The Board of Tides & Tales Maritime Community Project CLG invites you to the official launch of our new and enhanced website. The site showcases the rich maritime history of Waterford, its harbour and the Three Sister Rivers. The Website Enhancement Launch takes...
The Tides & Tales Maritime Community Project has been selected as County Winner in the National Heritage Week Awards 2024 for our event Cheekpoint - A community of the Tides for the Waterford County Council local authority area. To say we are thrilled is an...
May marks our annual fundraiser for the local RNLI station that we depend on for so much- Dunmore East RNLI. This is our 4th year to participate and this time round we plan to do at least a mile a day for the month of May - 31 miles. My wife Deena and I will travel...
It's been a hectic Heritage Week 2023, in fact, my busiest yet with three seperate events. We kicked off on Sunday 13th August with a presentation in Byrnes of Ballyhack, Co Wexford which focused on the history of Salmon fishing here in the harbour area, the boats,...
To support our local lifeboat station at Dunmore East my brother Robert and I rowed the river Suir this year - an estimated 25 miles. If you would like to support our efforts here's the link to make a financial contribution. All donations go to the RNLI. When I wrote...
For this years Imagine Arts festival I am doing two talks - both in Jordans on the Quay and both on the theme of Waterford Maritime History. The first is "In the Great Westerns Wake" - a reminisce of the ship that traded from the early 1930s to the mid-1960s from the...
For this year's Heritage Week Deena and I organised a weir building workshop based on my personal life experiences of working on the repair and the fishing of the traditional Waterford Harbour Head Weir. I decided to build a life-size model of the structure at...
After four long years of a hard slog, Cheekpoint finally got a new pontoon access to the water, bringing the village into the 21st Century. A small local committee with a very healthy membership of local boat owners was behind the project and from the outset, the...
Some might say that one event as a volunteer organiser for Heritage Week is noble, but two may be over the top. The truth is, I was thinking the same myself last week as the time clipped along and the workload seemed daunting. Having committed to do a...
On Saturday 23rd July the Camino Society of Ireland came to our community to appreciate the role of the harbour in medieval pilgrimage. On a walk led by Damien McLellan, we met at Passage East, took the ferry to Ballyhack, and wandered the roads in search of pilgrims'...
For Heritage Week 2022, I am running an interactive course for 12 people on how to "sink" a typical local fishing weir based on my experiences as a child and young adult. We will also have a trip courtesy of Tomás Sullivan to an existing weir to appreciate the scale...
Although Sunday 26th June dawned wet and breezy, as the morning wore on the cloud started to lift and by early afternoon it was a beautiful sunny summer day, but with a strong SW breeze. As Deena and I drove towards Dunmore East Geoff Harris broadcast from the...
On Saturday 18th June 2022 I went for an evening boating trip. As Deena was entertaining some friends at home I was on my own, but we had already had two good trips out together - to Jack Meades and Campile earlier that week. Our first trip out, made it to Jack...
We completed our Mayday Mile event - Cheekpoint to Dunmore by Cliff and Shore - in aid of our local RNLI station at Dunmore East on Sunday, May 22nd, 2022. Although the day dawned overcast and damp by 11 am the cloud was lifting and the walk proceeded in a fresh SW...
The Mayday Mile is a major fundraising initiative of the RNLI. 150 people drown in UK and Irish waters every year. And this summer, thousands of people will get into danger by the water. Ordinary people enjoying days out with family or friends. It happens so easily,...
In an effort to have my say into the recent consultation on the expansion of Marine Protected Areas I drew on my own bitter experience of how the political system can treat those communities that lack political power. My fear about the expansion (although I welcome...
Sunday 30th May 2021 dawned bright and breezy, a perfect day for my rescheduled fundraising walk to Dunmore East on behalf of the local RNLI lifeboat. The plan was simple enough in principle, to walk from Cheekpoint to Dunmore East, but as near to the water as...
Due to the poor weather of late, I have decided to reschedule my fundraising walk to Sunday 30th May. Its disappointing after all the support and the meet ups I had planned, but I am hopeful that the following week will be just as good. Many thanks for all the...
On Friday 16th April I appeared on Seascapes, the RTÉ Radio 1 maritime programme with Fergal Keane. Fergal very kindly interviewed me about my book Waterford Harbour Tides and Tales. We covered the background to my blogging and writing, discussed the importance of...
I'm delighted to be able to announce that all the residents of the Russianside, Cheekpoint, Co Waterford will receive the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 later this morning. Due to diplomatic considerations, a media blackout was insisted upon...
The highly popular early morning Booze, Blaa’s ‘n’ Banter annual hootananny extravaganza held in Jordan’s American Bar, on Waterford’s Quay’s goes online this year due to the Covid19 pestilence. It’s organised by the Waterford Council of Trade Unions in association...
I'm delighted to be featuring on the RTE Radio 1 Sunday Miscellany radio show again this week. It will be broadcast Sunday morning, 23rd February 2020 after the 9am news. This is my second appearance on the show, and unlike my previous...
Its been a hectic week since my first blog last Friday in the new monthly format. Readership was well down, perhaps because people were out of the habit after a four week layoff. I don't know. Will definitely try whet the appetites before the next last Friday in July...
I started 2019 with a pledge to publish a new book. Well I'm a lot of the way there, but there's been a hiccup and I wanted to give a brief update. As I said in January my working title was Stories from the Aft Oar and my chapters were based on stories I had heard...
Would you like to be part of the ever growing Tides and Tales Community? If you would like to join our regular monthly email list, please complete the form below and hit subscribe.