Carlingford Community Newsletter – November 2019 Edition

Carlingford Community Newsletter November 2019 Edition

CRA

Carlingford Residents Association

CCD

Carlingford Community Development

(The Foy Centre)

CTT

Carlingford Tidy Towns

CCTA

Carlingford & Cooley Tourism Assoc.

CLHT

Carlingford Lough Heritage Trust

This newsletter is jointly produced by the five bodies representing the Carlingford community,

namely:

Carlingford Community Forum News

The meeting of Carlingford Community Forum and Louth County Council took place in the Heritage Centre on Wednesday 13th of November. A number of items were discussed, among them, the Greenway, footpaths, camping/ camper vans, litter, signage, the Ghan wall, weekend noise, derelict sites, sports facilities, short term letting, traffic and Town & Village Renewal.

Work has recommenced on the Ghan Folly. This should enhance an area which has been looking really neglected for quite some time. We seem to be having difficulty however securing funding for the wall of the Holy Trinity cemetery. A further meeting is to be arranged.

The Forum met on Monday last to complete a submission to the Draft County Development Plan 2021 to 2027. The submission covers many items pertaining to the quality of life of residents. This will be followed up as the plan goes through its various stages.

We wish every success to the Choral Festival and hope our many visitors enjoy the hospitality arranged for them. We look forward to all our pre-Christmas events and wish everyone the joys of the Season.

Heritage News

Erasmus jigs and reels

More than 60 international students from DkIT got a unique taste of Irish music, dance and culture in the Heritage Centre on 15^th November. This is the second year that international and Erasmus project students have stepped it out to traditional tunes in the Centre following a visit to the Greenore railway museum, and like us they found that the craic was mighty.

For your diary

This is an annual fund-raising event for the Children’s Hospital in Crumlin.

Another date for your diary

Choral Festival

Cór Chairlinne’s annual festival at the end of November had its highlight concert in the Heritage Centre. Our local singers shared the stage with Choeurs des Hommes du Pays Charolais, Royale Union Wallone 1847 and the Dundalk Redemptorist Choir.

Spring concerts for Christmas

Here’s a unique idea for a Christmas present. The programme for the Spring Concert series has been launched with the help of Zoe Conway and John McIntyre and one of their featured musicians, Colm Sands. Tickets for the five concerts are €12 each, but we have a Christmas offer of all five for

€50.

The Foy Centre

Many thanks to all the kids… and all the adults… from Carlingford, Ratoath, Dundalk and Ashbourne for a great morning’s junior rugby on Saturday 2nd November.

The Centre has never been so busy with weekly activities, gymnastics, martial arts, keep-fit, and singing lessons all going extremely well.

We had one of our best community nights on November 22nd to celebrate the return of Fr. MacRaois. Over 400 parishioners attended to see him receive a presentation from local schools and the parish council.

The Foy Centre committee organized a ‘Mr and Mrs’ fundraiser for Nov 23rd when seven wonderful young couples from our community volunteered to take part. It was a very enjoyable event in spite of a disappointing attendance.

The annual choir festival is currently in full swing and going from strength to strength. This year we are hosting choirs from Belgium, France and Ireland.

If there’s anything you would like to see happening in the centre or on the pitch

Please contact 087 633 1701.

Carlingford Tidy Towns

Once again, we are proud to celebrate awards in a variety of categories in Louth Looking Good.

We finally received our National Tidy Towns Bronze Medal award at the SupaValu Regional Awards night held in Blackrock on 11th November 2019.

As part of a project to create a ‘Carlingford Urban Orchard’ CTT arranged to give away free Fruit Trees.

The rules were that trees would be available to the first people to collect them (limited to one per household). The trees must be planted in Carlingford and their location provided in order to mark them on a map. The project was funded by Biodiversity Leader as part of our ‘Trees and Bees’ project. It is hoped that this will provide fruit locally thus reducing air miles whilst also improving sustainability.

This proved a very popular event. 40 fruit trees were given away in just 15 minutes!

The dispersed Carlingford Orchard is now completed with 40 fruit trees planted in the Carlingford area. We were delighted to see residents from our local housing estates including St Oliver’s Park, Cuchulainn Heights, Harbour Cottages ,Abbey Court, Dundalk Street, River Lane and Mountain Park. Trees were also planted in Muchgrange, Mullatee, Bush, Grange, Omeath, Glenmore and Dundalk. We do hope that Carlingford and the surrounding areas can become more sustainable producing locally grown fruit. There should be a bounty of locally grown Apple’s (Cox, Russet, James Grieve, Brambley) Pears, Plums, Damsons, Sweet Cherries and even Peaches for many years to come. All we ask is that if you planted a tree please share your harvest with your neighbours and don’t let the fruit go to waste. There will be no plastic packaging associated with this fruit which is a bonus too. This project was part funded by Louth Leader – Thank you so much.

We planted over 500 Tulip bulbs on Thursday 21st November at the welcome beds and around the tennis courts and are looking forward to seeing them in Spring. These bulbs were kindly donated to CTT – Thank You!

CTT recently constructed a composting system to make our practices more sustainable. All those leaves and organic waste will soon be converted into compost for 2020. The fresh stuff goes in on the left-hand side and after forking into adjacent bins, the home-made compost should come out on the right-hand side. It was a cold day for this job! Many thanks to The Foy Centre for letting us use this spot at the corner of the football field.

Note: we continue to post very many interesting articles on environmental issues on our Facebook page. Please scan our pages to inform yourself of this increasing wave of public awareness.

Lately our pages included postings for missing cats and dogs, and we are pleased to report that Roy the border collie is now safely back with his owners after 11 days wandering from Omeath to Ravensdale.

CARLINGFORD TIDY TOWNS has organised a Basic Introduction to Energy information meeting on how to reduce energy costs and use more renewable energy. This meeting will provide information on what your options are when installing new energy systems in homes, community facilities and places of work, to make them warmer, more efficient and save money. This event will also provide information on the significant grants available to homeowners, (35% to 80% of the total costs) community groups and business, and how to work as a community to draw down this money. This event has received grant funding from Louth Leader and the delivery will be undertaken by a Qualified Energy Specialist.

The session is a highly interactive seventy-minute fun session to be held on 4th December at 8pm in Carlingford Heritage Centre.

Over the last four years Louth Energy has successfully led the implementation of community programmes retrofitting 230 homes (€2.5 Million investment) and availing of Government grant funding through S.E.A.I. leading to significant energy savings for the homeowners involved. www.louthenergy.com

What will be covered in the meeting

Achieving Conservation in energy use
How to gain greater efficiency from your energy use
Understand what is renewable energy and what are the sources of renewable energy
Up to date technologies and products people need to use in managing the energy needs in their homes and places of work
Sharing knowledge and providing advice to communities on how to work together to achieve energy savings and access grant funding for retrofitting homes, community facilities and business premises, to make them warmer and more efficient

We look forward to you joining us on the date shown above.

Please contact the following number to book your place 042 937 3686

Find us on Facebook.com/CarlingfordTidyTowns