Breakfast on Irish Rail – Cork to Dublin

The celtic tiger has definitely forced us into complacency about what we eat!  Having spent the few days before my train trip savouring the delightful fresh crispy pain au chocolat at The Yew Tree Bakery in Oughterard, Co Galway, my breakfast on the Cork to Dublin train was a real let down.

For starters, forget being able to buy a cup of herb tea (Take note Irish Rail - Herb Tea Bags last a very long time and are not heavy to transport!).  All I got when I asked for this was a vacant stare from a seriously unenthusiastic chap who spoke very poor English  (Should I have told him that there are probably 100s in this country who would be more than happy for his job right now!).  So I settled for watery hot chocolate (or rather, as it said on the cup – a hot chocolate flavoured drink).  Avoid this, it’s terrible!  For euro 5.25 I bought the hot chocolate and a fruit danish in so much plastic that it felt like I was unwrapping a christmas present and destroying the planet in the process.  The list of additives on the packaging was beyond belief and I seriously wondered if I would survive the day.

There is no reason why food standards cannot be much higher on our public transport system.  Starbucks – Please come and help us out!   Tourists  – Be warned!  Bring a pack snack if travelling by rail here

Music amongst the Mosaics in Timoleague

The programme for the annual music festival in Timoleague has been published and includes some very interesting concerts all taking place in the Church of the Ascension in Timoleague. These concerts are always popular and are great value at euro 15 per ticket. Also, remember that Timoleague Castle Gardens are open for ticket holders to picnic from 6pm on concert evenings.

Sunday, 29th June at 8pm Music for a Maharajah. Utsav Lal. Raga pianist with tabla percussion

Sunday, 6th July at 8pm Beyond the Pale. Music of the 17th century including Castello, Corelli, Purcell, Uccellini and others

Sunday, 20th July at 8pm Jenny Robinson ensemble. Programme includes Telemann, Banch and other renaissance composers.

Sunday, 27th July at 8pm Trioca. Programme includes Bax, Hamilton Harty, Telemann and Ravel.

Booking Number 023 46236 or 087 633 1483. www.timoleague.ie

West Cork Enterprise Board Funding 2006

I have just had a browse through the West Cork Enterprise Boards 2006 annual review to see what its objectives are. It aims to increase the number of viable jobs through the region, ie it supports rural development and local entrepreneurship. In 2006 the board provided financial assistance totalling euro 260,000 including 8 employment grants, 6 capital aid projects and 3 feasibility studies.

Financial assistance was approved in support of 3 childcare facilities, 4 food processing projects, 6 other manufacturing and local service projects and 3 feasibility study projects. The majority of financial assistance went to manufacturing projects (10 in total) with particular emphasis on the development of food and craft sectors.

12 of the 17 projects were new start ups and the majority of businesses were located in the Skibbereen, Clonakilty and Beara areas.

The companies that qualified for capital approvals in 2006 included

• Callatrim Foods
• Sandy Miller Collection Ltd
• Spice o’ Life Ltd
• JustSay3D.com
• Glennilen Dariy Products
• Rock Water Stables.

Employment approval grants went to the following:-

• Sharon Rose Designs
• Delisa Handcrafted Jewellery
• Michelle and Moz Playschool and Creche
• Caroline Murphy
• Clavin and Brophy Ltd
• Mellas Fudge
• Wendy House Creche
• Mairi Dadson

and lastly feasibility approvals went to

• Bigtoe3D
• Waveson Ltd
• Printed Textile Designers

Ballyvolane Country House

I had the good fortune to attend an informal lunch at Ballyvolane Country House in Castlelyons near Fermoy. What a magical place. The house was originally built in 1728 in the georgian country house style with three storeys. The top floor was removed in 1847 to create a two storey house with an extensive west end wing. The Greens have lived here since 1955 and run it as a successful country house guest house.

The gardens around the house include a mixture of deciduous trees, shrubs, both formal and informal areas and a large walled garden with copious amounts of vegetables all planted very neatly. Apparently it takes 9 hours to mow the lawn around the house and the croquet lawn looks absolutely perfect without a hump or bump in site. The garden at this time of year is a dream with bluebells throughout the woods and Rhododendrons, azaleas etc all in full bloom.

For anybody who feels like a quiet country break near the Blackwater, this is the place to stay.

Bandon Community Spring Clean

The Bandon Community Spring Clean has already begun so it’s time to get involved.

Residents from the Gaggin area of Bandon filled over 20 large black bags with refuse dumped along the road just yards from the Recyling Centre (much of it recyclable).  Participants from the Rosmini Centre in Bandon did a fabulous job cleaning up the Railway Walk that runs from near Innishannon to Bandon.  Fas cleaned up part of the town park and members of Sinn Fein collected over 30 bags from the riverwalk below Supervalu.  We still need to remove approximately 25 Supervalu trollies from the river and hope that Supervalu will give us some assistance in this process.

A mountain of waste was removed from Blue Hill which runs parallel to the Clonakilty Road between Gaggin to the Recycling Centre.  An entire skip was not enough to accommodate all that was collected in this area.

Help us save our countryside and do your bit for Bandon Spring Clean.  Tomorrow, Saturday, 26th April there will be a concerted effort to clean up Castle Road leading out to the golf course.  The clean up starts at Hartes Car Park in Bandon at 10am but join us anytime along Castle Road on the way to Bandon Golf Club.  We need as much help as we can get.  This road out beyond the 60km limit is sparcely populated so we need people from further afield to help us!

Today was the schools turn to get involved in the spring clean.  Sadly the weather played havoc with the schedule and some of the schools have deferred their clean up until next week.

West Cork Calling Tourism Group launches blog and revamped website

Kilbrogan House is part of West Cork Calling, a co-operative network of businesses spread across West Cork that offers a wide range of courses, activities and accommodation.  The group has been set up by the members themselves who were part of a Mergo initiative put together by Failte Ireland, the Irish Tourist Board.  The West Cork Calling network should enable the participants to market their products directly to the customer without sizeable individual advertising costs and/or costs associated with marketing via a third party.

Many local networks exist within towns in the region.  This group felt that a diverse network spread throughout the region would complement the local networks.  The ultimate aim of the group is to get members to work together to offer packages.

The network allows small and large businesses to participate together as the barrier to entry in terms of financial outlay is low and there is no exit barrier.  All the participants strive to achieve a common goal of attracting tourist to the region and at the same time offering first class products.  It is anticipated that the network will double in size over the next 12 months giving the customer an even wider choice of products and services.

For anybody interested the contact details are as follows:

www.westcorkcalling.com  and email: westcorkcalling@gmail.com

Kilbrogan House welcomes guests from Malta

Last year a group of six Canadian doctors spent three days with us. During the previous year they had spent their holidays at a self catering property on Gozo, an island off the coast of Malta. They highly recommended their holiday in Gozo so we made a careful note of this tip.

Yesterday we were fortunate to have Jacques and Melanie to stay. They both live in Luxemburg. Jacques is from Gozo so we were thrilled to hear first hand from a local about where and when to visit. His recommendation is to go in April when it is not too hot and when there aren’t too many tourists around.

We asked Jacques about Mintoff and he was most surprised that anybody here would even remember this former prime minister of Malta. Mintoff is still alive and is 91.

Jacques and Melanie went to Cork for the evening and ended up eating at Wagamama which they said was very good. (I didn’t even know that there was a ‘Wag’ in Cork)

Jacques has been using a tom tom gps to navigate his way around the Irish countryside.  He had downloaded irish software for the trip so that the mapping would be up-to-date.  However,  the tom tom let him down around Glencar in Kerry and they had a very tough time finding the way to their accommodation.  Luckily Bandon did feature on the tom tom!!