Bunratty

weekend.

Harvest Day in Bunratty

is on Sunday, I think.

Was it on this Sunday? Yeah.

You heard our guest there, Tom Delaney, mentioning Harvest Day, but we're delighted to go into more detail on it with Marie Brennan, Events Manager from Bunratty Castle and Folk Park.

Marie, a very good morning to you.

Good morning, Dara.

So, Tom Delaney is going to be a great attraction.

We had a great chat with him there on the programme.

He's been a regular to Bunratty for quite some time.

He has, he has.

He's really gotten to get comfortable with us here at Bunratty, which is wonderful.

Now, Ireland's agricultural heritage will be brought to life at Bunratty Folk Park this Sunday for a traditional harvest day.

Visitors can step back in time with vintage tractors and machinery, traditional crafts, music, dancing, storytelling and much more besides.

And Marie Brennan, the events manager at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park joins me now.

Marie, good morning to you.

Good morning, Alan.

And while honouring the past, you know.

Okay.

That is this Sunday, the traditional Harvest Day at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park.

You know, there was a lot of American visitors around the region this year.

I suppose with the Americans, is it that they're on a bus tour, the loop? So they're going to go to the Cliffs, they're going to go to Bunratty, those kind of things.

And Mount Shannon and certain parts of East Clare just haven't hit that yet.

You know, it's hard to know.

You know, there is, like Clare Tourism would say, They have been very conscious of promoting the whole part of the county.

Like as I know, I mean, growing up in the East Clare and North Tip region, we always kind of felt like the forgotten cousin in years gone by because it was always the cliffs.

It was always Bunratty, you know, that kind of thing.

It was always the coast.

Yeah.

So I would've played in Bunratty for about 10 years.

I was a musician in the Corn Bar there, the Irish night out there, traditional Irish night.

Um, so that would've been a very busy tourist attraction from the time I was, I think, 17, right up until a couple years ago.

It's an incredible facility to have in Limerick.

And I would have all sorts of master classes there and, you know, final performances and exams and all.

So after that year, funnily enough, I think Bunratty began to taper off, and I really got serious about the guitar there because I had Conal as a teacher.

I had been practicing fairly seriously since I was 16 or 17 on the guitar.

But there'll be a lot of excitement around the entrance and along that route.

And we make our way then from there to Bunratty for a regroup before we finish in Limerick that night.

Limerick will have the big finish line-up as well, so it'll be quite exciting.

But really, County Clare will be our second time in a row to come back.

Yeah, I think we might extend that to, we're also looking for the six mile bridge to Bunratty.

Look, I don't want to hog the limelight on this one.

Councils Gorm and Croagh and others have been on this trail for want of a better word over the last number of years.

Obviously that's not going to put the trail in place, but we're kind of a study there about a year and a half ago.

One of the challenges there we came across was we were all going grander.

I mean, I can walk you to Bunratty any day of the week, no more than any of the lads could walk, or anybody else out there, and how to get there.

But the TII came up with this notion that we'd have to build a footbridge to get people across the road.

Sure, if we have to do that, we'd never see the walking trail, you know? So we're back in again now and we'll go back and see can we get funded and see can we deal with Transport Infrastructure Ireland and get a bit of common sense to come into play.