While it could do with a little lightening up, No 1 Birchley is a rare treat, writes Tommy Barker.

Sq m: 69 (750 sq ft)

A Cork town is looking blooming fantastic as it prepares to represent Ireland in a major European floral competition tomorrow.

As a teenager, he watched in awe as it flashed past at a record speed of 147mph.

A 93-year-old man who watched the 1938 Cork Grand Prix in awe is gearing up to attend a re-run of the event this summer.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines for a grand prix circuit down memory lane.

CARRIGALINE, CORK €275,000

ON Apr 12, the Irish Examiner reported that the National Roads Authority is to spend €1m to upgrade the dual carriageway between the Jack Lynch Tunnel and Ballincollig.

The National Roads Authority is to carry out a €1m revamp of the dual carriageway between the Jack Lynch Tunnel and Bishopstown and rename it the N40 in the first phase of creating an orbital route for Cork city.

We scan a selection of trading up homes around the country

FOR two years Ballincollig has been a building site with traffic restrictions as the so-called green route progresses very slowly from east to west.

THERE it is – all cleaned out and ready and waiting for new owners.

THERE were seven viewings lined up for this house at Bridgewater, Carrigrohane last Saturday — not bad for one of the worst weeks of the year, in every sense.

NOW’S the time for planting bulbs for spring-flowering varieties such as daffodils. Hoping for early green shoots in their own patch of ground are the vendors of 38 Daffodil Fields in Cork.

BACK in 2000, the Ballincollig bypass was just a blueprint and the new town centre was still a working army barracks.

THEY didn’t have a brass band in Ballincollig last week, but McInerney’s new Fionn Laoi scheme did have a showhouse stand-off.

HOT on the heels of next door’s sale comes the right-hand-side semi of Woodside, Healy’s Bridge.

FIONN Laoi, the new McInterney housing scheme in Ballincollig, Co Cork, had a very positive launch last Thursday.

THE asking price on 19 Bridgewater might be €575,000, down from last year’s levels of c €630,000 for similar sales, but it is realistic for the current market.

A DRINK driver was arrested within an hour of being released from a Garda station — where he had been under arrest for drink driving.

DRIVE-BY viewers should take it very slowly on the approach to No 25 Bridgewater — the estate belongs to the children — and the odd Jack Russell.

WELL, there’s one at least comes along each spring with impeccable timing. This time no 30 Daffodil Fields is the first four-bed detached to burst onto the selling season, in tune with nature’s equivalent, hosts of golden daffodils.

A DETACHED bungalow in the nicely matured estate of Manor Hill in Ballincollig, hits the new year market at €375,000 through auctioneer, Trevor O’Sullivan of Sherry FitzGerald.

IT took years to sell, but when it did it sold well. Templehill Farm, on one of the highest points to the west of Cork city, has been bought by a local farmer for in excess of €3m.

THISTLE, ragwort and dock — noxious weeds according to the old posters which pointed out that all landowners on whose lands they were ‘in evidence’ were liable to prosecution.

THE preferred route for part of the most expensive highway ever planned for Cork will be unveiled this morning.

A MAJOR construction company has submitted proposals for an estimated €120 million housing project in Co Cork.

THOUSANDS of people will get the chance tonight and tomorrow night to see alterations to route proposals for the most expensive highway ever planned for Cork.

BACK to back, these houses at the Daffodil Fields at Poulavone, Ballincollig, offer a safe playing space for children, says Michael Downey of ERA Downey McCarthy Murphy.

A construction site in Co Kerry was closed down today amid serious concerns over work practices.

THE daffs are up and out in many places, and the first sale of 2005 in Cork’s Daffodil Fields is also on the way.