A trip around Donegal
A trip around the beautiful scenery of Donegal.
Ballyshannon Harvest Fair
For many years, the annual Harvest Fair in Ballyshannon was one of the biggest days of the year in south Donegal.
And next weekend, thanks to the efforts of a hard-working organising committee, the Harvest Fair will return with a host of events planned over the two days.
The event is being organised as part of the ‘Backing Ballyshannon’ project and one of the organisers, Mai Kelly, says the reaction from people when the idea was first mooted was better than she could ever have expected. “It’s been brilliant. People aren’t just talking the talk, they are happy to put their shoulders to the wheel and get behind this,” she said.
Sticking with tradition, the Harvest Fair will run on Friday and Saturday, September 16th and 17th.
And it will be preceded this coming weekend by the Glenties Harvest Fair which is set to once again, draw huge crowds to the area. A bumper programme of events starts this evening with the official opening at 8pm. See our Sunday/Tuesday papers for the best coverage next week from Glenties.
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Railway restoration show in Stranorlar
Apart from the major effort and expense of laying track on the old Donegal Railway trackbed, one of the few ways left to keep the old railways in the minds of local people and to attract outside interest is a model railway show.
Local enthusiasts County Donegal Railway Restoration Ltd who operate out of the restored old station building in Donegal Town have just such a show at Kee’s Hotel in Stranorlar this weekend starting tomorrow, Friday 9 and Saturday, September 10 from 11am to 5pm each day. There will be working small scale layouts of original Donegal railway stations – Letterkenny and Donegal Town, plus a similar scale model of Schull Station on the old Schull and Skibbereen line in Cork. There will be other working models including Hornby tinplate and Meccano, plus big garden railway size models of the Donegal rolling stock.
At the last show, in August, the digital displays of local railway photos on a computer screen caused a lot of interest, so this time there will be more emphasis on this and bigger screens, plus the facility to ask to see photos of a given part of the railway, and possibly, where copyright permits, to order prints of these.
This is a real opportunity for locals to research and remind themselves of their old railway and for visitors to get to know the importance of the railways in the development of Donegal and to get a taste of their days of operation.
Entry is only €5 for adults and €4 for concessions and children. More information from County Donegal Railway Restoration on (074) 9722655
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