Gort

THE Minister of State in charge of the Office of Public Works has allocated €36,000 for channel maintenance and a camera survey on Gort’s Crowe Street. The area was the scene of extensive flooding in late November.

SOUTH Galway pupils got a flavour of African teaching this week as two Ghanaian teachers were guests at Seamount College in Kinvara. The two teachers visited the school as part of an international teacher exchange programme funded by Irish Aid. In 2007, teacher Margo MacDonnell, now principal, was instrumental in setting up a development education course in the school.“It is an interest of my own because I worked with charities down through the years. In June 2008, another teacher, Geraldine Connors, and I visited Ghana on a teachers’ emersion programme and we taught in a Ghanaian school. While we were there we visited the local bishop and we said we would like to set up a link between Seamount College and a similar girls school in the area. Then we were linked to Notre Dame Girls’ Senior High School in Fiapre, Sunyani. That link has continued and our girls have communicated through letters and cards with students there. We also …

A NEWLY established youth organisation this week scooped the top prize in the AIB Better Ireland Programme, awarded by the bank’s Gort branch.

Heather Smith’s home outside Gort, basking in early spring sunshine, is a testament to her love of nature and her love of life. She enjoys gardening, cultivating tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes, chillies and herbs as the seasons permit. Vegetables are infinitely preferable to shrubs, she believes.Fossils are another of Heather’s passions. They adorn the entrance to the bungalow, symbols of life from another era.From the kitchen she points out a line of beech trees planted a decade ago while her husband was still alive, a copper wall steeling itself for the years ahead.Rust-chested robins are abundant in Heather’s garden. She feeds the birds at numerous stands around the house. It is early March and as she sits in her kitchen, a hare prances across the garden. She is momentarily distracted. Heather and her late husband, Stephen, came to Galway in 1974, 10 years after they married. She was from Kilkenny, he from Laois. Like Heather, Stephen too was a keen …

Wednesday’s St Patrick’s Day parade in Gort will have more community involvement than in previous years, it appears.

Young musicians from across the West will congregate in Gort at the weekend for the third annual Junior Orchestra Festival taking place in the South Galway town on Sunday.

THE Western Writers’ Centre is again appealing to the public for support for the third annual Forge at Gort festival.

This year’s St Patrick’s Day parade in Gort will be led by one of the town’s best-known businessmen.Clare man Gerry O’Donoghue has owned his own shop in the town for nearly 25 years and for the past decade, has consistently taken part in the local parade.