About ten to fifteen years ago I had lunch almost every week in Malahide and frequently my mother would join me but she will be 103 years old next May.
The Irish Sea has played a major role in the development of tourism in the Malahide. The extensive Velvet Strand stretches to the horizon and is extremely popular with bathers, walkers and water sports enthusiasts.
Walking from the town centre along the beach you’ll come to the wide velvet strand along the Mouth of the Estuary, from here the beach leads to Low Rock, a popular swimming section of the beach. After this the beach gets more rocky as you approach High Rock, for a more challenging swim and eventually if you continue on you will find yourself at Portmarnock beach where the sandy strand opens wide in front of you once more.
From Malahide Beach you can also take the coastal walk on the footpath all the way to Portmarnock but beware, it’s 5km away and that did catch me by surprise back in 2008 … I was exhausted and had to get a taxi back to the train station.
BISHOPS MEADOWS RIVER WALK – RIVER NORE LINEAR PARK
This visit I was better prepared for the canal and river walks in Kilkenny. I also brought proper rain gear but it did not rain except for a twenty minute thunder storm.
I wakened up early on the first morning and as the weather was beautiful and because rain had been forecasted for the rest of week I decided that I should immediately visit Bishops Meadows Walk but this timed I returned to the city centre via Freshford Road.
On day two of my visit to Kilkenny in 2018 [my last visit to the city] I walked more than twenty miles over three sessions and I was exhausted because the weather was very hot even though the sky was overcast. At the end of the day my feet were in a very poor condition. I asked a local farmer how long Bishopsmeadows walk was and he responded by saying six fields. Having seen some really large fields on my way to Kilkenny by train I was afraid that this could be six miles but I assumed that it would be no more than two miles assuming about four fields per mile. I later discovered that it is 2.6km but of course the return journey was also the same distance [I often forget about the return journey].
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