Kilcrohane Music Festival

AKA Ceol on the Coast.

(They were going to call it Craic on the coast but were afraid that they’d be overrun with Pete Doherty wannabes.)

 

As music festivals go, this would be about as low key as you get:

20 or so tents in a children’s playground.

2 pubs offering sporadic live music throughout the weekend

2 food caravans

2 barbecues and a half hearted craft stall.

We expected the whole thing to be pretty laid back but this was, well…

 

Not that I’m complaining (well not that much). We had a wonderful time.

Kilcrohane is a tiny town on the beautiful Sheep’s Head Peninsula, a two hour drive from Cork City.

When we arrived on Saturday afternoon the only sign of any festival, or life in general was the mobile chip van parked on the side of the road. The staff in the pub were a bit vague on where the best camping spot but after a bit of a wander and a phone call we set up at the play park.

Jane and I have done enough camping to know how to executive camp and left the others a little overwhelmed with what I suspect was thinly disguised envy as we produced a camp cooker, folding chairs, blow up bed and even, horror of horrors- pillows!

 

So we spent some time listening to music, and some of it was very good. Local heroes in the form of John Spillane or Hank and Ray are always worth catching and our band even played a short, semi-acoustic set which seemed to go very well. The local pubs had not really made anything approaching adequate contingency plans so as the evenings wore on it became more and more of a challenge to buy a drink. The sheer numbers of (often obnoxiously drunk) people quickly turned the bars into no go areas. Fortunately, the weather stayed mainly dry and standing outside was infinitely more pleasant.

 

The rest of the weekend was all about spending time with friends in the outdoors, whether stone circle hunting, clambering over coastal rocks, fishing or just kicking a Barbie Ball around a tennis court.

Despite the bed, we didn’t get much sleep. We came back tired, sunburnt (yes, sunburnt!!!) smelling of  (campfire) smoke and feeling generally a bit under the weather, but what a great time we had.

Wish you were here.