Boyne Valley kickstarts tourism season with St Patrick's celebrations
The Boyne Valley is set to kick start the tourism season with colourful and exciting celebration on St Patrick’s Day, a Spring Equinox Festival and a Living History Day at Oldbridge.
Trim Castle will turn green for St Patricks Day and there are parades taking place in nearly every town.
The Discover Boyne Valley Tourism App and the website www.discoverboynevalley.ie has a full list of events and festivals to choose from.
The OPW will turn Trim Castle green on Friday and Sonairte Organic Walled Garden in Laytown will demonstrate planting methods for potatoes on Saturday.
For the Equinox Sunrise at Loughcrew, the Office of Public Works will have staff in attendance at Cairn T, Loughcrew on the mornings of Sunday Monday and Tuesday from 6am until 730am. Admission to the Chamber of Cairn T is free of charge, a truly unique Boyne Valley experience not to be missed.
The Spring Equinox Festival in Loughcrew takes place on Saturdaya nd Sunday from 5.30am to 7pm each day, another imperative for your calendar in 2017.
A spectacular event and a great family day out is the Living History that takes place at the Battle of the Boyne Site on Sunday.
Award winning travel writer, Mark Graham will come to Kells to speak at a Boyne Valley Tourism event on how to create a memorable Festival, and after attending 183 festivals in just one year he has plenty to say about what is good and bad about festivals.
After being refused a mortgage on three separate occasions, Mark used his 10 per cent home deposit to fund a totally different type of adventure. He bought a '93 VW camper van and endeavoured to attend three festivals every week for an entire year. Mark overshot his target by attending a staggering 183 festivals in twelve months and wrote a book on it, ‘A Year of Festivals in Ireland’, for which he won the Travel Journalist of the Year Award in 2015.
He won a number of other awards including one for his blog that documented his quest which won “Best Popular Culture Award” at the Irish blog awards and he also picked up the “Association of Irish Festivals and Events Media Award”.
Members of Boyne Valley Tourism and those planning a festival or event in 2017 are welcome to attend this master class on how to create a memorable festival on Tuesday 28th March in the Headfort Arms Hotel Kells from 4.30pm.
Michele Whelan Boyne Valley Tourism said, “Our focus for 2017 is about working collaboratively with tourism businesses to create unique and appealing Boyne Valley experiences. 2017 is all about Ireland’s Ancient East of which the Boyne Valley is pivotal. The key strategic objective of Ireland’s Ancient East is to increase the number of international visitors to the region thus increasing tourism revenue and associated tourism employment.
'Boyne Valley Tourism works closely with Fáilte Ireland and its members to achieve this objective by developing a number of themed Boyne Valley Experiences and encouraging visitors to Discover the Boyne Valley and all it has to offer, at their own pace”