Ireland day 1579. Saturday 24 January 2026- Returning

Today’s summary	Got up early and made a convoluted journey to Gatwick for our 1325 flight back to Dublin. Major rail engineering works meant no Thameslink and no Gatwick Express services, and a landslide blocked the one remaining line still open. So had to take trains to East Grinstead and a rail replacement service bus from there. But still got to the airport with time to get a Wagamama lunch. Straightforward Ryanair flight and landed 10 minutes early in pouring rain. 102 bus to Malahide and back in the flat by 1600. Kerrigan’s shepherds pie for dinner
Today’s weather	Overcast but bright and dry in London. Light south easterly wind. Appx 8c. Gale force easterly wind and heavy rain in Dublin

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 comings and goings seem ceaseless at the moment! We both safely made it back from our European breaks last night, with Val pitching up in central London a couple of hours after me.

But our feet had barely touched the ground this morning, before we were off again. This time, it was back to Gatwick for a return flight to Dublin. We’re bringing our empty suitcases back with us, ready to fill up with our remaining possessions when we finally leave Ireland at the end of the week. Although bulky, the luggage wasn’t really a struggle (and I have properly got the hang of Ryanair’s self-service bag drop system now) as it was mostly empty and didn’t really weigh anything.

But the most difficult aspect of the trip was actually getting to Gatwick airport in the first place, in time for our 1325 flight. We’d received an alert email from Ryanair yesterday warning us that major rail engineering works meant there were no Thameslink or Gatwick Express trains running all weekend. But the same had happened on the way into London last weekend and we just took a train from Gatwick as normal, which got us to Victoria station OK, but just a bit slow as it took a circuitous diversionary route via Horsham. So we just assumed (and of course assumption is the mother of all f*** ups) that the same route would apply in reverse.

So we took the district line straight over Victoria station and allowed an extra hour and a half for our journey (as instructed by Mr O’Leary), thinking all would be well. And it would have been if the Horsham diversionary line hadn’t been blocked by an overnight landslide, cutting off all rail links from London to Gatwick. So a plan C was called for. Luckily, Southern Rail coped with this inconvenience remarkably well. We were directed to take a train to Clapham Junction, then from there another train to East Grinstead (somewhere I’d heard quite a lot about but never actually visited) and then finally a rail replacement bus from there to the airport.

I’m pleased to report that all the links in the chain functioned smoothly, and in the end the journey took us about two and a quarter hours, which was only an hour or so longer than it would have done if everything had gone normally. And having allowed all this extra time, we arrived about three hours before our flight was scheduled to depart. So we used the spare time to treat ourselves to an early lunch (or late breakfast) in the South Terminal Wagamamas, and had the luxury of not having to rush anywhere.

Our Ryanair flight left promptly on time at 1325 from Gate 5 and was actually quite comfortable as once again I hade paid the relatively small supplement to get seats with extra legroom. The only further hiccup was when we arrived in Dublin (ten minutes ahead of schedule I should add) in the pouring rain and we had to dash across the tarmac from the foot of the aircraft disembarkation ladder to the terminal building as fast as we could in order to avoid getting soaked.

Once inside, our checked bag turned up swiftly and efficiently, then we only had a 15 minute wait for a 102 bus to take us back to Malahide. We were back in the flat again – which was exactly as we had left it a week ago, by about 1600. So despite the train delays, the whole end to end journey was about 7½ hours. Not too unmanageable at all.

Anyway readers will be pleased to know that we are actually going to be staying in the same place for a few days now, and we are really looking forward to a bit of down-time before the next upheaval. So I’m stopping now and going to join Val for a delicious smelling Kerrigan’s shepherds pie that she’s just served up. Then I’d say we are going to settle down to watch a bit of TV, but I can’t because the TV has gone into storage now. Perhaps we’ll squint at the iPad instead.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Stage two of our six-stage journey to Malahide – the train from London Victoria to Clapham Junction	On the buses! Although the bus diversion was inconvenient, it was very well organised and the whole journey end to end from central London to Gatwick airport only took 2¼ hours – about an hour longer than normal. Luckily Ryanair had emailed us yesterday about the potential delays, so we allowed even more time than normal to get to Gatwick this morning.

Prawn Crackers while we waited for our Wagamamas lunch to arrive. A very civilised way to spend a few hours at Gatwick Airport!	As you walk down to the departure gate at Gatwick, there is a small window in the corridor wall, which allows you to take a peek behind the scenes into the baggage handling system. It’s fascinating watching the bags busily scurrying around with seemingly no human intervention – I could have watched it all day

Ryanair’s interpretation of a “cappuccino”* Well at least the waffle biscuit was good. *Note I risked taking the lid off the coffee for the purposes of this photo – I put it back on again straight afterwards rather than incur the wrath of the cabin crew, as happened the last time I tried leaving the top off a couple of weeks ago	Out of the plane and onto the tarmac at Dublin – and straight into a downpour. Apparently it’s been like this much of the time we have been away – and it certainly seems to be pretty wet everywhere.

Welcome back! A sign of spring in the Casino gardens. Lovely.