This festival has been going for years and I've never been near it. I'm not interested in gardening or roses, but this year the local heritage society had asked me to do a panel for their stand, so I went down to see how it looked.

It shows the metamorphosis of the Old Shieling from Hotel to Apartment Block. It fitted in nicely with their progress report on the Howth Road Project. They are doing a study of the Howth Road from a lot of different points of view and, aside from exhibiting the result, they hope to produce a book at some stage. You can see these and a few other photos separately here.

There was a lot of interest in their stand which included their existing display panels on the history of St. Anne's Estate (Guinness). Some of the themes under the Howth Road Project were very interesting, such as Fox's Lane, which used to be the old Howth Road way back, and the early days of the Raheny Inn, on which they have recently got access to some priceless documentation.

Olhausens seem to have an "old sausage" "old transport" marketing strategy. They had the old van at the Raheny Festival in June and now the old Dublin tram at this event. Mind you, the old van was there too.

I think this was a Viking Forge. Well, there were Vikings all over the place. Anyway it was a forge and they were making spears or something. The yellow guy is operating the bellows and the guy bending on the right is hammering the hot metal on the anvil.

Here are two Viking ships in dry dock.

This is an Eagle Owl, the largest owl in the world. This is the male version. I'm told the female is even bigger. Anyway, this one will do. And he's beginning to look at me very suspiciously. I'm glad I'm not a rabbit.

Ouch! He's adopting his pre-attack posture. Come to think of it. Maybe I am a rabbit - as in Run, Rabbit, Run ...

Northsiders needn't bother looking at this picture. I have just included it to reassure those lily livered southsiders that they will be looked after if they succeed in plucking up enough courage to cross the Liffey, which they can do with impunity now that the real Vikings have long departed.

Rock climbing. You had to be at least 6 years old to do this, on the way up.

And this, on the way down. Abseiling

Given the name of the Festival, I thought I'd better finish with some flowers. Surely there is a rose in there somewhere. And, no, it's not Pat Ingoldsby.