd jobs in the morning then drove our guest to the airport to catch an afternoon flight. Went on from the airport to the Asia Market store in Ballymount to get some Japanese provisions. On return to Malahide, we relaxed, did the laundry, I packed my things for a hike tomorrow, and we had M&S pop-pop curry for dinner. Finished off with an episode of “Mad Men” before bed.
Today’s weather	Poured with rain non stop pretty much all day. Moderate southerly wind. Appx 14c

Today’s overview location (The red mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The red line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

Weather-wise, today was a complete washout. It was raining when we woke up, and it didn’t stop until mid evening, by which time it was starting to get dark. But that didn’t keep us from being busy.

After breakfast, my first task was to go down to Tesco to get a few essentials. Most importantly, perhaps, a packed lunch ready for a walk I’m going on tomorrow. On my return, we had a cup of coffee then set off to the airport to deliver our friend for a mid afternoon flight back to the UK. It’s been very refreshing having her to stay. Always nice to meet new people.

Once we had said our goodbyes, Val and I drove on, round the M50, to the Asia Market superstore. We had discovered this place via Google, and it turned out to be a bit of a gem.

We are having some friends round for a Japanese meal in a few days’ time, and wanted to try and get some authentic ingredients. The shop – which was huge and well stocked – had everything we wanted, and plenty more besides. We spent almost an hour there, wandering up and down the aisles loading up the trolley.

Eventually we got what we needed and drove back round the M50 to Malahide. It was a slow journey as the motorway was jammed up – probably related to the weather, as there weren’t any accidents or other traffic related incidents that I could see and which might account for the delay.

On the way back, we stopped at the Applegreen petrol station to fill up and to get a few bits for today’s lunch and dinner.

Eventually, we found ourselves safely re-installed in the flat, with the car unloaded and the fridge fully stocked. We had lunch and a cup of tea to celebrate, then I had to go to doctors’ surgery to pick up the results of the blood tests I had last week. Lots of numbers and data which I am sure will be of interest to my hip surgeon, but rather less so to me.

For the rest of the afternoon, we did more laundry, relaxed and watched the rain pouring down outside. I also did my packing for tomorrow’s hike, before sharing a Marks and Spencer pop-pop curry (bought at Applegreen) for dinner.

We rounded off the evening with a rather nice Arbutus G&T and an episode of “Mad Men” before retiring to bed. A good day all round, despite the rain.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Rain-soaked Casino garden this morning – and it only got wetter as the day went on	The store came complete with its own indoor tuk-tuk based pickup truck, fully loaded with oriental exotica

Plenty of hardware, as well as foodstuffs, on sale today. Some of the crockery was made in Japan, which felt nice and authentic	*In the ailses. The sake* and Asahi beer were right at the far end.**



Salted jellyfish. After due consideration, we decided to give this treat a miss