Woodland Bard

6th August, not only the day before Lunasadh Cross Quarter time but also time for my car's NCT test. The only availability was at Castlerea. Well, to not blog on boring ol' NCT, I'll just say the car passed. I love the little park by the NCT depot. An Ivy wall ... A river weir ... and its controls ... Trees in a stone circle, which I am sure is a modern decorative folly ... Was this once an estate? A pathway once to somewhere ... Crossing the bridge looks pretty downstream ... and a beautiful free flowing mature oak tree here ... Being a warm sunny afternoon I wanted to do more, so I headed out of Castlerea town, SE, to a multi henge ancient Bronze Age remains that still looks very grand. Known as Rathra, a 'quadvallate' ceremonial site, they say. I will post a map of its location below. Here's a view from the road, and there is fairly solid parking for two cars. Very modestly promoted ... Getting

Every small town needs an annual event to showcase the arts of local talent. To generate wider interest then the small town also invites and books popular 'celebrities' which are also an inspiration to local artists. Boyle, Co. Roscommon does this well with their annual festival of Arts that include exhibitions of paintings, photographs, sculptures and crafts along with the performing arts of music, songs, drama, dance, comedy, storytelling and poetry among others. On the last day of the festival, Saturday 2nd August, 2015 it was the turn of the lovely Moylurg Writers to do their 'thing'. I had the honour of being the opening poet and allowed 5 minutes to do my thing :-) I performed Coll The Hazel, then 5 more wonderful Moylurgs did their thing. Stunning appreciative audience. Some say 100 people were there, but I think it was more like 50. The venue was The Auditorium at King House, a lovely room for this work.