Ready to walk after a feed of pancakes and coffee on a hazy but dry day without too much pain in my foot. The iPhone being set up, the walking gear on, I set off about nine into a chilly easterly breeze. Round to Roches Hill where the crushed booze cans and general detritus make you sad and anrgy that no one cares to clean up after those who can only afford to watch the golfers in Killiney. Overcast, there's no bird song today but the bright yellow gorse somehow compensates. Cross the highest point and on down towards the sea, using mostly walled rights-of-way. An early encounter with a Black Suvdriver reminded me to watch out for the local wildlife. Overgrown pathways attest to an ongoing conflict in the area; unrestricted access might attract walkers and others into places they are not really wanted.
Reaching the beach, having passed the gum treed garden of the Canadian ambassador, I saw a Greater Breasted Ball Thrower. She was entertaining a dog where it is alleged that sandwiches were once offered to a tramp seen on successive days sitting below Bono's home - except it is said it was Bono.
Killiney beach is where Robert Mallett demonstrated in 1862 that seismic energy propagated in the near surface thereby explaining the destructive forces of earthquakes. This knowledge was used to triangulate artillery locations in the Great War and is now a fundamental tool in exploration and exploitation of sub-surface natural resources.
I watched a Blousy Backcombed Bun bird walk across the small promontory that separates Killiney and White Rock beaches. I was rock-hopping my way across the storm driven boulders, varifocal glasses inspired bone breaking noises whispering in my sub-conscious. The outcrop is the contact or metamorhic aureole between the granite pluton and the country rock into which it was injected, a fact that explains a few adits that memorialise unfulfilled Victorian ambitions. I could still see aligned, black rectilinear tourmaline crystals on some exposed surfaces of the schists.