Just where is “The Home of the Greenway”?

After 40 day and 40 nights of brilliant sunshine, it actually rained on Sunday 15^th July. A day that will surely live long in our memory.

If you were watching the footie, you’ll remember in years to come, that on this day, France won the World Cup in Moscow, 20 years after lifting the trophy in Paris. It was also the day that Novak Djokovic lifted his fourth Wimbledon title. Made all the more remarkable, when you consider the injury hampered last two years he has endured. Oh, and Kilkenny tumbled out of the Hurling Championship! They’ll be joining Waterford, Wexford and Tipp on an extended Summer break.

The rain also caught me out, whilst on my Penny Farthing. Up at the top of Templeorum, with two fellow Biscuits, we had to make the treacherous descent into Piltown. To me, this mountain road is my very own piece of the Tour de France. The wee “S-bends” halfway down, with the stunning views of the Suir Valley, is in my mind a mini Alpine Pass. It’s a great road to cycle or walk, whether you start in Piltown or Newmarket.

Thankfully, my cycle on Saturday suffered no hazardous dramas.

On the last blisteringly hot day before the rains came, a group of “Cookie-clad” cyclists pedalled very hard into a strong South-Westerly headwind. Cycling from Waterford City to Dungarvan Town, to meet with a number of in-bound Irish tour operators. Wearing another of my other hats, “Waterford Camino Tours”, I was helping to host some V.I.P. guests. Guests looking to Waterford and the South East as a new, emerging market. Specifically, we were promoting all things Greenway, Comeraghs and coastal trails. We really do have so much to offer. It is just that we don’t shout loud enough about what’s on our doorstep.

Waterford’s guests sampled the delights of fishing for lobster off Dunmore East, the underground croft in the Museum of Treasures, Crough Woods to Mahon Falls and of course a cycle through Durrow Tunnel to Dungarvan. This tunnel is now being marketed as “The world’s biggest air conditioning unit!” If you haven’t yet walked or pedalled through this spectacular setting, do so on the next scorchingly hot day. It is quite literally, the coolest place to go, when it’s even too hot for an ice cream!

Dungarvan was extremely busy with walkers and all manner of fashionably clad pedal pushers. The quay was the place to be seen, on the last hot day before the rains came. The local supermarket supplied the tea, coffee and FREE cake! As I was paying the tab, I almost cried! Customer service is all too often overlooked, but the staff members in Garvey’s SuperValu were extra special and wonderfully engaging. There’s a lesson for many here!

As our posse settled down for some alfresco picnicking, we were approached by a local member of the Dungarvan press. No doubt drawn to us by our athletic bodies, clad in skin tight bright yellow Lycra. “Would you agree to a few photographs and an interview?” we were asked. Never one to shy away from a wee bit of PR, I volunteered to speak and say a few words. Fifteen minutes later, a few hundred words spoken into the “i-Voice Recorder” and it was all over, done and dusted. The Waterford Biscuit Club, the importance of the Greenway as a tourism attractor, Waterford Camino Tours and even the 1848 Tricolour, all topics of discussion.

 

What struck me on Saturday, was just how Dungarvan has embraced this new Greenway attraction. Everyone has really bought into the project and is passionately selling the concept. From the “Meet and Greet”, to the stunning town centre quayside location and of course the local newspaper article, all adding to our experience. One of those Special Days that we’ll all fondly remember.

This “Wehst” Waterford market town, is promoting itself as the “Home of the Greenway” and you can see why. Waterford City may well be the starting point of the Greenway, but it’s disconnected from the buzz, liveliness and energy, that walkers and cyclists are bringing Dungarvan.

If we don’t pedal harder, we’ll never catch up.

Ireland – a pimple on the nose of Brexit!

 No two days are ever the same, in the merry-go-round that surrounds our daily connection with politics. One moment our representatives are flavour of the month. Making front page headlines proclaiming that TD X is quite literally “The bee’s knees!” Then “BOOM”, the very same media have turned against them and all of a sudden they’re “Mr Potato Head!”

There’s a very fine line between riding the crest of a wave and drowning in your self-importance. It’s a strange game to want to participate in and to those that do, I readily tip my hat, as you really can never win. Dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t.

I suppose that our political glitterati, live their lives on the basis that today’s headlines, are tomorrow’s fish supper wrappings. Any bad PR will soon be forgotten, as we the voting public, their employers, move onto the next important topic in our lives. Now that may well be “Love Island” or 24/7 cardio care at University Hospital Waterford. We are soon distracted and if we are to be brutally honest, we’ll forget the very images that made us say “I’ll never vote for him/her again!”

Remember the recent referendum photography of the 14 Waterford Councillors, standing to attention, outside the City Hall? Proclaiming their entitlement as men, to “Vote NO!” There was public outcry. A bombardment of social media indignation, ridiculing the image and the messaging contained within that framed photograph. Just how many will recall this picture, when they come a knocking next May, for your local council vote? I have no doubt that they wish this imagery to quietly disappear. Secretly hoping that no new candidates will come forward, to remind Waterford’s voting public of this ill-informed, error in judgment.

A term in office, brings out the very best and worst in some of our representatives. No doubt many go into the dark world of politics with their eyes closed. Their rose tinted glasses are very rapidly removed, dropped on the ground and stood on. They are then consumed by either party politics or the promise of more money. A Junior Ministerial post perhaps, a Chair of a Committee? Or better still, the guarantee of delivering on their manifesto promises for their constituents? Deals are undoubtedly being brokered, in the dark dank corridors of power, at Leinster House.

Crafty politicians barter a better deal and deliver with no fuss. No pomp and certainly no media ceremony. They just deliver for their adoring public and then move on to the next item on the agenda. Keeping it fresh and unsullied is the key to keeping your media presence performing at the highest levels.

We’ve heard many say that we need to be ready to benefit economically, from that everlasting soap opera that is “Brexit”. The reality is, that Ireland is the last thing on the UK Government’s mind. Whilst the Conservative party continually glues itself back together, using the Blue Peter method of sticky backed plastic and coat hangers, said party leading the charge, is self-imploding. Leading figures are going, but they’ve not gone yet. Enjoying shouting louder than ever from Common’s backbenches.

You have to wonder if Brexit will just disappear on the back of a leadership challenge or maybe even another election? Will we see “Brentry” the UK’s next political milestone? What will be, will be and we in Waterford, need our charges to focus on the here and now.

Brexit may well be another distraction for our TDs, ignoring what’s needed closer to home. We can’t in truth influence the Tory Party’s stance on leaving the EU. They’ll obviously be dead set on protecting themselves, whilst looking after their own voters. After all, it is a much tougher electoral system in the UK. First past the post and no multi-seat constituencies.

Maybe we need to make it harder for TDs to be elected and reduce the representation to reflect the population size? That way, a single elected TD would have to represent ALL views and opinions to earn their keep. They’d have to deliver to survive.

Squeezing the Brexit pimple, is proving much harder than anyone imagined.

“Connect Four!”

You know that game! The one with the blue plastic sandwich board, balancing on two wobbly feet. Covered in 42 circular holes, into which you fit your wee red or yellow pieces. A game for two-players, who take alternate turns to drop their coloured disks into the slot to “Connect Four” in a row, either vertically, horizontally or diagonally. An abstract strategy game that would realistically take between 1 and 10 minutes to play.

There are, apparently, over four and a half trillion game piece combinations, on the 7 by 6 play board grid. A tricky wee game, that came out in the mid-seventies and was the must have present at the time of release. It is a game where your strategy, could in due course, benefit your opponent’s strategy.

Connecting four for Waterford, would certainly help our economic cause.

The Waterford Greenway, has as I have continually championed, been a massive success. More so for the “Wesht” of the county, as that after all is where the idea was first muted and started. You only have to go in to Dungarvan’s newly refurbished Grattan Square, to see hundreds of walkers and cyclists mingling with the locals. They’re spending their hard earned Euros in cafes, restaurants, pubs and shops. It has been a phenomenally fiscal success story, everywhere along the 46km route. Except perhaps in Waterford City Centre.

This lack of connectivity to Waterford’s beating heart is disappointing. At a time when the Greenway is fresh, new and exciting, Ireland’s oldest City Centre is unquestionably missing out. The lack of a suitable connector to Bilberry, creates the wrong impression. It also gives an uneven balance to the spending profile of Greenway users. More money is being spent out of the City and yet the bulk of rate paying businesses are in the City. Plans are afoot to rectify this imbalance. The lack of speed, in implementing a suitable solution must be a concern.

Waterford Airport’s woes continue to lack any connectivity. Two years have gone by, since any commercial flight took-off or landed for a foreign destination. There is quite literally tumbleweed blowing across the runway. Whilst other regional airports continue to “Boom” and attract funding, ours doesn’t! We, the travelling public, are already connecting with other transport hubs such as Dublin and Cork. Bringing us back to Waterford will be a gargantuan task and maybe our Mission Impossible?

Our third level educators are failing to connect all the dots. Only last week, we heard that Dublin, “www.tu4Dublin.ie”, is almost certainly going to be the first Technological University in Ireland. This despite our enthusiasm after the 2011 Hunt Report was published, when we’d hope that Waterford and Carlow would wear this crown. Support had been canvassed, the application process keenly adopted, yet unfathomably, we still lost out?

DIT has also secured funding for a €220 million campus, due to open in 2020. Others are working together and making it happen. We appear to be bereft of connections and political backing to push the necessary buttons. Or maybe there is something deeper stalling our applications?

Our four political protagonists are making all the right connections, but in all the wrong places. Political neighbours are delivering in bucket loads for their constituents. Just look across the border to Kilkenny, Cork or Tipperary. The TDs in these heartlands are pulling rabbits out of their hats, at will. Time and time again we read about X, Y and Z being built, funded and completed. There has been no need for another report! No waiting for funding. No delays in getting Pashcal to loosen his purse strings. Some have such close connections that access to taxpayers’ money is a bottomless pit.

 

Why then does Waterford not even have the most basic of connections? We have for as long as I can remember, been the bottom of so many waiting lists. Yet making the above four connect seamlessly, would undeniably help ALL our current causes.

Delivering better connections seems to be our Everest. Yes, we can always get to base camp, but the promise of oxygen to help us get to the top, never materialises.

“Connect Four”, a game we must win!

“Don’t panic, don’t panic!”

Considering that I lodge my article the Friday before it reaches your doorstep, I have to write with a wee eye on what’s likely to happen next week. Now that is difficult at the very best of times. However, being Scottish makes that even harder, as we are naturally good at dealing with the here and now, but trying to second guess the future is a wee bit harder for us.

We are pragmatic, realistic, no-nonsense and matter-of-fact. You’ll know that you have Scots in your blood, if you stop talking and listen, when bagpipes are playing in the background. You’ll quite happily eat the odd Haggis or two, despite knowing what it’s made of! Love watching “Braveheart”, even though you know it is a historically inaccurate Hollywood fairytale. You’ll be prepared at any moment to risk injury, life and limb, by diving into a crowd to retrieve a penny. Finally, when that big orange disc in the sky starts to shine for more than one day, you’ll happily slow-roast for hours on end. Changing your base colour from milky-white, to lobster red, with no hope of ever getting a hint of a tan!

 

At the time of sitting down to push and bash away at the QWERTY keyboard on my laptop, in some sort of hopefully structured way, I could already start to hear the taps all over Dublin Town, running full flow once again. Though, this time it was not to stop “Pipes freezing”, rather it was filling baths and sinks to avoid water shortages. Just how did we arrive at the start of July with water shortages? Have we not just experienced the very wettest of winters and an almighty dollop of snow, that created 10 and 12 feet drifts? Just where has ALL that melt-water gone? It appears to have done a Penn and Teller and disappeared. Not even Keith Barry can help us find our missing Uisce. Perhaps we need to start drinking more Uisce Beatha to compensate?

A few days of “Unseasonably hot weather”, has the whole of Uisce Éireann in a panic. Their social media and PR departments have gone into overdrive. All weekend leave has no doubt been cancelled. Cries of “Don’t panic, don’t panic Mr Grant!” reverberating around Colvill House. Their website is stating that the “Demand for water has risen to critical levels”. Having looked at the longer term forecast, the whole country will be in shutdown by the time you’ve read this. Taps will have been turned off at the mains and we’ll be relying on imported bottled water to survive. Our gardens will have been transformed from luscious green, to burnt toast brown and Dermot Bannon wouldn’t be able to save the day. As there is no hope, we must now all retreat into our shells and just give up life!

Life will of course go on. In fact the “Sunny South East” is once again living up to its Failte Ireland strap line. This wee corner of Ireland’s Ancient East, is sizzling like never before. The hot Saharan winds are bringing people in their thousands, to our City and County. Only last Tuesday, on one of the many “Hottest days of the year”, I had the pleasure of cycling our wonderful Greenway, with a journalist from Australia. Asked if the climate was always like this, “Yes, of course it is!” was my honest reply, as I pointed out Buzzards, Egrets, and Cormorants enjoying the sunshine along the Suir Estuary. We have to make the most of days and weeks like these, as they come around all too infrequently.

In the midst of all this talk of heatstroke and heat exhaustion, thousands of hard, mad amateur athletes, conquered the 26 miles 385 yards or 42,195 metres, of the Waterford Viking Marathon. They’re all certifiably bonkers. Any physical exertion in the heat, poses tough questions about your own ability. There’s no help completing a marathon. Just you against the ticking clock. A singular brave feat of dogged endurance. Well done to those that completed the distance and didn’t panic in the heat.

Enjoy the pleasures the sunshine brings and “Happy 4^th of July”.