{"id":222,"date":"2011-03-06T20:41:26","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T18:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=222"},"modified":"2011-04-05T10:39:50","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T08:39:50","slug":"corofin-festival-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/music\/corofin-festival-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Corofin Festival 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

After our trip to London to Ecobuild the day before we set off for Ireland. The Stena ferry for Rosslare left at 2.30pm so we had to leave at about 11 am as we needed to pick up some food for the journey as we did not want to pay ferry prices. The drive to Fishguard only takes about one hour and a half as the roads are pretty good. We were quite surprised how pretty Fishguard is. Stena actually own the ferry terminal the rest of the harbour is a small fishing port surrounded by a small picturesque town and beautiful coast. The railway station stops quite close to the ferry terminal making it convenient for foot passengers. We\u00a0 met some people who had travelled from Bath with only one change at Cardiff.<\/p>\n

The journey to Ireland is about three and a half hours. The England v Ireland cricket world cup was on live so that passed the time. Ireland won!<\/p>\n

The drive the other side to County Clare is about three hours. We got off the ferry at about 6.20pm and were in Peppers Bar<\/a> by about 10pm. Peppers is a famous music pub in Feakle. As it was a Wednesday evening we were expecting a session but it was very quiet as everybody was at the festival in Corofin. We went on to our friend’s B+B Clondanagh Cottage<\/a> near to Tulla. Clondanagh cottage is situated in peaceful countryside on a donkey farm and overlooks Clondanagh Lake. Dorothy is an amazing hostess and she and her husband Michael and their two children make you feel very welcome. The B+B is very cosy with lovely bright rooms and super ambience.<\/p>\n

Dorothy certainly spoils you with her lovely breakfasts which set you up for the day.<\/p>\n

\"Irish
Full Irish Breakfast at Clondanagh Cottage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The area is famous for the fishing being in the East Clare Lakelands. Dorothy, who herself is a keen fisherwoman, can give advice and hire out tackle and provide a boat for Clondanagh lake where there is private lake frontage.<\/p>\n

\"McGlynn\"
Arty McGlynn one of the Best Guitarists in Trad Music Playing at Corofin <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This area is also very famous for Traditional Irish music which is the reason we started to visit. We decided to go to Corofin festival this year as this is the first opportunity we have had (a big advantage of being retired). Corofin is a small village just on the Burren only about a 45 minute drive from Clondanagh Cottage. Corofin together with Tulla and Feakle are hugely important in the traditional music of Clare (and Irish music in general). If you want to hear the ‘real thing’ as opposed to a tourist pastiche this is the area to come.<\/p>\n

\"Mick
Mick Leahy Playing with John Blake and Lamond Gillespie at Corofin 2011<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The festival itself was excellent. It is quite small but very well organised. We had specifically gone to see Lamond Gillespie, John Blake and Mick Leahy of Traditional Irish music of London and Humours of Highgate fame. They rarely play together and were brilliant giving a lesson in how to play traditional music – perfectly together without being over the top – letting the music speak for itself. True masters.<\/p>\n

In fact there was excellent music the whole weekend. We will certainly go next year as well if we are not travelling.<\/p>\n

The Burren is\u00a0 a karst landscape area in Northwest Clare and is famous for its biodiversity and it’s archeological sites. As we were exceptionally lucky with the weather, dry sunny and quite mild for the time of year, we decided to explore a bit more of this beautiful area and take a few photographs. We eventually found, the very well preserved dolmen, Poulnabrone (well we didn’t have a map!). The name means the hole of sorrows. John managed to take some good photographs at sunset.<\/p>\n

\"Dolmen\"
Poulnabrone Dolmen \u00a9 John Burton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had a quiet day on the Saturday, when John helped Michael building some sheds that Dorothy is going to use for fishing tackle and then went to at Macks Bar with the Healy brothers later that evening. They were brilliant as usual.<\/p>\n

On Sunday we had to come home as there is a lot of sorting out to do\u00a0 with the house alterations. The journey back was all right. We managed to find a 24 hour Tesco in Clonmel which is useful to know about for a break, especially if we ever used the late ferry. The ferry arrived on time, in fact, it may have been early.\u00a0 We arrived home at about 1-30am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After our trip to London to Ecobuild the day before we set off for Ireland. The Stena ferry for Rosslare left at 2.30pm so we had to leave at about 11 am as we needed to pick up some food for the journey as we did not want to pay ferry prices. The drive to … Continue reading “Corofin Festival 2011”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[63,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizburton.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}