Great fun assignment last weekend for The Examiner - the annual culchie festival held this year in Ballyjamesduff, County Cavan. Went out on the Friday and took a few photos of one of the first culchies to arrive in McCabe's Bar, Ballyjamesduff - Patrick Smith from Castlepollard, County Westmeath. The festival seems to be great fun and for the October Bank Holiday Weekend something different to do.
The Virginia Pumpkin Festival was also held the same weekend in the nearby town of yep, you guessed it - Virginia. After reading some of the info on the festival lineup I decided to concentrate on culchies arriving from Ballyjamesduff to Virginia to pay homage to the Pumpkin so I got there early on teh road from Ballyjamesduff to Virginia which is a great long straight stretch of road. They were to arrive on hundreds of Honda 50's, in the end it turned out they arranged to meet in the town of Virginia, unbeknownst to me or the stewards I was talking to on the Ballyjamesduff road.
Ireland at the best of times can be disjointed and disorganised and in my line of work you just have to accept this, once you do things go smoothly enough, no point having a hissy fit when you can't control events.
A warm enough day I had planned to stand in the middle of the road and get shots of bikes flying past me, this could have been a foolhardy venture but for the fact that I had large hi vis jacket in the jeep, these luminous garments infuse the wearer with great powers it seems, especially the ability to stop traffic, which I did when I saw Elvis arrive on his trumped up Honda 50, I was delighted with the photo I took of him and it ended up on the front page of The Examiner - good result all round.
