New day

This is the view from my flat in Cork, out across the Lee river and the valley. The photo shows the early morning sun shining through the spires of St Finbarrs Cathedral. It was taken at 8.30am on 21 January 2011. As you can see it's getting bright earlier in the mornings. The winter is behind us - at last. It was one of coldest and rudest winters for a long time. We had lots of snow and ice - I'll put up a few pictures to prove it.

Heritage open day 2010

Loads of interesting places opened their doors to the public today to mark the Heritage Open Day. I am exhausted after going around the city to see them. In the end I had to take refuge in a pub to rest my weary body and drink a few pints!

I went to a few places including the Shandon Bells (St Anns Cathedral), the Firkin Crane, the Courthouse and Elizabeth Fort. There was a great friendly welcoming buzz around the city with lots of places that are not normally open to the public opening their doors. It was a case of 'I always wondered what it was like inside' etc. The courthouse was the strangest one. I was never in one before, but have seen them on telly and in movies etc, but it was a weird experience, don't know why though, maybe because the building is over 100 years old and I'm sure lots of weird things have happened in there over the years! Here's a few snaps of what I saw.

Shandon Bells




The Firkin Crane (the round building)


Inside Courthouse

Paddy Games 2010

Fireman carry relay
Crawling
Running under hurdles
3 Legged race
The inaugural 'Paddy Games' took place today Saturday 14 August 2010. I'm sure that because of it the day will go down in history!! It involved many familiar sporting events but with a twist. For example there was the triple backwards jump, backwards running, the blindfold dash, a tricycle race and Irish dancing hurdles. Their maxim is "taking silly very seriously".

It was all a bit of a laugh really. It was held in the Mardyke arena in Cork city and about 1,700 spectators turned up to support the 270 people taking part.

Town of Kinsale

I went to Kinsale the other day with my brother who was staying with me in Cork for a few days. The Solitaire boat race had just landed a few days before and the boats were still there - lots of French people in the town.

We stopped at Charles Fort on the way back to Cork. It is an old star-shaped coastal defence fort built by the British in the 1670s when Ireland was a colony of Britain.

They were afraid that their enemies - Holland, Spain or France would invade Britain through Ireland. It never happened though - I'm sure they would have taken one quick look at Charles Fort with all its heavy canons trained on the narrow gap where boats enter and said IMPOSSIBLE. It was gutted during the Irish Civil War in 1922-23, but it still stands and you get a great impression of what it was like long ago.



This clip shows what it looks like around Kinsale and you can also just about see Charles Fort.

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.