Ardmore Tidy Towns Notes July 27th 2015

27/07/2015 07:35

Ardmore Tidy Towns Notes.

Brilliant Festival

Well done to The Pattern Festival Committee on another real ‘Wow’ festival. Even the mixed weather conditions didn’t dampen the spirits. A special word to the hard working committee members and their families who came out each morning around 5.30 am to clean up and pick whatever litter etc was around. At 7am each morning you wouldn’t know that there was anybody in the village the night before.

 

Tourism Town Award.

On Friday last we got the brilliant news that we’ve been short listed for the Tourism Town Award 2015. Each year Bord Fáilte award two towns (one large town & one small town) with The Tourism Town Award and they’ve drawn up a short list of 15 for this years award. Among the big towns nominated are the likes of Killarney, Kilkenny, Clonakilty etc and Lismore, Kinsale, Youghal and Ardmore are among the small towns. It’s a great honour to be short listed and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for the final outcome which will be made known later in the year.

 

The Duck Race.

Well it certainly was the weather for ducks at the weekend but amazingly it stayed fine for our annual Duck Race, kindly sponsored by Ardmore Open Farm. With the Ardmore Fire Brigade volunteering the time the ducks got plenty encouragement to get down the river and we had several course and distance records among the heat winners with 45 ducks qualifying for a star studded final. RTE racing commentator, Brian Gleeson also volunteered his services and really added to the occasion with his brilliant commentary. And he’s good at the horses but his knowledge of ducks is unparalleled in these islands as he knew the seed, breed and generation of every single duck in attendance. Eddie Flavin’s duck came through the gates at the the head of affairs closely followed by Aoife Broderick and Michael Ronayne. Well done to the huge number of committee members who teamed up brilliantly to get through the whole programme in loads of time for the big match.

 

B ereaved.

Sincere sympathy to committee members, Marian Power and Kathleen Troy whose mother, Anna Murphy died recently and also sympathy to the Lenane family, Toor, on the sad loss of Geraldine Ar dheis Dé go raibh siad.

 

St Declan’s Well.

While the festival created a wonderful atmosphere and much music dancing and laughter around the place all week, it is nice to see that the traditional pattern is also observed. Bishop Cullinane celebrated mass on Friday evening and hundreds of people attended the informal prayer service at The Well at midnight on Friday night and many locals, visitors and people from neighbouring parishes have been visiting the well and doing ‘The Round’ all week and will continue this week. As mentioned recently, The Well and surrounds are in pristine condition and much of this is due to the hard voluntary labour of Michael and Anne Supple who are up there virtually every day touching up things. So the Tripadvisor Certificate is great credit to them too.
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