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Limerick Bastille Day Boules - On Saturday, July 10 at the Hunt Museum, a traditional French game of ‘pétanque’ will take place with many prizes! Limerick Bastille Day Boules - On Saturday, July 10 at the Hunt Museum, a traditional French game of ‘pétanque’ will take place with many prizes!

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Limerick Bastille Day Boules Tournament Event

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3 years ago

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Limerick Bastille Day Boules – On Saturday, July 10 at the Hunt Museum, a traditional French game of ‘pétanque’ will take place with many prizes!

Limerick Bastille Day Boules Tournament Event

By I Love Limerick Correspondent Dylan Frawley

On Saturday, July 10, a French Boules competition will take place at The Hunt Museum as part of Limerick Bastille Day this year.


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Launched in 2019, Limerick’s new annual summer festival takes place every July on the weekend closest to Bastille Day, the French national day. It commemorates the Flight of the Wild Geese and celebrates the long-lasting friendship between Ireland and France.

For this year’s edition, which will mark the 330th anniversary of the Treaty of Limerick and will be the first major cultural event to take place in the city since the beginning of the pandemic, the organisers have put together an exciting programme of events which will take place over three days, on Friday 9, Saturday 10, and Sunday 11 July.

‘Boules’ is the name of a collection of games that involve a ball being thrown. ‘Pétanque’ uses metal balls which are thrown to land as near as possible to a target ball, consisting of three players per team.

The prize for winning the competition is a very good bottle of wine from O’Brien Wines with runners up receiving a bottle of Pastis! There are prizes for kids (up to 14) too. The competition starts from 2:30 pm to 5 pm.

The event is free but Limerick Mental Health Association volunteers will be coordinating and donations into their buckets will be very welcome. If you cannot register online, it means all slots are booked but there will be a live queue (lots of activities related to the Wild Geese Festival to watch) and an opportunity to compete. Assure your place by booking your team online or by phone at (061) 312 833.

Throughout the day other events such as Living History Camp will be set up in the new gardens of the Hunt Museum by reenactors from En Garde, the Franco-Irish Historical Society, who will bring back to life Napoleon Bonaparte’s famous Irish Legion. There will also be musical performances from the Limerick School of Music and from the Saint Mary’s Prize Band as well as a few surprises and an opportunity to do a guided walking tour of the city centre with local historian Dr Paul O’Brien and a public talk by Dr Harman Murtagh, an expert on the Wild Geese, will take place at the People’s Museum also.

Commenting on this year’s festival edition, Honorary Consul of France Dr Loïc Guyon said: “Organising a festival of this magnitude is never easy but organising it during a pandemic has been a tremendous challenge. This would not have been possible without the support of my co-organiser, Mr David O’Brien, CEO of the Limerick Civic Trust, and of all the volunteers who joined our organising committee last October and to whom I wish to express my gratitude. I also wish to thank the Limerick City & County Council, as well as our official sponsors (Heavy Technology, UL, O’Brien’s Wines and Château Kirwan) and all our other generous supporters for giving us the means to bring some much-needed fun and artistic and cultural relief to the people of Limerick and to visitors from elsewhere after what we have all been through”.

All events will be free but due to the pandemic, the number of attendees will be strictly limited. In compliance with recently published guidelines from Fáilte Ireland and the Arts Council, pre-booking via Eventbrite will be required.

 

To register for Boules Tournament go HERE

For more stories on Limerick Bastille Day go HERE

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