Lee Swim 2010

The annual Lee Swim - a swim in Cork's river Lee - took place on Saturday 24 July 2010. About 340 people took part in it and they swam down through the city for about 2,000 meters. They drew a lot of spectators along the quays, even though they weren't very vocal in their encouragement.

When I first heard about it I immediately thought of the Jack B Yeats painting of the Liffey Swim. We had a copy of it in my parents house when I was growing up. It always seemed a bit weird to think that people actually swam in the Liffey which was always considered very polluted, but they did and they still do.

According to the ever reliable Wikipedia!!, the Cork swim seems to get a bigger number of entrants compared to the Dublin one. Not sure why that is, maybe the Dublin swim is more difficult - it's a bigger river!

Cork Clipper Festival

A boat race came into Cork on 7 July 2010. The boats were tied up on a specially built thing - I'm not very good a boating terminology! The city council arranged a festival to welcome the crews to Cork with music and different events to get people involved. There's a nice atmosphere around the quayside. You can get info on the event here:

www.corkclipperfestival.com/about-the-festival/

Bonfire night - 23 June 2010

Well I looked out my window the other evening and saw a fire. I was going to phone the fire brigade because I was convinced a house was on fire, until I noticed another fire nearby and then another and then another and another. I then remembered someone talking about a tradition in Cork on 23 of June every year - bonfire night.

It happens on St John's eve and these days it seems to be an excuse to light a fire where normally you can't. I saw people putting unwanted furniture on some fires. The next day you could see the remains of these fires and it wasn't a pretty sight.