Ireland day 1525. Monday 01 December 2025- Rain and Cook

Today’s summary	Rained all day so was indoors most of the time. Porridge for breakfast then made a beef casserole. Continued downloading photos from old PC in the afternoon, and had a long video call with Val in Canada. Went on a short walk over Robswall as it was getting g dark, then had casserole for dinner and read some more of my book.
Today’s weather	Heavily overcast all day, with more or less continuous rain. Moderate westerly wind. Appx 9c

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): Robswall on wet night

Commentary

Weatherwise, today was a bit disappointing. The extended wet spell continued more or less all day, so I didn’t feel particularly inclined to head out and go exploring. So I focused on indoor activities instead.

First of all, I made myself some porridge with some added dates, which certainly boosted its fibre content even further. After breakfast, I fired up the old PC again and got it retrieving more of my photos from the cloud. It’s a remarkably tedious process which has already taken me the best part of a week

Anyway, by then a slightly drier interval had come along, so I ventured out to the shops and bought some essential groceries. I was mostly successful in my purchases and returned to the flat laden with useful things like washing powder and frozen peas.

Then I set about making something to eat. Pop pop meals are ok as far as they go, but I’m not sure they are a good idea for the longer term. So I set to and made a large vat of beef casserole, which I bunged in the oven and left to bubble away for the afternoon.

For lunch I had a rather unappetising pre-tinned tuna and bean salad. Even though it could easily have doubled as cat food, it actually tasted OK.

By this time it was mid afternoon and getting-up time in Vancouver. So I had a good long chat with Val, to review developments on both sides of the Atlantic. All good over there. She returns to Europe overnight tonight.

Once I’d come off the phone, I made sure the PC was still chugging away then pulled on my waterproofs and headed out into the gathering gloom. I had decided I couldn’t stand being cooped up any longer so wanted to go for a walk to clear my head, despite the rain. Actually by this stage it wasn’t saturating – just leaving me with wet socks at the end which are now busily steaming away on the sitting room radiator. Nice.

By the time I had got back, my casserole was almost ready but I had a problem with the mashed potatoes I’d made earlier. They were so starchy that they had collapsed into a soggy mush almost as soon as I had finished boiling them, so once mashed they had turned into a disgusting looking formless slop. I had a bit of a brainwave and poured it out onto a baking sheet which I put in the oven with the casserole. After a while, the potato had dried off and turned into a semi-crispy, semi-soft cake. It actually went quite well with the casserole (it certainly looked a lot better than it did before).

So I had casserole and potatoes (plus some of the frozen peas) for dinner and it tasted good, I’m pleased to report. And even better, there’s plenty left so I should be able to avoid pop pop meals for the next few days.

Well that’s that. Now it’s time to relax a bit, and get through another chapter of my book. And the weather forecast looks dry for the next 24 hours, so I need to think about what I’m going to do tomorrow. Bring it on!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


This morning’s view (and this afternoon’s, and yesterday’s, and the day before’s..)	Beware. Man in kitchen

Cat food aka lunch. The jury is out	Robswall Crescent this evening



On the beach. Definitely nobody swimming tonight!