A New Season, A Familiar Hike

Yesterday on the radio (I've been streaming newstalk.ie in an effort to see if it's any less morning-showey than RTE 1), someone mentioned that February 1 is the first day of Spring. And the ole guy I was chatting to at the reception desk of a building the other day assured me that "oh sure, once February first has passed, the worst of it is over, ya know. It's all just a bit better from there." So, in honour of the last day of winter, I went for a hike at Howth. I haven't been there since the late fall, and I missed it. I was taking pictures and thinking to myself "how may pictures can I take of the same place??!" But then I reassured myself that, after all, it is a new season. The pictures will surely be different, no? In the interest of keeping this posting short, which I am not exactly known to do, I will stop now, and include a photo essay. It was a crisp but beautifully sunny day, with stunning light. My walk revealed that Howth has a Sunday Farmer's market (I bought a brownie that tasted like fudge), that sometime since my last walk, a car drove over one cliff and landed on a lower one, that far too many people leave their dogs' poop on the sidewalk (not pictured), and that the gorse still has yellow flowers in the winter. The soundtrack for this hike was Moth stories from the past couple of months, and several Savage podcast episodes. The last pics are of the Halfpenny bridge just moments ago.