Surfing festival to make a splash

SEAWEED dolls, water sports, beach games and a traditional Michaelmas Day to celebrate the patron saint of Seafarers are all on the menu for a surf and sea festival next month.

Details of the fourth annual Tramore Oceanic Surf and Sea Festival, which takes place from September 22 to 25, were launched yesterday on Tramore beach.

Held to mark the close of the traditional bathing season, the festival will open with a “Tramore of Yore” exhibition at the coastguard station.

Since about 1920, the ladies who worked the “bathing boxes” on Tramore beach always held an event at the end of the season on Michaelmas Day by making and carrying seaweed dolls around the town and later tossing them in the sea.

This tradition will be revived by the Surf and Sea Festival where, on the Sunday, the festival will close with a parade along the Tramore promenade with a seaweed doll which will then be thrown in the sea. Also taking place over the weekend will be a ladies’ surf competition, a surf and sea art exhibition, seaweed foraging, a dog show, kite-surfing demonstrations, an emergency rescue exhibition, rock- climbing, pony-trekking, sea-paddling, sea-angling and a “rampage” BMX display.

Karen Dubsky, from Coastwatch Ireland, will host a workshop on the Saturday of the festival.

Go online to surfandseafestival.com for more information.