A few days in Cork and Waterford

Dublin is still on our to-do list, but we managed to get over to the more southerly parts of Ireland recently to visit some of Breda's friends and relations.

The main attraction was the West Waterford Drama Festival. Now in its 34th year, this is one of the highlights of the Irish amateur drama circuit. I've been four or five times over the last decade or so, and have always been impressed by the high standards of acting, set design and lighting, as well as the sheer amount of hard work that goes on behind the scenes to make everything run smoothly. The Irish take amateur drama much more seriously than the British - or it has a higher profile within the wider community, anyway. I was surprised to see a two-page spread in one of the local papers dedicated to news from all the nearby drama groups. The home team came third in their section (out of seven), which was no doubt disappointing for them, but the competition was fierce - I don't think many people envied the adjudicator the task of picking the winners.

Before the festival, we stayed in Cork City for a few days.


The view from our hotel window, looking east along the River Lee

I visited Elizabeth Fort, a 17th-century fort (!) that has also been used as a women's prison and police barracks. It's now owned by the city council, who hope to develop it as a tourist attraction and heritage site. Currently there isn't much to see apart from the walls and some displays with mannequins -



Anyone who's been to a pub with me knows that I'm fond of the odd drop of Jameson, so I jumped at the chance to take a tour of their distillery in Midleton. This is actually the old distillery, which closed in the 1970s when a more modern one was built next door, so it demonstrates the old-fashioned way of making whiskey. (The modern way is basically the same, but more precisely controlled.) One of the warehouses near the end of the tour is still used for storing barrels of the maturing whiskey, just so that you can savour the fragrance of it.


...a pub with no beer!

We also visited House of Waterford Crystal, where you can see every stage in the production process. I was surprised to learn that the patterns aren't moulded but cut with rotary grinders after the glass has set - it's obviously much tougher than I thought! Almost everything is still done by hand, but they have a couple of computer-controlled grinders for doing pieces that need very deep cuts, where it's too hard for a person to keep the depth consistent. They have a very modern-looking PC in charge of these machines, and I was amused to see what looked like a DOS application running on it. If it ain't broke...

Breda found what we think is the most expensive piece on the site -


Insured for €150,000 (the clock, not Breda)

All that excitement meant that I didn't get as much writing done as I would've liked, but more about that later...