Search Results for 'Achill Island'

A fundraising event in aid of the Achill Lifeboats RNLI will take place at The Valley House, Achill Island from noon to 5pm on Saturday July 16.

Ross Lewis, master chef and proprietor of Michelin-starred Chapter One restaurant in Dublin’s Parnell Square will be the Guest of Honour at the 2011 Féile Bia na Mara, Achill Island’s popular seafood festival. It will begin on Thursday July 15 with complimentary oyster tasting in the local pubs and restaurants and finish with the always entertaining Achill’s Got Talent on Sunday July 17. There will be a host of activities and events in between to enjoy.

Reading William Henry’s book Famine - Galway’s Darkest Days*, I was struck yet again by the fact that while thousands of people died of starvation in the west of Ireland, when whole communities abandoned their homes in a desperate search for food, our seas were boiling with fish. The author tells us that in Galway at the beginning of the Great Famine in 1845 the Claddagh fishermen fiercely protected their fishing rights in the Bay, which they regarded as their exclusive property. But as the famine dragged on to the end of the decade the Claddagh fishermen had no means left for catching fish. They had pawned their boats and fishing equipment for food. The historian Cecil Woodham-Smith in her classic account of the Great Famine**, tells us that on January 9 1847, ‘all boats were drawn up to the quay wall, stripped to the bare poles, not a sign of tackle or sail remaining....not a fish was to be had in the town, not a boat was at sea.’

“We seem to have got to the bottom of it and hope to have the whole thing dealt with inside a week or two,” senior engineer for Mayo County Council, Michael Mongan, said this week in relation to the new Achill Island bridge. Mr Mongan was giving the members of the Belmullet Electoral Area committee an update on the bridge which had difficulty closing late last year.

The annual Heinrich Böll Memorial Weekend 2011 will take place on Achill Island this coming weekend, starting today, Friday April 29 to Sunday May 1. The event opens at 7pm on Friday at the Cyral Gray Memorial Hall Dugort. The official opening will be by Angela Spizig, vice mayor of Cologne, and the welcome address will be made by Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council, Michael Burke.

Conditions were good for the second annual Kilmovee 10k last Saturday afternoon. Some said it was very hot, but nobody among the record turnout of runners and walkers — 335 finishers — was really complaining. There were entries from 16 counties also. This year the event was the first race in the 2011 Mayo AC C&C Cellular

An Easter bazaar and cake sale will take place on Saturday April 23 in St Anne's Boxing Club, James Street Car Park, Westport.

The 2011 Achill Half-Marathon will take place on Saturday July 2.

The new bridge between Achill island and the mainland failed on the last day of a guarantee from one of the contractors on the bridge, a meeting of the Belmullet electoral area committee was told this week. The bridge failed to close on November 19, 2010, and caused a large number of people to be held up for a number of hours.

Mayo is heavily promoted as a must-visit destination by Discover Ireland this Christmas with both Achill Island and the Westport New Year Walking festival highlighted as top events. Anyone wanting to catch the very last sunset of 2010 is recommended to go along to Achill Island, located on a longitude of approximately 10 degrees west, making it one of the most westerly points in Europe.