Waterford is having a Harvest Festival from September 10 to 19 and today was 'Amazing Grazing'. The Quay carparks were closed off and full of stalls from 11am to 6pm. The Quay is the main road by the river and usually has about 600 carparks so it was a big occasion.

We went into Waterford late morning and once again the church near our place was very busy . We had seen what was possibly one wedding and 2 funerals there while we have stayed and today of course there was a service. For a small church in a small area it seems to be remarkably busy.

We left our car at Tony and Nuala’s and walked the 2km to the Quays. As it happened there were a lot of parks but there was also a hospice charity run so it was good not to be driving through that. There must have been about a thousand people involved in the run, many of whom were walking. We went past the house where William Hobson was born

We stopped first to look at a memorial on the quay. There are 2 columns, each with names. The SS Formby, a merchant ship, left Liverpool on December 15 1917 to bring food and goods to Waterford. It was torpedoed without warning and sunk in minutes with no survivors. Only one body was found. 2 days later the SS Coningbeg sailed home from Liverpool and was also torpedoed by the same U boat . There are 83 names on the 2 memorials.

We spent a couple of hours at the Festival. The stalls were mainly food but there were some jewelry and craft stalls as well. At the end of the quay there was a funfair which we didn’t visit. At that stage Nuala called out - they had just finished eating having been there for a couple of hours. We had lunch and also bought quiches for tea. On the way back we called into a hotel for a drink and to check emails.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon doing the remaining caches on the Peninsula. We say we are at Ballymacaw because that is the nearest village but we are actually about 4 km from there, near the end of the Brownstown Peninsula. We look across the Bay to Tramore and there is a long spit at low tide in the bay. The cache was in the area behind the spit. We were told that in 1857 embankments were constructed which enclosed 500 acres here. This cost half a million pounds (45 million euro in 2004 money) . A racecourse and golf links were constructed on this reclaimed land. A bad winter storm in 1912 led to the breaching of the embankment allowing the racecourse and links to be inundated.

The next 2 caches were at 2 quite different coves. The first was called Smugglers cove and it was at Ballymacaw Cove. This secret cove was used in the early 19th century for smuggling furniture into Ireland from France. The larger ships docked at the mouth of the cove and transferred their cargo onto large wooden tenders powered by teams of men with oars. Once ashore, it was taken by cart to Waterford City and distributed around the country from there. The buyers were the local gentry who wanted to have this in their manors and castles and the trade only died when the furniture became available through normal channels.

The final 2 caches were also at beaches, although we only saw 1 person swimming. We were not even tempted to paddle. We then stopped at the memorial at Dunmore East that Nuala had mentioned. It is to the locals who have died at sea. Included in it was mention of the 2 ships from the morning memorial and the names of about 6 locals who were on board. The dates went from the 1800’s through to 2009.We then returned home for a quiet evening in, watching a programme about the Battle of Britain.