Rathmullan Film Festival
Our Festival is taking place in the beautiful seaside town of Rathmullan Donegal from 15-18 February. If you are looking for a long weekend of nature & beach walks..
Our Festival is taking place in the beautiful seaside town of Rathmullan Donegal from 15-18 February. If you are looking for a long weekend of nature & beach walks..
Enjoy a rich cultural experience in the heart of Rathmullan … following the trail of the Earls through mainland Europe 10 years after they departed Rathmullan’s Shores.
‘Live on the Lawn’ returns to the gardens of Rathmullan House on May 14th. Following the massive success of our first ‘LOTL’ event in September last year, we return with a stellar line up accompanied by a plethora of activities throughout the day.
Lisa McGill is primarily a seascape artist, living in Rathmullan. As a young girl, Lisa spent several carefree summers on Rutland Island, the island of her forbears, so she likes to believe that this explains the tug of the sea
Special Olympics Ireland is calling on Donegal people to get ‘Freezin’ for a Reason’ by participating in their coolest fundraising event of the year.
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Rathmullan Charters boats will be operating again for the season from mid-May 2015
Call Angela on +353 87 2480132 or Neil on +353 87 0507464 for details of available dates and special deals for groups of up to 12 persons.
Lough Swilly SAC will begin the new season with the first trip of the year from Rathmullan in mid-April. There are some places available for non members so anyone interested in going out for a good day’s fishing should give us a call on +353 87 2480132
The 49th Lough Swilly Tope and whitefish Festival will be held over the Whit weekend 30th May and 1st June. Anglers can fish in either section with a total prize fund of over 1000 euros. There are still some places available on both days – the entry fee is €60 per day for seniors and €35 for juniors.
View Holiday Homes in Rathmullan
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Community clean-up event with scrap metal collection organised in support of Rathmullan Habitat for Humanity Group.
Saturday 13th April – assemble at pier car park
A free scrap metal collection point is being set-up in the Rathmullan beach car-park. All types of metal is accepted – steel, copper, iron. Collection of large items can be arranged by contacting Fiona (087)987-2915.
All proceeds will go to the Rathmullan Habitat for Humanity Group travelling to Malawi in August.
Rathmullan on Lesser Spotted Ulster
We very nearly didn’t have room to squeeze into Alfie McCollum’s shop, the old courthouse, in Rathmullan. I don’t think I have ever been in a more congested space.
Every inch of it was crammed from floor to ceiling with the most extraordinary collections of memorabilia, antiques, bric-a-brac, crockery, jewellery, glassware, paintings, signs, postcards, toys, skeletons (yes skeletons) and at least one specimen of every single man-made object that ever existed on earth.
Well, that might be a slight exaggeration but that’s the way it seemed to our camera crew who had to find somewhere to stand with their equipment without sending whole cabinets of fragile and irreplaceable objects crashing to the ground.
Thankfully Vinny Cunningham, our cameraman, and Billy Gallagher, a sound man if ever there was one, don’t take up much room.
Vinny is tall and thin and Billy doesn’t eat much, but even so they had to inch sideways into position and then stand very still and try not to breathe for an hour or so.
It was quite a challenge for them, but after many years of filming Lesser Spotted Ulster they’re well used to finding themselves in strange, awkward and often downright scary places. They’ve been up mountains, down caves, crawled through souterrains, waded swollen rivers, sailed the seas in every imaginable type of craft and even climbed to the top of cathedral spires in gale force winds.
They’ve done all this while burdened down with gear that weighs as much as two bags of coal.
Have they ever complained? Frequently, but I just ignore them.
Seriously though, Vinny and Billy are a great double act, one of the main reasons why Lesser Spotted Ulster is such a joy to do.
Their technical skills, I take for granted, it’s the quiet, unfussy and unobtrusive way they go about their business that makes them such an invaluable part of the team. They’re really expert at putting people at their ease, relaxing them, making the whole process as painless as possible.
Often when we finish recording people will say, “Is that it?”
The true skill of a documentary camera crew is their ability to be invisible.
Vinny and Billy are brilliant at it. It’s time they got a mention.
This article, by Joe Mahon, appears on utv website.
The Memory of Scent at Rathmullan House
Conceived in the United States, set in Paris, and launched in Rathmullan – for American born Lisa Burkitt’s debut novel ‘The Memory of Scent’ there is something of her life’s journey to date running through these geographical themes.
It was in the land of her birth that the idea of a book first took root and it was the city where she spent a period of her life in that was almost inevitably going to form the backdrop for her historical story. And this Friday evening in the scenic surrounds of Rathmullan House her novel will take its first steps into the public domain in a county she now firmly calls home.
It has been home for some time now – was home when her family relocated to Letterkenny from an America that had reeled from the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy to arrive in an Ireland that had shared in the shock of those slayings. The McGills came back in the year of Bloody Sunday – from the racial tensions they’d left behind in Cleveland, Ohio, to the sectarian divisions of the Troubles here. But life for all of them would move on. Or so they thought.
Lisa’s mother, Eileen (a member of the well known McGlinchey family) had taken her four children back to Letterkenny while her husband, Basil, remained on in the States for a further year. The couple had initially met at the Covehill home of Lisa’s aunt. Jo, Cork born, Basil having arrived in the town as a raw 16-year-old to take up employment in the Post Office. “It was like a foreign posting in the army!,” laughs Lisa.
They married in Dublin in the early fifties and set off to live in the States, setting up home in Cleveland where he started a job as a stockbroker. Lisa and her three siblings, Denise, Anne and Paul, were all born in the U.S. but after moving to New Jersey the family finally took the decision to return.
Two years after that return, in 1972, personal tragedy hit the McGills in the most devastating of circumstances. They had spent their first Christmas together in Letterkenny when 41-year-old Eileen was killed in a car crash in the vicinity of the Port Bridge, shattering the dream of a new life and fresh beginnings.
To this day, Lisa doesn’t know, and has deliberately never made it her business to know, the precise location of the fatal accident. “I pass by it frequently but where exactly my mum’s car spun off the road, I don’t know and don’t want to.
“I was eleven years of age when it happened and for five years after the accident, I never uttered the word ‘Mummy’.”
Not that her mother wasn’t forever a presence. “The house we were living in at Lower Main Street became physically colder. The life went out of it.”
But time, even in the face of tragedy, won’t stand still and for the young Lisa the world opened up to creativity and thoughts of travel. “The first time I got a poem published was in my fourth year at the Loreto Convent. It was called ‘Lament of a Delinquent’,” she grins at the memory of the title.
“I always wanted to travel and I suppose I saw myself following a journalistic career in a war zone.”
It was to Jerusalem that she ultimately headed. “I was there for one and a half years and absolutely adored it.” Her first rejection slips came from the old ‘Irish Press’ who weren’t interested in summaries of daily life in Israel.
But there were other places to see and other writings that would be accepted by publishers. “I lived in Paris for a while and it stayed with me.” Stayed with her when she took herself off to the United States and the idea of a novel sewed itself into her consciousness and the City of Lights emerged as the setting point for it.
The seed grew but in the meantime, after her return to Donegal, so too Lisa’s involvement in journalism. initial prime mover behind the ‘Finn Valley Voice’ and producer on Highland Radio among other achievements. The intensive research into ‘The Memory of Scent’, which centres on the story of a woman in Paris in 1883, began in 2009 and finally the book will take its place on the bookshelves after this weekend.
Lisa has just returned from the French city where she attended the launch of an anthology of best Parisian stories which includes a story of her own, ‘A Pinch of Tarragaon’, which she had reshaped into the genre from the drafts of her novel.
Somehow Paris was always destined to play a significant role in Lisa Burkitt’s writing career. And she never had any doubts that Donegal would be the launching pad for her debut work of fiction.
“People would have said why not Dublin but I always wanted to launch the book in the county where I live.”
The Memory of Scent at Rathmullan House
And in Rathmullan this Friday evening. ‘The Memory of Scent’ will be launched by County Arts Officer, Traolach O’Fionnain. Highland Radio’s Shaun Doherty will also read an extract from the work which is being published by ‘The History Press’.
A significant chapter in Lisa’s writing career. And more to follow. “I’m writing another book. It took me so long to finally get this one out that I don’t want to waste any more time.”
From the United States to Donegal via Paris and other points. The journey continues.
article appeared in Donegal Democrat