A range of events for all ages will take place in Coole next month as the park celebrates Tree Week as part of its spring cultural programme.
Sunday March 7 will see several events taking place in Coole including Coole Trees in Spring, a guided walk through the park with staff from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, who will explain how to identify different tree species in spring. This event will take place from 2.30pm to 4pm along with a range of indoor and outdoor family events including scavenger hunts and games.
Storyteller Clare Murphy will tell tree-related stories from 4pm to 5pm. This event is for children aged seven to 11 and advance booking is required. To book contact Coole Park at (091 ) 631804.
Coole Trees in Spring will also take place on Sunday March 14, with guided walks of the park by NPWS guide Áine O’Loughlin, who will discuss the history of the park’s trees from Lady Gregory’s time to the present day. This event will take place from 2.30pm to 4pm.
The Gringo Stars will perform a concert of Mexican music at Coole from 4pm to 5pm on the same day. American fiddle player Frank Hall (Moonshine, Higglers, Buffalo in the Castle ) has gathered a tasteful repertoire of old Mexican folk tunes and brought together well-known Galway musicians Paul Gunning (accordion, Máimín Cajun, Fantango ), Johnny Moynihan (Sweeney's Men, De Danann, Planxty, and Moonshine ), Peter Brazier (guitar, Cafe Kinvara, Fantango, Ain't Misbehavin' ), and John Martin (Boucherie, Máimín Cajun Band ) to form The Gringo Stars. The band bring to life Mexican based roots music from the sweet and lively twin harmony fiddles of orquestas de cuerdas (traditional string bands ) to the pulsating folk accordions of Tex-Mex border music. Singing en Español, and backing the music with guitarron and bajo sexto, The Gringo Stars deliver a varied and engaging mix of upbeat, dramatic, and enchanting listening and dance music with a healthy dose of fun and sun.
There has been a great attendance at the ‘Reading and Understanding the Landscape’ course. The course, which is funded by Galway Rural Development, offers a detailed study into the layers of the landscape. This course is a guiding template for landscape mapping throughout Co Galway.
Today (Thursday ) from 8pm to 10pm Christy Cunniffe, archaeologist and PhD student with the NUI Galway department of archaeology, will give a lecture on archaeology. On Monday March 8 the lecture will be ‘Traditional houses in Ireland: their design, materials and relationship to their environment’, by Cliona O’Carroll, lecturer, department of folklore and ethnology, NUI Cork. Ms O’Carroll will include folklore research resources in her talk, particularly the National Folklore Collection. On Thursday March 11 Elaine O’Riordan, project manager with the Galway County Biodiversity Project, will speak on ‘Biodiversity and the Landscape’. The final lecture will take place on Monday March 15, when Miriam Moffitt, lecturer in local history studies at the NUI Maynooth department of history, will speak on ‘Printed Sources and the Landscape’.
All events in the Coole Park Spring 2010 Programme are free. For more details on any event, or to book for the storytelling event, contact Coole Park at (091 ) 631804.
