Ireland day 1512. Tuesday 18 November 2025- Down Jacket

Today’s summary	In the morning spent more time clearing out unused clothes and taking them to the charity shop while Val strolled round the Demesne. After hummus and soup lunch, went into Dublin to get some tickets and a new down jacket. In the evening had salmon for dinner and watched some more TV
Today’s weather	Overcast with a brief shower in the afternoon. Light westerly wind. Appx 9c

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

Commentary

I’m on a bit of a roll at the moment, clearing out old clothes from my wardrobe. My rule of thumb is that if I haven’t worn something for over a year, I am unlikely ever to do again. In which case it either goes to the charity shop if it’s decent and wearable, or to recycling if it’s not. So far I have “let go” about half of the things I was diligently holding on to, and I’ve still got further to go.

Val was unenthused about the prospect of joining in my endeavours, though, so took herself off for a walk round d the Demesne while I was hard at work.

By the time I’d finished, and delivered everything to Oxfam, it was time for lunch. So we had a bowl of Val’s home made super-nice cauliflower soup from a couple of days ago, along with some hummus and breadsticks. Tasty and reasonably healthy.

In the afternoon, there were a couple of odd jobs we needed to do in Dublin. So we got togged up for the cooler weather outside, headed over to the station, and caught a timely DART into town.

The first stop was the Connolly ticket office where we needed to get some tickets for a forthcoming rail trip. With my senior railcard, the price for Val and I for the return journey came to the grand total of €0. Good value I thought.

Next, I wanted to try and get a new down jacket, and Val was in the lookout for some walking trousers. So we got a Luas over to Jervis and had a look round the new Fifty Three Degrees North store in the basement of Arnotts. It was quite interesting but rather expensive. More aimed at the fashion end of outdoor sports than the practical. Neither of us found what we were looking for.

So we left empty handed and walked across the road to Marks and Spencer, where went looking for some salmon for tonight’s dinner. We were more successful there than we had been in Arnotts so set off to walk back to Connolly with a bit more of a spring our step.

On the way, on the off-chance we dropped into Mountain Warehouse where lo and behold they had just one down jacket left, and it was exactly the style I wanted and exactly my size. So I bought it and even managed to get a 15% discount courtesy of the Dublin Walking Club (though I did have to answer some questions about the mountains of Glenmalure first, to prove that I was genuine!). I got it for €101 in the end, which I thought was quite reasonable in these inflationary days. Val, unfortunately, wasn’t quite so fortunate with her trousers, so we will have to resume her quest at a later date.

After that, it was just a quick walk back to Connolly, then a brief wait for a non-stop diesel to take us to Malahide.

Next up, we’re cooking the salmon, then in time honoured fashion, I think we will settle back for a bit of TV to round off the day.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Super-healthy lunch (well apart from the biscuits and the bacon fries)	Ticket office at Connolly. It’s a bit of a soul-less place, but the staff are super-friendly.

O’Connell Street, with Clery’s (with the wall-clock) on the right. Mountain Warehouse is just beyond	This has all the promise of being a great day out



Dublin’s latest outdoor sports vendor. Slightly disappointing, to be honest