Displaying items by tag: EU visitor attraction

1st October 2017

Spike Island Awarded Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction

#SpikeIsland - In Cork Harbour the visitor centre on Spike Island run by Cork County Council has been named Europe's leading tourist attraction at the 2017 World Travel Awards.

RTE news writes that Fortress Spike Island saw off competition from the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace and Rome's Colosseum to win the award.

The 104-acre Spike Island was a monastic settlement in the seventh century, a British artillery fortification from the 18th century, and a prison from where thousands of convicts were transported to Australia in the 19th century.

It remained under British control, even after the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, and was handed over to the Irish State in 1938.

It operated as a prison again from 1985 until the last of the prisoners left in 2004.

To read more on this tourist attraction award, click here.

Published in Cork Harbour

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Esailing & Virtual Sailing information

The concept of e-sailing, or virtual sailing, is based on a computer game sailing challenge that has been around for more than a decade.

The research and development of software over this time means its popularity has taken off to the extent that it has now become a part of the sailing seascape and now allows people to take an 'active part' in some of the most famous regattas across the world such as the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum, Sydney Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, America’s Cup and some Olympic venues too, all from the comfort of their armchair.

The most popular model is the 'eSailing World Championship'. It is an annual esports competition, first held in 2018 and officially recognised by World Sailing, the sports governing body.

The eSailing World Championship is a yearly competition for virtual sailors competing on the Virtual Regatta Inshore game.

The contract to run the event was given to a private company, Virtual Regatta that had amassed tens of thousands of sailors playing offshore sailing routing game following major offshore races in real-time.

In April 2020, the company says on its website that it has 35,000 active players and 500,000 regattas sailed.

Virtual Regatta started in 2010 as a small team of passionate designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs gathered around the idea that virtual sailing sports games can mix with real races and real skippers.