Ireland day 1446. Saturday 13 September 2025- Ink

Today’s summary	In the morning, Val went in a run and I hiked over Seamount Hill. Did some shopping and had lunch afterwards. Afterwards, we made some oak gall ink, which was surprisingly successful.
Today’s weather	Cloudy but dry with some sunny intervals. Moderate to strong westerly wind. Appx 15c

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): Seamount Hill Circular

Commentary

Well today was certainly a day with a difference, although it started ordinarily enough. Tea in bed to start with, then some activity. Val went off to the Demesne for a run, and while she was out, I took a short walk up Seamount Hill. On our return, we had some lunch (sardines on toast – a nod to Mediterraneanism) and went to the shops.

So far so normal.

Next though, we did something different. We made some oak gall ink. A bit of an idiosyncratic activity, I grant you, but very interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, we had harvested some oak galls from the trees up in the Demesne. After crushing the galls with a hammer, Val put them in a jar with some rainwater she had collected on the balcony, and left them to steep until today.

At the same time, I had bought some wire wool from the hardware shop, and had put that in another jar with rainwater, and left it to go rusty.

Meanwhile, feathers were collected, clove oil and coffee filters purchased, and gum Arabic sourced from Amazon. All key ingredients in the ink-making endeavour. Then, once we had collected everything together this afternoon, we made the ink.

In the first stage, the rusty water and the liquor from the oak-gall crush were separately passed through coffee filters to remove debris. Then the gall liquor – which was light brown in colour – was mixed with some of the rusty water, at which point the mixture went a much darker brown (presumably the ferric ions are reacting with the tannins to make the indelible ink). Then next, some gum Arabic was added to thicken it and make it run better, and a few drops of clove oil as a preservative. Finally, the concoction was sieved through a tea strainer to remove lumps of undissolved gum.

The resulting mixture was dark brown in colour and with roughly the same consistency as oil paint. This was our ink!

I tried writing with it, using a feather as a quill pen. You can see some of the results in the photos below. It was quite successful, and once the ink had dried it seemed fairly indelible. Val had even better results using the dipping pen she bought at Eason’s a few days ago. A very passable italic scribe!

To celebrate our crafty endeavours, for dinner we had pasta with aubergine and tomato sauce. The same as yesterday, actually, but it was so tasty, Val decided to make it again. And it was very good, once again. We rounded off the evening in the same way as yesterday too – Vermouth and TV!

So all in all a very interesting and successful day. It’s extremely satisfying to use your hands and brain to do something creative. So much better than doomscrolling through social media all day!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The view from the top of Seamount Hill, looking north across the estuary to the Corballis (Donabate / Portrane) peninsula at low tide	Filtering the iron – rust mix. Although the raw rust mix is dark in colour, when it’s filtered it comes out fairly clear. The original dark colour must be due to suspended particles of iron which are taken out by the paper.

My first effort. Using a dipping pen rather than a feather is much easier but the quill feels more authentic	Scribe hard at work



The finished products and the ingredients. All written by Val in (of course) oak-gall ink using the dipping pen shown in the photo