The renowned annual Irish Conker Championship returns to Freshford for its 11th outing this Sunday, October 24, and the Kilkenny village promises to be a hive of activity over the weekend.
The main event takes place on the Village Green on Sunday with registration for the adults and childrens’ competitions from noon onwards and the national championships beginning at 1pm.
Conkers is a popular traditional game played with the fruit of the horse-chestnut tree in which conkers on a string are struck against each other until only one survives.
And though the championships are open to all-comers, there will also be an opportunity to play in a non-competitive environment as well as numerous other activities in Freshford over the festival weekend.
On Sunday during the championships there will be art and craft stalls, exhibition stalls, a range of wonderful food, free Halloween games and activities, story telling, pony rides, face painting, a country market stall, pumpkin carving, and plenty more.
But the activities kick off earlier on the weekend in Freshford and on Friday, October 22, with Halloween around the corner, a special ghost trail will take in some of the spine-tingling tales and spooky sights of the village. It is free and participants can meet on the green at 6.30pm.
And continuing the Halloween theme, a ‘spooky recipes for scaredy cats’ workshop will take place on Saturday morning cooking up a menu of treats to tuck into after a night of trick-or-treating.
A workshop teaching people to create their own tissue lanterns will see lanterns exhibited and hanging from trees around the town during the street parade on Saturday.
The street conker parade will take place from 7pm on Saturday evening from Buncrussia Street to the Village Green and there will be live music at Kavanagh’s on the Square and Farrell’s on Kilkenny Street later in the evening.
The exhibition will open in the Church of Ireland on Chapel Street on Friday evening with the Battle in the Kingdom of Ossory depicting the ferocious action on the battle fields at Clashacrow, Freshford
