Ireland day 1565. Saturday 10 January 2026- Indolence

Today’s summary	A quiet day with blissfully nothing in the diary for either of us. Spent the morning doing some shopping then in the flat unsuccessfully hunting for a missing credit card. After having poached egg for lunch, we went on a loop walk round the Demesne and over Seamount Hill. Called in at the library on the way back. Kerrigans stir fry for dinner.
Today’s weather	Dull and overcast all day with some light rain in the evening. Almost no wind. Appx 5c.

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): Demesne Seapark loop walk

Commentary

Oh joy of joys. There was nothing scheduled in today’s calendar for either of us. In my view these are the very best of all days. Complete freedom!

Anyway we immediately contrived a crisis to deal with, in the absence of an actual one being scheduled in the diary. I discovered that I had mislaid one of my credit cards, so we wasted what seemed like hours searching around to try and find it. Unfortunately we drew a blank so had to come up with a plan B which would keep me going until the replacement arrived. Sigh.

After that I did a bit of shopping then we had poached egg on toast for lunch, along with (in my case) too many Colin the Caterpillars. After numerous pauses for cups of tea, we decided we needed to do something a bit more constructive with the day. So we stepped outside, as is our habit, and went for a walk.

Today we combined a couple of our favourite loops – the Demesne and Seamount Hill. A decent leg stretch and fantastic views from the top of the hill. Not surprising that the new flats that were recently built up there were selling for €4mln a pop.

We descended to the Coast Road from the hill, and walked back to the flat via the Library to return a book, and O’Brien’s off-licence to buy some beers.

We were back in the flat, central heating on and blinds drawn, at about 4:30. We treated ourselves to some supermarket snacks and of course had another cup of tea to wash them down.

For dinner, a little while later, we had a Kerrigan’s stir fry, accompanied by the beers we bought earlier. Then to round off the day we the squinted just about tolerably at the iPad, catching up on yet another episode of “Chef’s Table”.

A deliciously low key day and I sometimes wish that there could be more of them.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


The “Secret” garden outside our flats, which everyone knows about. It’s a communal area which hardly anyone – ourselves included – ever uses. I feel we could have enjoyed it more over the four and a half years we have been here	A lonely figure on the Demesne perimeter path. Actually there were quite a few people about, so this photo creates and unrealistic impression of isolation

The Shore, Seamount Rise. Some of the newest, most exclusive and priciest apartments in Malahide. But also some of the best views	Malahide tennis club, off the Coast Road. It’s busy all day, every day, regardless of the weather



Val surveying the scene, on the path from Seamount Hill into the Seapark estate