Ireland day 1516. Saturday 22 November 2025- Birds

Today’s summary	Spent the morning clearing out more old paperwork then took the train to Balbriggan and walked along the coast to Laytown. Tens of thousands of seabirds on the shore, especially near the Delvin river estuary at Gormanston. Feeding off the clams and other marine life washed up by storm Claudia last week. Caught the train back from Laytown and had a Thai takeaway for dinner while we watched “Thunderball”
Today’s weather	Heavy rain overnight but dry and a bit milder than recently by morning. Cleared and cooled a couple of degrees in the afternoon. Hardly any wind. Appx 8c

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): Birds along Gormanston beach

Commentary

We have worked out a few “go to” coastal walks near Malahide, which we can be pretty much guaranteed to enjoy at any time of the year and in any kind of weather. Heading south from here, is our Malahide to Howth walk, which involves coming back on the train and a bus.

But going in the opposite direction, heading north, is our Balbriggan to Laytown walk. We only “discovered” it a few months ago, but since then we have done it four times and really enjoy it. It involves a train ride to the start and from the finish, but with my senior railcard, that’s a breeze. So we decided today to add a fifth completion of the route to our tally, and gathered our things ready to catch the train to Balbriggan.

First, though, I determined to keep up my progress in clearing out paperwork. So I set about having a go at some bureaucratic rationalisation before doing anything else. In the file I tackled today I couldn’t find as much to get rid of as yesterday, but still ended up with a respectable hamster nest of curly bits in the shredder.

While I was doing that, Val got on with her needlework until eventually we were both ready to leave. We caught a train around 12:30 and got to the start of the walk at Balbriggan at 1pm. We headed straight down to the beach where the tide was high but falling fast. So at no point along the walk did we get wet feet.

The first part of the walk – as far as the railway bridge over the Delvin river near Gormanston is the most scenically interesting. But the normally-white shelly coves today were covered a thick layer of rotting seaweed. Churned up probably by last week’s storm Claudia. Interesting but smelly.

The local seabird residents evidently found it even more interesting as they were massed in their tens of thousands along the shore, picking out the tasty bits of clam, razor shell and starfish dredged up and stormily dumped at the tide line along with the seaweed. It was an amazing spectacle. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many birds in one place at one time and from a distance, the beach looked as if it was covered in fluid raucous white snow. Amazing.

Beyond the Delvin bridge, it was plain sailing all the way back to Laytown, rolling along the vast and ever widening tidal flats near Gormanston. Once at Laytown, we had about half an hour to wait for a train, so dropped into Pat’s Supermarket to pick up some quick refreshments to enjoy while waiting for the train.

Iarnród Éireann duly turned up and whisked us back to Malahide before 5:30pm. From the station, I walked round to Tescos to get some bread and milk whereas Val got the slightly more fun job of going to O’Brien’s to buy a bottle of wine.

So now we are going to down-tools, open the wine and order a Thai takeaway. While we’re waiting for it to be ready, we’re going to make a start on watching “Thunderball”.

Malbec, curry, James Bond and a rosy glow from a winter walk in the beach. There can’t be many better ways to finish off a day than that.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Fascinating inflatable seaweed holdfast among the debris on the shore	Razor shells, among other things, in the tidal flotsam

Clams complete with fleshy protuberances – feeding or breathing tubes I guess. A bit gross, to be honest.	Starfish were also abundant, although looking a bit desiccated

A nice tasty meal for a seagull, I’m sure. But I think I prefer mine cooked	Journey’s end. Laytown station, just after the sun had sunk below the horizon

Seabirds not snow. I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how many there were. But an abundance of food for them today – there will be some well-fed chicks next spring!