Who needs Lapland? Winterval is like walking in a Waterford wonderland

Why go to Lapland when you can have a merry old time at Winterval, asks Tommy Barker

It was a  soft job, but someone had to do it – pay a fact-finding visit to  Waterford’s Winterval Festival last weekend.The job (child’s work, really) was to report back on the Ferris Wheel highs, and temperature lows,  as the city of the ‘sunny south-east ‘ once again drapes itself in rugs and wraps, in off-season festive warmth and  hospitality, in the run-up to Christmas.

A decade ago, in Celtic Reindeer times, indulgent Irish parents might have been inclined to take their cosseted offspring to, oh, why not?, to the Arctic Circle and Lapland to meet with Father Christmas in the magical icy wastes. Back then, apparently when ‘everyone was good (for it) all  year’ Lapland was the destination du jour, money no object.

Now,  while Irish economic recovery and employment might be back on track, Lapland is still somewhat  off in  the lap of luxury destinations. After all, a  day-trip this time of year to a Lapland Santa’s Grotto  will set you back €550, whilst  an overnight  for a child will be €759 (and€ 859 per each adoring accompanying adult) and two nights in the freezing  wastes will be a cool €999 for a child (gift included) or €1199 for  grown-up, whose drinks will be optional.  You’d get a good week in the sun (or a fortnight in Tramore) for that sort of sum, sez any chastened Irish parent with an eye to the family budget and the necessity to put a bulge in a Christmas stocking.

@Winterval_WAT #Winterval #Illuminations #Waterford pic.twitter.com/n66zVgTLOs

— Paul O'Brien (@PaulOBrienKil) November 30, 2015

The sharp jolt back to economic reality of the past few years hasn’t of course killed the magic of Christmas, for Irish adults or children, but what it has done is to throw us back on our own resources, and grounded us our own shores and city streets too. No harm.

We now do Christmas festivals  like we never did before, from Glow in Cork, frozen finds in Fota and cabanas in Cuskinny, on to street markets in Galway and just about everywhere else, plus  department store delights in Dublin and sundry High Streets. When they are good, they are laying down childhood memories to match any Santa encounter in a distant Lapland: it’s make-believe, after all.

At the end of the alphabet, but just down the road in Munster and bidding strong for make-believe, is the Winter wonderland of Winterval in Waterford.

This is year four of this wonderful  endeavour in what is Ireland’s oldest city: Waterford’s  1101 years old and showing well even at this dusky time of year after civic renewal projects begin  to yield  year-round dividends. Winterval’s family attractions are snuck  in and around its  narrow  old streets, by its three medieval and Viking Triangle building attractions, and at all points in between.

Winterval is along a well-scattered trail, deliberately diverse rather than concentrated in a particular quarter. It means visitors unfamiliar with Waterford’s city streets quickly get their bearings.

Winterval’s organisers have started to bill it as Ireland’s Christmas Festival, and it’s an allowably assertive claim, given how the city and its commerce is backed up behind its Yuletide, Suirside splendours.

Interspersed by dozens of wooden cabins (alright, sheds) selling toys, games, crafts, woollens and  Christmas jumpers, as well as food stalls and gluhwein offerings, Waterford has ceded its core city streets  for horse drawn carriages, pulled by hairy ankled Shire horses, and its quays for an ice rink and Bloom-like  garden attraction.

Then, a street train all-aglow with lights like in a  Budweiser ad links one attraction to another, and yet another, and those attractions include a vintage ferris wheel  by The Mall (it slows down obliging for parents to take snaps of delighted or distraught smallies), or a helter skelter by the Bishop’s Palace, and a classic carousel of prancing ponies and haughty steeds, whirring at speed  by John Robert Square. Every half hour in dusk and darkness, a Georgian building hosts the indignity of a projected 3D show on its facade, with magician Keith Barry on camera, plus dancing and hip-hopping elves, as well as slow, schmaltzy waltzers seemingly  in the building’s windows. Small children ’got it,’ standing transfixed while it lasted.

@Winterval_WAT The Penguins of Waterford Winterval. pic.twitter.com/b4qwQobTz6

— Paul O'Brien (@PaulOBrienKil) November 30, 2015

It’s all along a well-scattered trail, deliberately diverse rather than concentrated in any one particular quarter. And, while it may have been dispersed  this way for sound and equitable commercial reasons, it means visitors unfamiliar with Waterford’s city streets quickly get their bearings too; the links between the oldest buildings in the ’Viking Quarter’ are a real, medieval delight. Squint a little, or over-indulge in gluhwein, and you could almost be at a German  Christmas market as you pass by the city’s floodlit old churches….

Negotiating and linking the various attractions means wandering through shopping streets and the  30-shops’ strong  City Square centre, normally the sort of commercial hub  this reporter would avoid like a medieval plague.

But, it was Christmas, this was a job to be done, and as an investigative hack in the field,  I soldiered though the tinseled and tasseled halls of commerce.

At this stage, my laden and able ‘research assistant’  had softened any residual anti-Santa sentiments,  and resolve,  by earlier repeated CD plays of Bing Crosbie and dreams of White Christmases,  for the 90-minute car journey to Waterford from Cork.

I’d been good all day, and just like any child (tick), Grinch (tick, tick) or  Ebeneezer Scrooge (all on tick) deserves for good behaviour, I got my due reward. Out on the street was a  sign advertising (what else,  as a  sign of economic recovery?)  a ‘closing down sale’ in a two-storey charity shop. I had myself a Waterford Spraoi: Thank you, oh  thank you Santa.