Ireland day 1430. Thursday 28 August 2025- Malahide Meander

Today’s summary	Another relatively quiet day in Malahide. in the morning I had a long video call with a friend in Dorset, UK and Val did some cooking. Then we walked down to the beach for a picnic lunch. Quite cold so we didn’t linger. Later on I did some Spanish deberes and afterwards we went up to the demesne to collect oak galls. Delicious cheese and polenta bites for dinner, that Val had conjured up this morning.
Today’s weather	Cool and grey, feeling like it would rain but it never did. Moderate south westerly wind. Appx 16c

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): Malahide Meander

Commentary

The weather definitely seems to have changed lately – it’s been much cooler the last couple of days than it was earlier in the week, and the sun seems to have gone on holiday. We have also had a bit of rain, though so far today, as I write, we have escaped. Anyway the weather didn’t deter us from getting out and about and doing all the things we normally do.

But before we ventured out, Val wanted to do some cooking (she’s heroic) and I had a long video call with a friend in Dorset, UK. We chatted for two hours, which gave us plenty of time to discuss our respective travel experiences, and generally put the world to rights.

By the time we had both finished our various activities, we were starting to get hungry so Val expertly pulled together a couple of packed lunches, I made a trusty Thermos of coffee, and we set off for Malahide beach.

It was quite chilly down there, and hard to get out of the wind, but we eventually managed to find a reasonably sheltered spot and sat down to enjoy our cheese mini- muffins, gyozas from the freezer, and a couple of slices of focaccia bread. All very civilised really, especially with some half decent coffee to accompany it.

Because the weather didn’t encourage lingering, we were only there for about 45 minutes, before returning to the flat. Once back, I took a brief break from meandering to do the first part of my Spanish homework (we have finished the story of Lola Largo now) and Val couldn’t seemingly resist the temptation to do some more cooking.

When all of that was out of the way, we headed out again, this time on a mission to collect oak-galls (pictured in the banner image at the top) from some of the oak trees in the Demesne.

Galls seem to be particularly abundant this year, though most of the ones we found on the trees were not yet ready to be collected. You can tell this because the wasp pupating in the gall drills its way out once it’s mature, leaving a perfect round hole in the outside of the gall. When the hole appears, it means the gall is empty and it can be harvested.

The reason for harvesting them in the first place will be revealed at a later date. But suffice it to say that it is for a project that Val is doing, and it involves crushed galls, rusty iron wool, Gum Arabic and rainwater. All very perplexing, I’m sure.

After our expedition, we quickly went round the marina and then headed back to the flat. We had a cup of coffee on our return, and enjoyed a delicious dinner of polenta cakes with Parmesan, topped with poached egg. One of Val’s culinary creations and it was delicious.

The rest of the evening was spent unwinding (although we were already pretty unwound) and watching a bit of tv.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Opportunist blackheaded gull (in non-breeding plumage – so it doesn’t live up to its name as it has a white head) on the look out for tasty morsels of discarded lunch. No chance of that I’m afraid!	The beach was absolutely deserted today, apart from two hardy picnickers (us). School return, midweek and cold weather had obviously banished the hordes

Meanwhile up at the tennis club, the courts were being carefully restored An impressive operation – given how fully the courts are utilised, I guess they have to do this quite often, though I’ve never seen it before	Setting out on our gall-hunt with gall-hunter-in-chief showing the way. (You can see a couple of galls in the banner image at the top – the one on the left is whole, though with a hole where the pupated wasp has drilled its way out; the one on the right has broken in half, so you can see the lacuna where the chrysalis developed)



Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium – cultivated variety) putting on a good show in the Marina Village. Apparently its normal on some varieties for the flowers to start pink and then turn white as they age. So you really can get two different colours on the same plant