If you don't normally stop in the midlands town, you should make a beeline for next month's Longford Dance Fest, then head for the bog, for Ireland's most visceral museum experience writes MANCHÁN MAGAN
There’s a secret in Longford, a subculture that locals do their best to ignore until April of every year, when it rears its shocking, scantily-clad, adrenalin-pumped head above the parapet – or, at least, out of the cattle sheds and converted milking parlour that it thrives in for most of the year. It’s called Longford Dance Fest, and for sheer quirkiness and vivacity it is unrivalled in its part of the country. After experiencing it, the cultural Siberia of Ireland’s midlands never seems the same again.
The festival is focused around the Irish National Youth Dance Company, which is based at Shawbrook – a dance school that itself is a surreal and Elysian spot secreted away in a seemingly sedate farm on the edge of the bog near Legan.
My first experience of the festival was three years ago, when I drove into Slashers GAA club, in Longford town, to find a voluminous Egyptian woman draped in silks suspended from a crane above the clubhouse singing falsetto while groups of leotarded teenagers, festooned with ribbons and bandanas, danced in a ritualistic orgy beneath her.
I admit I was startled, yet, looking around me at locals who had gathered for the spectacle, I realised they were far more startled than I. Nothing in life had prepared these innocent bachelor farmers, matronly mothers and Polish guttering contractors for outlandishness of this scale. They had come along out of a sense of civic duty and found themselves caught in a rip tide far beyond their depth. I’ve been hooked ever since and arrange my schedule to ensure I never miss the festival.
Last year was possibly the most surreal of all. We gathered at 5am at the dance school in Shawbrook and were led through a forest in semidarkness to see French dancers clinging to branches of massive oaks and Spanish chestnuts. Some were wrapped in silk, twitching like cocooned moths; others were seminaked and moving like prowling leopards or somnolent slugs. It was the most absurd, surreal yet emotionally charged experience to stand in a bog-encircled woodland in the predawn with an explosion of chirruping fledglings blasting out from the minty young leaves and the occasional lone swan and V of geese whacking through the air overhead. Afterwards we were all brought back to the farmhouse for hot chocolate and croissants.
This year’s Longford Dance Fest runs from April 16th to 18th. It seems to be mostly contained within the walls of the town’s Backstage Theatre, and “contained” is the appropriate word, as both Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre and a French aerial circus artist are taking part, so my guess is that most of the performances will be in the roof space or up the walls.
The highlight is always the Irish National Youth Dance Company piece on the final night. There is something enthralling about watching the sheer intensity – bordering on desperation – of adolescent dancers performing for their lives. To see it at its nail-biting, most excruciatingly stressful best you should go to the various ballet, jazz and contemporary dance competitions held during the day – a realm of blood, sweat and tears straight out of a Baz Luhrmann movie.
The best thing about Longford Dance Fest is that it brings you to a town you might otherwise have little reason to visit. Walking through Longford with flashes of aerial acrobatics or a mangled pas de deux still playing itself in your mind offers a whole new perspective on the place. Suddenly the soaring lava-grey flanks of the cathedral and the butterfly intensity of Eamon Farrell’s one-hour photo shop seem totemic and alluring.
There has always been something frail and tender about Longford: yes, it’s a broody garrison town, but there’s an engaging vulnerability to it, too. It lacks the swagger of Mullingar, the bombast of Athlone. It’s only the second-biggest town on the N4, it has no proper third-level institution and it’s main businesses are dog food and cement.
If you Google “Longford highlights” you’re brought straight to pages full of rose gardens, antique craft shops in colonial houses and a wildlife lagoon sanctuary, which looks encouraging until you realise these are in Longford, Tasmania. Longford, Ireland, barely gets a mention. Even Longford Tourism advises you to head to Mullingar, Glasson or the Slieve Russell for quality golf courses, and to go to Knock or Dublin for an airport. Crushed between the hulking behemoths of Leinster, Ulster and Connacht, it’s hard for it to stake out an identity.
Yet the county has hidden charms. A visit to Ardagh, a delightful 19th-century Swiss- designed estate village that has won the national TidyTowns competition three times, will trick you into believing you’re in Cornwall. Renting a boat in Lanesboro for a punt around Lough Ree and the eerie monastery ruins on Saint’s Island and Quaker Island summons up visions of an alternate water world. This lost-world theme continues on a walk through the beautiful Derrycassin Wood, on the shores of Lough Gowna on the far side of the county, and the enchanting mini dolmen nearby at Aughnacliffe. The rapids on the River Inny near Ballymahon are fast becoming a hot spot for kayakers, especially since the establishment of the Outdoor Discovery kayaking school nearby.
But what Longford does best of all is bogs. The place is a rich rug of smoky-brown bogland and quiet reedy fields. The trick is to embrace the bog. Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre revels in it. Built around an 18m stretch of original Iron Age bog road, it provides possibly the most visceral museum experience in Ireland. Nothing is replicated or “interpreted”: the huge oak planks lie just as they were laid 2,000 years ago across the bog to form a track towards the Shannon; humidifiers prevent it from cracking in the heat.
Nearby in Kenagh is the ISPCA’s National Animal Centre, where visitors are welcome to call in and, with luck, take home a dog or cat. Its otter and wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary is also there, although it currently has no otters.
In Longford town you can continue the bog theme by gorging on little sods of sweetened turf in the form of brownies or chocolate muffins at Torc Cafe or Cool Beans Coffee Co. A smoky black coffee wouldn’t be too far off the theme, either.
From there you ought to head out the Roscommon road a few kilometres to the quiet village of Killashee, where an endless vista of bogland stretching in every direction seemingly forever opens out in front of you. Only the peat-fuelled Lough Ree Power Station in Lanesboro, on the horizon, reminds you that you’re still on planet earth.
Abandon the car somewhere on the brown blanket and head into the wilderness for your first initiation into the ancient sport of drain jumping.
This underappreciated activity was the main reason I visited my cousins in Killashee as a child. It involves racing across the wonderfully spongy, Bord na Móna-levelled bogland until you come upon a drainage ditch, which you then leap over with superhuman Fionn Mac Cumhaill-like agility, aided by the mattress of 10,000-year-old plant fibre beneath you.
It sounds silly, but it’s wonderfully invigorating and induces a sense of euphoria that few other activities can match. No matter how hard you fall you can’t possibly hurt yourself, as you inevitably spring up again.
Realistically, I suppose, one ought to contact Bord na Móna to check its policy on bog bouncing, or at least on public access to its lands, but life is too short, especially considering that Bord na Móna plans to flood the entire area around Killashee soon and turn it into a wildlife sanctuary. This might be your last opportunity to experience bog bouncing for the next 10,000 years.
And even if you don’t go leaping, the landscape is worth a roam around; it’s a place of tawny grasses and bog cotton shimmering in the wind off the Shannon, and the odd dashing hare or flustered pheasant.
As a final bog-themed activity before heading home, call into Magan’s pub in Killashee – whose landlord is no relation beyond being my first cousin. The recommendation may seem like flagrant nepotism until you see for yourselves how special the place is, one of those last- remaining dark-painted, womb-like bars that make Ireland Ireland.
Inside, leaning on the brown whiskey-stained counter, you’ll find men who know a lot more about bog bouncing than I ever will. And in the peat-coloured pint that my cousin Dan will be pouring for you, and the equally dark caffeinated fizzy drinks that’ll have the kids hyper the whole way home, you’ll see that everything is connected and that, while Longford might not be the heart or soul of Ireland, it could well be its liver.
The Irish National Youth Dance Company is performing in Market Square, Longford, at 2.30pm today
Where to stay, where to eat and where to go
Where to stay
Viewmount House. Dublin Road, Longford, 043-41919, www.viewmount house.com. A Georgian house on almost two hectares of wooded gardens on the edge of town. People rave about the breakfasts.
Annaly Hotel. Main Street, Longford, 043-42058, www.annaly hotel.ie. Snazzy boutique hotel owned by one of the ubiquitous Reynolds clan. Its sister hotel, the blousy, traditional Longford Arms (www.longfordarms.ie), is across the road.
Cooneys. Main Street, Ballymahon, 090-6438180, www.cooneyshotel.com. A newly renovated three-star hotel by the River Inny. Convenient for the Outdoor Discovery kayaking school.
Where to eat
VM Restaurant. Viewmount House, Dublin Road, Longford, 043-41919, www.viewmount house. com. Elegant restaurant, specialising in local ingredients, in the stables of Viewmount House.
Aubergine Gallery Cafe. First Floor, the White House, Ballymahon Street, Longford, 043-48633. Unassuming entrance, but reliable food.
Black Olive. Ballymahon Street, Longford, 043-42923. Interesting continental dishes.
Where to go
Outdoor Discovery kayaking, archery and canoeing school. Creevaghbeg, Ballymahon, 086-2721245, www.outdoordiscovery.ie.
Take a gillie out on Lough Ree to tour the islands. Contact Longford Tourism, Market Square, Longford, 043-42577, www.longfordtourism.ie.
Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre. Kenagh, 043-22386, www.heritageireland.ie/en/ MidlandsEastCoast/Corlea TrackwayVisitorCentre. Open April-September. Admission free.
Longford Dance Fest. Backstage Theatre (043-47888, www.backstage.ie) and Shawbrook School of Dance (044-9357570, www.shawbrook.org).