Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Hillsborough Oyster Festival

Is the Hillsborough Oyster Festival the stupidest-ever idea and location for an event? It has been going now for years, a corporate platform created by Guinness to give the rich and aspirational something to do for a weekend, bringing to life one of their corporate photo library images that appears in every Oirish tourist publication produced these days.

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The irony is that you can't actually get oysters in Hillsborough. Or fish. Or crab. Or lobster, or any other kind of seafood. Because Hillsborough, as most people know, (according to GoogleMaps) is far inland - about 15 miles from Belfast and about 20 miles from the nearest sea inlet (Strangford Lough). And as for the nearest oyster farm where the things are actually available, it could be as far away as Donegal!

They must have a really tough time landing all those baskets of fresh oysters at the quayside in Hillsborough.


1 comments:

Russell McQuillan said...

Mark the festival takes its inspiration from the Galway oyster festival and is a committee led charity based event.

It was and is not a Guinness event, however Guinness, Coca-Cola and Charles Hurst are big sponsors to the running of the festival.

As for the location...... well we where not going to run it in someone else village where we!

Hope this helps
Russell McQuillan
Hillsborough Oyster Festival

russellmcquillan.com