Ireland day 1571. Friday 16 January 2026- Farewells

Today’s summary	Had a lie in this morning to help recover from last night’s late return from the UK. Leisurely breakfast then spent the morning doing some more packing ready for our next trip to London, which starts tomorrow. In the afternoon met with some friends from the Walking Club up at the Avoca café and said our farewells. Back at the flat aferwards we did more packing, had a Kerrigans dinner and went to bed early.
Today’s weather	Rainy with occasional brighter intervals. Light southerly 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) (No GPX today)

Commentary

Our return trip from the UK yesterday was largely uneventful. The most memorable feature of it was actually the late night ferry crossing, which meant we didn’t get into the flat until almost 3 am this morning. Accordingly we allowed ourselves a bit of a lie-in today, to get a decent cup of tea and some relaxation before starting the day’s jobs.

Our first objective was to gather the next tranche of belongings which have to be transported to the UK, and to start getting them into manually-transportable cases. We are going to the UK again tomorrow (the third time in five days for me) and are taking with us a full complement of cabin- and hold- baggage. We wanted to get as much of our stuff in as possible, without breaking the weight limit, so there isn’t too much to carry on our final exit from Ireland in a couple of weeks’ time.

Midway through the packing, we broke off temporarily to go up to the castle for coffee. It was raining so I’m a bit ashamed to admit that we drove round – but on the other hand our waterproofs had mostly been packed and we didn’t really want to get soaked to the skin before sitting for hours chatting in a café.

We had arranged to meet two of our good friends from the Walking Club today – Pauline and Frances – for a chat and to say our farewells. It was a jolly occasion on the one hand – talking about plans for the future and reliving some of the best moments from the past – but laced with sadness too as it will probably be a while before we all meet again. When you move to a new location you build emotional as well as bureaucratic ties to the new place, and sometimes they can be harder to break than you expect.

Eventually we had said all that needed to be said so we bade our final farewells and drove back to the flat. Val dived straight back in to her packing then when she’d done as much as she reasonably could, I filled in the rest of the unused suitcase space with a few more of my possessions. While I was doing my bit, Val went to the Post Office and then called in at Kerrigans to get some dinner.

Once the suitcases were all full and had been sat on to squash them shut, we had dinner which was basically the tray-bakes Val had bought at Kerrigans supplemented with some pots of rice pudding that I found in the fridge.

Eventually, evening came around and I felt in desperate need of some fresh air, after five days in planes, trains and automobiles. So I had a quick saunter round Hanlons Lane then we watched a bit of “Chefs Kitchen” on the iPad. Finally, given that we have another early airport-run tomorrow, we called it a day at around 10pm, crashed out, and got an early night.

Tiring times, but very exciting!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Midway through packing – a tiny fraction of what we are taking back to the UK in the course of our numerous trips back and forth across the Irish Sea	Oblique view of the entrance to the Avoca courtyard, from close to where the Japonica (see below) was growing

Avoca café in the Castle demesne. It’s frighteningly expensive and always busy. A licence to print money	I’m not even remotely interested in what these are for



Japonica (AKA quince) coming into full bloom on the Avoca courtyard wall. Must be a very sheltered spot