Youghal Cycling Club always encourages new members both male and female of all ages. We know it can be a bit unnerving if you are new to cycling, joining a club cycle for the first time.

If you are already cycling but feel you could benefit from group cycling, we would like to hear from you. If you are looking for a fun and enjoyable way of getting fit and think road cycling could be for you, we would also like to hear from you!

With bodies(of all shapes) covered head to toe in lyrca and everthing that goes with it,this can be a strange world for the novice cyclist.

A bike of any kind(mountain, road racer,or Hybrid)and a tracksuit is all you need along with the desire to improve your fitness and have a bit of fun at the same time.Check out the training page to see the health benefits of regular cycling.

If you would like to talk to club Secretary Jonathan Tobin about any questions you might have regarding joining the group for a cycle he is only to willing to answer your queries and encourage you to your next step in joining the group for a cycle.

Jonathan can be contacted at 086-8563292 or email

107 Medals for Ireland at the biggest sporting event of the Summer

(Dublin, Tuesday 5th July 2011) Team Ireland received a rapturous welcome from hundreds of family members, friends and supporters who gathered in Dublin Airport this afternoon to applaud them, following their outstanding performances at the 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games.

The 126 Athletes and their 49 coaches entered the arrivals hall to a deafening sound of cheers and applause. They were greeted by family members and friends with tears of joy and hugs.

Team Ireland, which is sponsored by eircom, had an outstanding performance at the 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games, recording a number of personal best records and winning a total of 107 Medals and dozens of place ribbons in 12 sports: Aquatics, Athletics, Badminton, Basketball, Bocce, Bowling, Equestrian, Football (5 aside Male; 5 aside Female & 11 aside Male), Golf, Gymnastics, Kayaking and Table-Tennis.

The 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games ran from the 25th June – 4th July in Athens, Greece. It was the biggest sporting event to take place in the World this summer with 7,500 athletes from 185 nations competing. The Games were supported by 25,000 volunteers, 200 of whom were from Ireland.

Speaking about Team Ireland’s performance at the Games Minister of State Michael Ring TD said: “Representing your country at the Special Olympics World Summer Games is a tremendous honour for all the athletes and their families, coaches and supporters.  You have all been the most wonderful ambassadors for your country, in every possible way, and we are very proud of you all.”

Minister Ring went on to say: “I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Special Olympics Ireland and everybody else involved in the athletes’ preparations for, and participation at, the Games and I wish you all well for the future.”

John Treacy, CEO, Irish Sports Council said “I would like to convey my best wishes and congratulations to Team Ireland as they return home from the Summer Games. The athletes performed magnificently throughout the Games and not only did themselves, their family and friends proud but also their country.  On behalf of the Irish Sports Council I would like to thank all the coaches, parents and volunteers for helping make the Special Olympics Summer Games in Athens another memorable occasion for Irish sport”

Chief Executive, Sport NI Eamonn McCartan said Sport Northern Ireland wishes to extend congratulations to the Irish Special Olympics team as they return from the World Summer Games in Athens. Sport Northern Ireland is committed to encouraging increased participation at every level.  This is a remarkable achievement and Sport Northern Ireland offers congratulations to each and every individual involved in the preparation of the team as well as each athlete who took part.”

Matt English, CEO Special Olympics Ireland paid tribute to the athletes and their coaches saying “So much work goes into preparing a team for competition on the World sporting stage. Team Ireland put a huge amount of effort into their training schedule in advance of these Games and they certainly reaped the rewards in Athens. So many of our athletes recorded personal best performances as well as medal wins and we are equally proud of all of our athletes regardless of whether they return home with medals or not. The overall results of the Team are testament to the hard work and dedication of both the athletes and their coaches. I applaud each and every member of Team Ireland and congratulate them on their outstanding sporting achievements”.

Carolan Lennon, Chief Commercial Officer, eircom (Premier sponsors of Team Ireland) said “Congratulations to all the 126 athletes – you have all been marvellous. It’s great to see all your hard work and preparation pay off.  You have played a blinder for Ireland again at the World Games and done us all proud. Have a great home coming and enjoy the celebrations”.

‘Down Memory Lane’
An exhibition of photographs by Mickey Roche at McGoldrick Art and Photography.

On Thursday June 16th 2011, seventy years to the day that he commenced employment as a film projectionist in the Regal cinema, Youghal’s Mikey Roche held his first photography exhibition. The showcase, at the McGoldrick Art & Photography Gallery, North Main Street (adjacent to Clock Gate),  featured a selection of images that he had taken himself alongside some vintage samples that the 88 year-old acquired during his long and healthy life.

The exhibition was opened by John Kennedy, radio broadcaster with the local radio station CRY 104fm. John heaped huge praise on Mikey Roche’s work. He said Mickey was a marvelous man who’s work was priceless and were works of art in themselves.
Click on image to enlarge

 

Mogeely Vintage Club will host their 12th Annual Vintage Festival on Sunday the 17nd July. To date the club has raised over €160,000 for charities including ACT, Marymount Hospice, CASA, Midleton Community Hospital, Irish Wheelchair Association, Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and Cystic Fibrosis Ireland. Due to the difficulties in raising funds being experienced by all charities and organisations in the current economic climate Mogeely Vintage Club has decided this year to donate proceeds from the event to three charities, Midleton Community Hospital, Enable Ireland Cork and the Irish Kidney Association.

This years festival will take place in Mogeely Community grounds and will commence with the parade of a steam engine lead by a piper through the village of Mogeely to the vintage field at 2pm on Sunday the 17th July followed by the events official opening by the clubs great friends “The Bachelors in Trouble” from Waterford.

Year after year the number and variety of vintage tractors, cars, motor bikes and engines goes from strength to strength with in excess of 500 exhibits expected this year. One of the striking aspects of this years festival is the list of varied attractions that the committee have lined up yet again. The Old Time Threshing will take pride of place where we will be able to reminisce to bygone days. Live music throughout the day will be provided by the ever popular Pa Daly with a specially prepared dancing stage available for those who wish to dance the day away. Other attractions on the day will include baby show, dog show, best dressed lady, slow tractor race and barrel race. Also this year the committee are introducing sheave throwing, tractor balancing, trailer reversing & speed car wheel changing. For kids there will be bouncy castles, amusements and  pony rides with the highlight being the kids sports for all ages.

This year the festival committee have also  introduced events on the Saturday night (16th July) which include a Vintage Car and Tractor run which departs Mogeely at 7pm and travels through the local villages of Castlemartyr and Killeagh before returning to Mogeely. This is then followed by an interpub 5 a-side tug-of-war in the local Community grounds at 8pm. There is great interest in this event and it should not be missed!!

As the festival approaches it is a big well done to the local committee for making this event possible. Judging by the professional and dedicated attitude of this terrific group of people, the Mogeely Vintage Festival looks set to be another great success this year. The committee would like to pay special tribute to their many sponsors and the local community for its overwhelming support and like to extend a warm welcome to you all to the weekends events.

The officers and committee are: Denis Hennessy (Chairman), Tom Hickey (Vice Chairman), John Kelleher (Secretary), Will Leahy (Treasurer), Pat Doherty (Safety Officer),  Trevor Fleming, Moss Fleming, Denny John Scanlon, T.J Carew, John Sheehan, Tony Cashel, Peter Lawton, Tom Crotty, Pat Shanahan, Dominic Cashman, Hugh Keane, Michael Butler, Keith Walsh, Tom Walsh, Stephen Butler, Jim Scannell, Billy Walsh, Denis Mulcahy, Jim Behan, Dan Costigan, James Cashman, Tadhg O’Loughlin, Jim McCarthy, Sheila Hennessy

So come along and see for yourself – lets make this years festival the best yet!

The Irish Times – Monday, July 4, 2011
MICHAEL PARSONS

NEGOTIATIONS WILL take place in England later this week to try to resolve a protracted dispute about the ownership of a valuable painting linked to an Anglo-Irish family in Cork.
Children Under a Palm , a water colour by the Boston-born artist Winslow Homer (1836-1910), was found in the 1980s in Co Cork by an English tourist, Tony Varney.

The work was among a portfolio of paintings dumped close to a rubbish tip and was discovered by Mr Varney while on a fishing trip on the River Blackwater near Youghal.

Years later, in 2008, Mr Varney and his daughter Selina brought a number of the paintings to the BBC Antiques Roadshow to be valued. Experts there noted the signature of Homer on a watercolour and declared it to be a previously unknown – and very valuable – work by the artist.

A recent programme in the BBC Fake or Fortune ? documentary series outlined how events unfolded when the Varneys decided to consign the painting to auction at Sotheby’s. By May 2009 the painting was up for sale, valued at $150-$250,000 (€103,000-€172,000) at Sotheby’s New York.

But the sale was halted at the last minute when Simon Murray, a barrister and member of a Co Cork Anglo-Irish family, turned up in Manhattan to claim ownership for his family. Efforts to broker a deal between him and the Varneys were unsuccessful and the picture was withdrawn from the auction. The painting has been in legal limbo ever since and remains in the possession of Sotheby’s.

Matthew Weigman, a Sotheby’s director, told The Irish Times that “after two years in which the parties have failed to reach a settlement”, the ownership of the painting “remains unclear as the claimant has provided no information about its whereabouts between the time of his family’s ownership of the picture in the 1880s and its discovery by a relative of Sotheby’s consignor 100 years later”.

The picture was probably painted by Homer in 1885 during a visit to the Bahamas, then a British colony. The governor of the Bahamas from 1884-1887 was Sir Henry Arthur Blake, a Limerick-born British colonial administrator. It is believed the artist was a house-guest who painted Blake’s three children – Olive, Maurice and Arthur -sitting under a palm plant dressed in exotic costumes for a fancy-dress party. Blake later served in Newfoundland and Jamaica and, eventually, as governor of Hong Kong before he and his wife, Lady Edith, eventually retired to Myrtle Grove, a historic house in Youghal, Co Cork.

 

Sir Henry and Lady Edith are buried in the garden at Myrtle Grove which is still owned by their descendents and is today home to Mr Murray’s mother, Shirley.

Mr Murray, a great-great-grandson of Blake, declined to speak to The Irish Times . However, Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register in London, spoke “on behalf of the family”.

The Art Loss Register is an international company describing itself as “the world’s largest private database of lost and stolen art, antiques and collectables” offering services including “item registration, search and recovery services to collectors, the art trade, insurers and worldwide law enforcement agencies”.

 

Mr Radcliffe said the unframed painting was in a portfolio with other pictures and was stolen from the gate lodge at Myrtle Grove. He said the family did not report its theft to gardaí at the time because, although there had been a couple of minor burglaries at the property, they were unaware that the portfolio was missing.

They were alerted to the New York auction by an article in the Daily Telegraph and contacted Sotheby’s. Gardaí in Youghal have confirmed that “a complaint has been made by the family and is being investigated”.

Mr Radcliffe is meeting lawyers representing the Varney family in England this week and is “hoping to negotiate a settlement which would allow the picture to be returned to Ireland to the legal owner” who would decide whether to keep the painting or sell it.

source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0704/1224300034557.html

Tuesday, 28 June 2011 – The legal furore surrounding this watercolour has fascinated BBC viewers, but the story of the family it portrays is even more gripping, says Patrick Cockburn, grandson of the sitter

There sits my grandmother, Olive Blake, as a child at a fancy dress party in the Bahamas in 1885, dressed resplendently as an Arabian princess with scarlet head-dress and broad cummerbund over a yellow dress. A fan, which looks as if it is made from peacock feathers, dangles from her left hand and beside her, dressed as Arabian princes in flowing white trousers, are her younger brothers Maurice and Arthur. No wonder their parents Sir Henry and Lady Edith Blake were pleased by the watercolour of their three children painted by the American artist Winslow Homer.

The picture, for all its troubled recent history – detailed last Sunday evening as part of a major BBC series, Fake or Fortune – has an appealing freshness and spontaneity about it and Olive and her brothers look attractive, without being overly self-conscious of their exotic costumes. There is a certain formality about their expressions and posture, as if they are conscious that their father, Sir Henry, is the governor of the Bahamas. I wonder what Olive or her parents would have made of the controversy now surrounding the re-appearance and contested ownership of this charming painting, well over a century after it was produced.

Did she ever realise that Homer, already well-established when he visited the Bahamas, had gone on to become one of America’s iconic painters who enjoyed immense popularity and some of whose paintings sell today for millions of dollars? I only have a hazy memory of Olive, who died in 1953 when I was aged three, as being a formidable looking woman of whom I was somewhat frightened.

On the other hand, at that age most adults, aside from my parents and nanny, appeared to me to be intimidating and possibly hostile forces.

I remember when I was about three – it must have been shortly before she died – my grandmother took me and my first cousin Shirley in her car to bathe at a beach surrounded by rocks and cliffs called Goat Island near the town of Youghal on the southern Irish coast. Shirley and I both ran fully clothed into sea and were brought back shivering and in disgrace, wrapped in newspapers to Myrtle Grove, a Tudor house behind the medieval walls in Youghal once owned by Sir Walter Raleigh, where she lived.

Sir Henry and Lady Edith had gone to live in Myrtle Grove after he retired as a colonial governor in 1907 and they are buried in the garden. It was a few miles from here, a century after it was painted, that Winslow Homer’s painting was picked up next to a rubbish dump beside Youghal bay by a fisherman called Tony Varney. It was found with some other papers, one of which established a link to Sir Henry’s time as governor of the Bahamas. The finding of the watercolour was in the 1980s and it then disappeared into the attic of Mr Varney’s daughter, Selina, for 20 years, until it was identified on The Antiques Roadshow as being worth £30,000, a figure which, according to experts in New York, is a serious underestimate. They suggest that the painting, which was being auctioned by Sotheby’s, might sell for $250,000, but the sale was stopped at the last moment after objections by descendents of Sir Henry and Edith Blake.

Olive Blake, the central figure in the watercolour, would probably have been taken aback by what has happened.

My mother, Patricia Cockburn, the youngest of Olive’s six children, described her mother as strong-willed, intelligent, interested in the world around her, but highly conventional. As the daughter of a colonial governor, Olive developed a taste for travel and was contemptuous of personal discomfort. She married Jack Arbuthnot, an officer in the Scots Guards and ADC to her father, who was then in his last year as Governor of Hong Kong in 1903. The wedding was a regal affair, with the men in dazzling white uniforms – and her new husband, who liked his creature comforts, had expected the honeymoon would be luxurious.

Instead, Olive insisted they should travel to a remote Buddhist monastery in Japan of which she had read. When they arrived, he discovered they would have to sleep on the floor on straw mats.

The monastery was also overrun by rats. Olive later gleefully told my mother: “You know, Daddy didn’t like it a bit. He had to stay awake all night shooting at them with a revolver.”

Jack Arbuthnot, who for many years supplemented the inadequate pay of an army officer with part time journalism, was the originator of the “Beachcomber” column for the Daily Express. He was also a good amateur painter and sculptor, but quirky and unpredictable. He fought in the First World War and made an original and, to me, very moving relic of his time on the Western Front. On Christmas Day 1914 he collected broken medieval glass from the cathedral at Ypres and reworked the fragments of brown, red, green and clear glass, into a metal cross.

Sir Henry and Lady Edith Blake would probably have been less affected by the strange history of Homer’s picture of their children – something they apparently commissioned on the spur of the moment – because their own lives had been full of high drama.

Staring out from their official portraits in the newspapers of the day in the Bahamas, they look almost like caricatures of coldly remote British rulers at the zenith of the empire. But, in reality, their marriage was the result of an elopement, furiously opposed by Edith’s wealthy Anglo-Irish family, which had disinherited her. On the death of her mother, who had inherited the family estates, Edith and Henry had tried to seize back a house – which she felt was part of her inheritance – at pistol point and were brought before a magistrates’ court.

Edith Blake came from a rich, but dysfunctional family with large estates in Tipperary and Waterford, including extensive copper mines along the coast.

She was the elder of two daughters of Catherine Isabella and Ralph Bernal Osborne, who had come to loathe each other shortly after their marriage in 1844. He was a liberally minded Whig MP, who was originally called Ralph Bernal and appears to have married her largely for her money and resented having to change his name to hers.

An early dispute came when he tried vainly to have all the sheep on her estates in Ireland re-branded with his initials instead of hers.

Relations did not improve over the next 30 years. “The most violent scenes used frequently to take place between my parents,” Edith later wrote. “My sister [Grace] and I often stood holding each other’s hands in the corner, very much frightened. I hated my father and looked upon my mother as a suffering angel.”

Frightened or not, Edith was not an inhibited Victorian girl. She painted extremely well and wrote an excellent book on travelling in southern Europe.

At one moment she complains vigorously about a hotel in Istanbul where she was staying and which had told her there was a public baths next door. In fact, it was some way off and, she notes irritably, that she had to walk to it through the streets of the city wearing only her dressing gown.

Hostilities between her mother and father persisted as Edith grew up. Things were made only slightly more bearable by the fact that he lived mostly in England, while Catherine Isabella stayed at Newtown Anner outside Clonmel in county Tipperary. When he did visit the house she would greet him by saying: “I trust you are well, Mr Osborne, and how did you leave your mistresses?”

When Edith was 16 or 17 her mother wrote a novel called False Positions, published anonymously, which was a thinly-disguised attack on her husband.

Formal separation between Bernal and Catherine Isabella was often mooted but never happened, possibly because relations were too venomous to achieve even this modus vivendi.

Aside from these infuriated rows, the Osbornes were highly educated, painted and drew well and had an early interest in photography. Often the women of the family posed in fancy dress as Italian or Balkan peasants.

Catherine Isabella, presumably ruing her own experience, saw all men who wooed her daughters as potential fortune hunters. Curiously this was almost the only subject on which she and her husband sometimes agreed. When Edith said she intended to marry a good looking and recently widowed police officer called Henry Blake who commanded the Royal Irish Constabulary in the local market town of Clonmel, they adamantly opposed the match.

Briefly united, her parents said he was an adventurer whom they alleged had once been a draper’s assistant in Limerick. When they did marry in 1874, Edith was promptly disinherited and, in true Victorian fashion, her parents forbade her name ever to be mentioned in their house again. The newly-married Blakes were poor, compared to Edith’s previous palatial standard of living. Henry resigned from the police and became a Resident Magistrate, a powerful post with civil and military authority, in central Ireland, just as the war between landlord and tenant was at its height. He was much hated for overseeing evictions, arrests and trials and an open grave was dug outside the Blakes’ house to underline local hostility. Their doors were barred.

A visiting local journalist said that Edith acted as a sort of bodyguard to her husband, adding admiringly “she is always armed, a dead shot with a pistol and practises every day”.

Edith found other uses for her gun. The bitterness between her and her parents remained deep. When her mother died on 21 June 1880, the Blakes took back one of the family houses. But while they were attending her mother’s funeral they found that the agent for the estate had taken advantage of their absence to install his own caretaker. On their return to the house, Henry tried physically to throw the man through the door, while Edith drew a pistol, according to a later court report and shouted: “Look at this – if you don’t go out I will put what’s here through you.” The Blakes never denied that she had drawn a gun and Henry’s lame excuse was that she was could not have shot the caretaker because he was standing in the way and she could not get a clean shot.

The culmination of the family row came the next day in court when Henry was accused of using “force and violence” and Edith of threatening to shoot the caretaker with her gun. The Blakes saw what had happened in a different light. Grace, Edith’s younger sister, had married the Duke of St Albans and they stood to inherit the Osborne estates.

In court Henry, still enraged, somewhat illogically blamed the whole affair on the Duke, saying he wanted to get him sacked as a resident magistrate. He said: “The only one who has an interest in this matter is my noble brother-in-law, the Duke of St Albans, and if he has anything to do with it, I tell him it is an ignoble and discreditable thing for him to bring Mrs Blake here.”

Though should have been an open and shut case, sympathetic local magistrates decided against putting him on trial and the crown did not appeal.

Possibly Blake got off because the beleaguered government in Ireland did not want to lose one of their more effective lieutenants. He also appears to have dropped his and Edith’s claim to the Osborne estates. As well as being a magistrate he was a prolific and eloquent if anonymous journalist with a stark view of Irish politics.

He wrote in 1880 that “there are two Irelands, more clearly defined in religion, feeling and interests than were the Northern and Southern States of America in 1864″.

The New York Times wrote that after a few years as Special Magistrate, with wide authority, that “Blake had made himself so widely hated by the people that he had to be removed from Ireland”. Even so, the pay-off was munificent, probably because the government was in his debt because of active and dangerous service during the land wars, but also because he was now backed by the Duke of St Albans. He was given a knighthood and, after an attempt was balked by the Irish in Australia to make him governor of Queensland, he became governor of the Bahamas in 1884. It was here, months later, that he held the fancy dress party which his children attended in oriental finery and Winslow Homer painted the picture, the ownership of which has created so much controversy.

The Broken Boy, by Patrick Cockburn, is published by Jonathan Cape

source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/the-girl-in-the-painting-2303618.html

The winners of this year’s Irish Performing Arts Festival Drama section were the St. Raphael’s Drama Group, Youghal.

Their play entitled ‘ An Angel Fell from the Sky’  was a ‘clear winner’ said judge Catherine Mahon Buckley who admitted she had been moved to tears by the incredible performances, visual beauty and simplicity of the piece.

The play involved both live performance and shadow puppets brilliantly provided by St. Raphael’s Windy Lane Puppet Group.

As St. Raphael’s said to be the angel of ‘happy meetings’ the play An Angel Fell from the Sky tells the story of an angel who one day falls from the sky. The angel goes on a journey of happy meetings that lead to his own journey home.

The competition which took place over two days in the Firkin Crane Theatre, Cork involved seventeen groups from around the country.

This multi talented group’s short film When They Least Expect It was recently screened in the Mall Arts Centre Youghal and Camden Palace Cork.

The winning play An Angel Fell from the Sky will next be performed at the St. Raphael’s Open Day on Sunday July10th at 3pm.

Congratulations to everyone involved and a big thank you to the St. Raphael’s staff, family and friends for their support.

 

CIRCUS GERBOLA

PRESENT THEIR INCREDIBLE NEW SHOW FOR 2011

MUSICA!

At Youghal , opposite perks, Cork Road

From the 11th to the 13th of July

Circus Gerbola are celebrating their 10th anniversary and are delighted to announce that they will be performing their unique anniversary show, Musica!, in Youghal. A memorable experience for the whole family, Musica! is a spellbinding spectacle that’s  packed with amazing performances, mischievous fun and Live Music including Aerial Violinist, Cello Extraodinaire & Grand Piano Contortionist.

Enchanting audiences all over the country is an act not to be missed… the extraordinary & very beautiful aerial dance piece performed with original music that was composed and choreographed by Fidget Feet contemporary circus company. Of course you can expect ridiculous and hilarious clowning and there are more great acts like Flying Tango, Cloud Swing, Balance Perch, Adagio and the Circus Gerbola Liberty Horses and also dont miss out on the chance to see Zebras, Camels, Dogs, Ostrich and an Emu. For the younger circus goer don’t miss Barney & Friends!

SEATS FROM AS LITTLE AS

€7.99

With special discount voucher

Now That’s Value!!

(look out for vouchers in shops etc.)

VENUE:

Youghal, opposite Perks, Cork Road

SHOWTIMES:

Monday @ 7.30 p.m

Tuesday @ 7.30 p.m

Wednesday @ 4.30 p.m & 7.30 p.m

Book your ticket from www.ticketgroup.ie

phone 0818 333344 or at any Xtra-Vision store

Info: 086 3700620

email: info@circusgerbola.ie

www.circusgerbola.ie

Team Ireland makes waves and breaks records on day five of the 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games

(Athens, Friday 1st July 2011) Team Ireland was celebrating again today after another day of medal wins, personal best records and great sporting achievements in Athens.

In what was a fantastic day for the bocce team all three mens’ singles events resulted in medals for Ireland. Simon Darragh from Celbridge in Kildare and Oliver Magee from Lisburn, Co. Antrim won a gold medal each for their efforts while Kilkenny man Conor Ryan secured a bronze.

In the singles bowling event, Joyce Haughian from Newry and Mary Quigley from Tullow, Co. Carlow won gold in their divisions while Paul Bridgman from Cobh, Co. Cork won silver. Jonathon Griffin from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway came fourth in his event while Mayo woman Deirdre Garvin came seventh.

In equestrian Steven Yetman from Donaghadee, Co. Down won silver in the working trials event while Sally Duffy from Tallaght in Dublin won gold.

The women’s 5-aside team secured bronze in their match against Italy winning by a margin of 4 – 0.

There were plenty of celebrations for the golf team also with Patrick Donnelly from Dungannon, Co. Tyrone winning gold. Fellow team mates Michael O’Leary from Killarney, Co. Kerry, Laura Kelly from Oldcastle, Co. Meath and Denise Flattery from Castlegar, Co. Galway won silver. Gary Fleming from Monkstown, Co. Cork won bronze and Stephen Deignan came in fifth place.

In basketball the Irish women’s team overcame Italy by 24 – 16.

In athletics there was a silver medal win for Martin Mahood from Bangor, Co. Down in the 800m event and Rachel Ryan from Templemore, Co. Tipperary won bronze in the 100m women’s event.

In singles badminton there were bronze medal wins for Jacqueline Gault from Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim and Bernadette Kennedy.

In kayaking Galway man Ruairi O’ Toole took silver in the 500m event while Teresa Maguire from Portarlington, Co. Laois won bronze in the 500m competition. Shaun Bradley from Letterkenny, Co. Donegal and Celine Mulready from Dublin came fourth in their 500m events.

Wicklow woman Aisling Beacom took silver in the first Open Water Swim event to take place at a World Games, swimming a distance of 1.5 km in 35 minutes. Also in aquatics Ciara Trait  from Kilkenny won gold in the 25m freestyle event while Joseph Cullen won gold in the 100m Individual Medley.

The current medal tally for Team Ireland stands at 67: (20 Gold; 32 Silver and 15 bronze medals).

Team Ireland will be in action once again tomorrow.  To follow their progress or to leave a message of support please visit www.specialolympics.ie/athens<http://www.specialolympics.ie/athens> You can also download a free iphone App from the Apple istore which will enable you to track your local athlete while on the go. Team Ireland are proudly supported by eircom.

Unemployed Get A New Lease Of Life Thanks To The People of Youghal

Anyone who has visited Dolphin Square on a Friday or Saturday lately may have noticed something fishy going on, it’s not something to worry about, and in fact many of the locals have already welcomed the new edition to the local community, which comes to us in the form of a new fish stall which operates every Friday and Saturday from 9am to 4pm in Dolphin Square carpark.  Abbey Seafood have come to the town in a bid to win over the locals with their fresh fish and seafood, not to mention their quirky business ideas, which include having a range of complementary customer recipe cards available to take home, with ideas on how best to cook the fish they have just purchased and with colouring sheets available for children, there is something for all ages.  All this means it’s not just tuna that is ‘dolphin’ friendly in Youghal these days.

Run by two ex-fishermen, Abbey Seafood offers customers a fine selection of fresh seafood sourced from our own local waters.  The two brothers who set-up the business decided that a change was in order, as they had been made unemployed some time ago following the collapse of the construction industry.  One of the brothers, John commented, “We were tired of signing on, we wanted to use our skills in a new way that would be beneficial to us and the local community.  We chose Youghal because our Mother is from the area and we have a lot of family living here.  We decided to go ahead with this business as it would give the fishermen a new outlet for their fish, and it gave us the chance to bring fresh fish to the local community.”  These new Entrepreneurs are certainly causing a ‘splash’ with the locals, who have welcomed the addition of the stall to the area.

Abbey Seafood guarantee that the produce sold is no more than 24 hours from the boat.  With a wide selection to choose from, and expert knowledge on hand to give hints and tips as to what fish to buy and how to cook it, the motto is ‘fish doesn’t have to be frightening’.  Following on from shows such as RTE’s Martin’s Still Mad About Fish, Abbey Seafood intend to not only bring fresh fish to existing customers, but also to make new customers aware of the ease and versatility of fish dishes.  So why not come along and see for yourself, we promise you will have a whale of a time.

Contact Information:

John Healy

Abbey Seafood

40 An Grianan,

Ballinroad

Dungarvan

Co. Waterford

Tel: 087 3668833

Email: abbeyseafood@hotmail.com