Ireland day 1360. Thursday 19 June 2025- Fungus Hunt

Today’s summary	Spent the morning transferring some GPX files over to Locus Maps then after lunch had a video call with a friend in London. Afterwards, finished off the GPX work and went up Paddy’s Hill to try and find a curious fungus I had spotted yesterday and which I wanted to investigate further. Couldn’t locate it but had a good walk anyway. Cooked chicken from Kerrigans with garden fresh veg for dinner. Video call to Val in London then more travel videos in the evening.
Today’s weather	Dry and mostly sunny. Moderate easterly wind. Appx 19c

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): Fungal search

Commentary

Regular visitors to this website will know that two of my most serious vices are firstly technology and secondly travel videos. Of course, with Val being away for the next few days, I’m taking full advantage of temporary bachelorhood to indulge them both.

So this morning I thought it would be a good idea to transfer over some of my older GPX files to my new Locus Maps app. As I have been recording the files since about 2012, when the ViewRanger app was first launched, I have got quite a few. Thousands, in fact. So the process took a long time, and was beset with more technical bugs than I expected. In the end, I just moved over a couple of thousand – basically all the Ireland recordings and some of the more recent ones before we came. I still have copies of all the others on my laptop, which I can dig out if I ever need them.

This fun but somewhat nerdy activity took up more or less the whole morning, so I stopped for lunch at about 1pm then went on to have a video call with a friend in London before spending a couple more hours finishing everything off.

Next, I set about the main task of the day.

Yesterday, while walking across the playing fields near Paddy’s Hill, I’d come a curiously-patterned toadstool which had me perplexed. I’d posted a picture of it on the Natural History Museum’s Facebook site and it had aroused quite a lot of curiosity. So I thought I’d go back and see if I could find it again and do some more research.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I couldn’t find it. Although yesterday’s photo was geotagged, and I went back to the exact spot where I’d found it yesterday, there was no sign of the fascinating fungus. But there was some telltale evidence in the form of some heaps of grass trimmings, and a few shards of macerated mushroom. I was forced to conclude that the grass had been cut since I last visited, consigning my mycological investigations to the compost heap of history. Perhaps it will pop up again on a warm wet morning one day – anyway I’ll keep a lookout.

I finished off my walk with a loop along the coast, which was looking very vacational in the sun. As I passed the shops, I dropped into Kerrigans and bought some chicken fillets for dinner.

Once I had returned to the flat, I successfully managed to put my disappointment to one side and cooked the chicken. I had it with some fresh vegetables that one of our guests on Monday had brought from their garden. Absolutely delicious.

I also slotted in a video call with Val, who is enjoying her trip to London. Then finally I settled down on front of the TV to indulge my other fantasy. Tonight it was travel videos from Japan. Fantastic!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


This was the mysterious fungus yesterday	And this is all that seemed to be left of it today

Everlasting sweet pea alongside the GAA pitch in the demesne. It always grows in the same spot every summer, and it’s a colourful addition to the hedgerow	Rosa rugosa (I think) in pink and white shades thriving in the sun on the Robswall estate



A lovely afternoon to be on the beach!