Maundy

I set out this morning to test my stamina. I thought I should try to ascend some 500 metres but stay local. Experience tells me can be done in three trips up from sea-level to the dominant landmark, the obelisk. I did four ascents but only two from sea-level, and it took just over four hours. I also had ambitions to walk 30 km but had to stop after some 20 km because my knee began to hurt. My iPhone tells me the 564 m I ascended is the equivalent of climbing 165 flights of stairs. No wonder my knee twinges. Anyway, I engaged in some banter with people at work in the office because one of the team had proposed a stair climbing challenge and I had just done two days worth. In real terms, this is just a start - the Yorkshire Three Peaks are each 500 m.

Orienteers fruit machine with sigma 6 9 and rho perhaps?

Increasingly I feel like I should call my blog walkingcurmudgeon rather than walkingcommentary. When out walking, especially locally, I often get annoyed by the intrusions and in my mind, diminutions of the scenic beauty. There's a race on, not an arms race but a views race fuelled by post-crash rebound cash that seems to be pouring out of the banks again. Trees once used as privacy screens or wind shields are disappearing faster than ever. Homes emerge as if shouting to by-passers "Hey, look at what you don't have" and I don't mean their triple glazing. Planning permissions defy comprehension as new builds are allowed exceed the scale of the landscape by ever increasing margins. Wilfully blind planning authorities? Large plots that were formerly built with discreet homes are long subdivided and now redivided in a dispiriting modern recreation of gavelkind. These shrinking plots are being filled with tall houses that are anything but discreet. We understand that views are not a right but overviews negate indigenous privacies and this appears to be forgotten by our planners. Is demand-driven house price inflation worth the degradation of living conditions as home packing density is allowed increase? Is this a ruse to increase property tax takes by the Exchequer or An tAire Airgeadais? As Naomi Klein put it in The Shock Doctrine: “When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty.” 

Sticking with a whinging theme, let me first say how much I enjoy the wild garlic and bluebells appearing all over the area. However, the curmudgeon in me wonders why oriental people think of these as nursery plants and take them home? And I specifically mean people who appear to have oriental origins. I saw the same walkway being stripped of what they called snowdrops both today and last week by different oriental families. Removing them conveys private pleasures to the few, denying public pleasure to the many. It's unfair and mean spirited and just wrong. I wanted to share my exasperation but didn't know how to do it. So who will educate them?

I watched some kids on the beach dipping their toes in the gentle lapping of the water while I was watching terns and gannets hunting and diving. I wondered if the kids and their parents were Christian and understood the symbolism of feet washing on Maundy Thursday. I also wondered about the guys sitting in the nip beyond normal view, taking in the intermittent sun. (Nothing should be inferred by my juxtaposition of these two observations. It's simply what I saw.)

When I got home, I ate four hot cross buns and probably destroyed the value of my workout. I must admit that I enjoyed the buns, washed down with several cups of tea. And I'd have eaten them even if I hadn't walked. So I'm ahead. Well ahead.

By the way, that's an aplite between my boots. It's been there on The Flags for generations and I remember when I first saw it for what it was.  That was after a field trip to study the granite contact and schists down on the beach. Which is where that barred door photo is from, down where the kids put their toes in the water. And the other 'flag' flies over the Dalkey Town Hall.