Roundstone News 15th August 05
We have had one of the busiest weeks in Roundstone, what with the great weather and of course the Summerfest which started last Thursday and finished up yesterday, yesterday saw the largest gathering I have ever seen in the village with all the games for the kids and the revival of sheaf tossing which was brought in by the Sullivan Family, anyway it has to be said, that Mark Forsyth, Thomas King and Simon Ashe have yet again done a hell of a job with all the events that took place, The litter in the streets could have got out of control but the lads were out early each morning to clear up the best they could, it also has to be mentioned that thanks to our John Conneely he came in for a few hours over the weekend, voluntarily I might add for a few hours just to keep our streets clean. I also noticed that there was a lot more voluntary help to make it work, I had the impression this year that the trio had more fun owing to the extra help, I am glad because it can be some times a thankless task to implement a program of this sort so, hopefully they were pleased enough to be spurred on to prepare for I think their fifth Summerfest for 2006, any way congratulations to them and to all those that gave their support to the RNLI and of course to all those that gave their time to make the events run smoothly.
I had a quick word with Simon this afternoon while they were all clearing up around the place re the fund raising for the RNLI, no total as yet as it is still on going, but would let me know in a few days time of the amount raised.
Colette King:
Was the Roundstone / O’Dowds representative for the selection of a beauty Queen for the Clifden Pony show which was held in the station house in Clifden yesterday, I gather from a good few friends of Colette did a good job all the same as a representative for our area, good one Collette
Stable Gallery:
There was a wine reception with an opening of new mixed media paintings in the stable Gallery with artist Sibéail Ní Chumin from Galway her works are refreshingly different depicting Bulls, actually the paintings are on the
ROUNDSTONE ART GALLERY>>>>
should you want to have a look at them also that same evening, the launch of a collection of paper backs written by authors that have an affinity with the area, for example the history of the donkey, and Humanity Dick just to name a few, in other words all the books written on different subjects relating to Connemara will be put on sale in the gallery
Community Games:
As the season is slowly coming to a close we have one more event to happen in Roundstone and this is the Community Games, which will be held on the 4th September on the green field with activities for all age groups. Posters giving all details will be out over the next few days.
Johnny Sheehan will sponsor the Community Games; Johnny in his own quite way has given a lot to the village, so like last year it should be a fun day. We will have Bouncing Castles, Tug of war etc, disco for kids and the Adults also a table quiz to raise some money for the Parents Ass.
Dogs Bay / Gurteen Beach:
The Roundstone Beach Committee, i.e. Pat Mullen, Joe Rafferty and James Conneely were nominated by the Galway County Council some time ago to have a DVD recording of the work and progress of the control of the banks from both sides from erosion, this recording happened on Monday with camera man Stephen O’Brien from Westport, the filming was done in two stages, the first part was with Louise Purten who is an expert on the Flora and Fauna and the second part was with members of the youth Club for the litter clean up, making a special reference to the fact that if the erosion was not controlled there would be no beaches for our visitors, so my thanks to Cahill Mullen, and his friends Shane Rooney, Andrew and Adam McCaffery and Oaísian Kenny for the clean up that morning.
Just to go back abit it was in 1988 that work started on the beaches with voluntary fund raising, then it was in 1990 that grants became available, and then came on board were three Galway County Council engineers who have contributed so much to the project, John Noone, Michael Dolly and John Wynn, also Ross Melville of Owen Precaste, played a part during the various surveys, he donated his Helicopter as part of the beach project.
The committees work after all these years is now finally being recognised as one of most important projects in the name of conservation, anyway the said DVD is hoped to be out in early November.
While we are on the subject of Gurteen, I have just heard that after two years of objections to a sewage plant for the camping site Pat has just received notice that, the Galway County Council have granted permission for a state of the art for a new plant, as more and more visitors are coming to the west with their mobile homes etc this has got to be good for the camping site and for Roundstone.
Roundstone Pony Show:
A little update a new committee will be elected on Monday the 21st. I was talking to Paddy the Yank this morning and he was telling me that the last show in Roundstone was 1981 and he was hoping to find out if anybody has any old catalogues or old cups and trophies of the Roundstone days Paddy the yank would like to hear from you, and talking about Paddy, his mere “Roundstone Mary” became champion of the show in the Murloch Show in Clare.
