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Displaying items by tag: People’s Park Haulbowline

A former Cork Harbour slagheap turned park has been officially opened by the Taoiseach, as The Irish Times reports.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin was joined by local TD and Defence Minister Simon Coveney among others on Saturday (17 July) at the ribbon-cutting for what’s been named the People’s Park Haulbowline.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the park — on the site of the former Irish Steel slag heap at the east tip of Haulbowline island — includes 4km of harbour-side walkways, a 1km jogging circuit and numerous seating areas.

It has also been extensively landscaped with wildflower areas and more than 200 trees, rich with biodiversity and wildlife.

And its official opening marks the culmination of a multi-year, €25m remediation project that the Taoiseach says should stand as a model for the rest of the country.

“This is great day not for Corkonians but also for the people of Ireland,” he said. “It’s a national people’s park but it also reflects the genuine transformation that we can bring about at various sites.”

The Irish Times has more on the story HERE.

Bob Bateman's People's Park & Haulbowline Photo Gallery

Published in Cork Harbour

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.