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DylanFest 2012 is on in Moville

Posted Thursday, October 20, 2011

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DylanFest Moville 2012

It's on again in 2012 - Stuck Inside of Moville, the DylanFest on the Lough, Ireland's only annual festival of Bob Dylan music in Moville, Donegal.

Moville, is a picturesque little town with a population of less than 1,500 situated in the countryside and on the shores of a salmon fishing sea lough.

It was recently the location for a comedy horror film Grabbers which comes out in 2012.

Grabbers is set in a fictional sleepy idyllic village and the makers of it decided that Moville fitted the description perfectly.

Successful

The first five years were highly successful, growing each year and the 2011 event was the best and biggest ever.

It will take place from June 29th to July 8th this year.

That's right, it will be an 11-day festival rather than the usual 4-day one.

Clipper Race

The reason is that the penultimate leg of the Round-the-World Clipper yacht race will be starting in neighbouring town Greencastle on Sunday July 8th and the ships will be coming in at the end of the 3rd last leg over the previous week to ten days.

It seems that there are usually 150,000 people who attend these races with 250 spectator yachts so we've been asked to put on some entertainment for them while they are here - and to try and keep them here for the whole 4-day weekend.

Two DylanFests

As there is a limited amount of accommodation in the area, instead of just moving the DylanFest from its normal first weekend in July to the second weekend, it has been decided to put on a DylanFest for the normal Dylan fans who come to Moville that weekend and another one for the visitors who come for the yacht race.

The 2nd weekend will be predominantly Dylan but not wholly Dylan as we intend to showcase all the festivals that we put on here so there will be some of the best acts from our annual BeatlesFest and Irish TradFest as well that weekend.

As there will be extra people about to see the ships coming in at the end of the 3rd leg of the race, and so that the acts from abroad don't have to go away and come back again, we are going to put the Dylan acts on in the pubs of Moville and Greencastle during the week in between.

Stars

The new star of the 2011 DylanFest, Jacques Mees, from Tilburg in Holland has agreed to come back in 2012.

Jacques runs the Dutch DylanFest and took 3rd place when Dylan Radio ran a contest over several months to find the best Dylan act in the world.

There were more than 100 contestants at the start.

We are also in discussion with the stars of 2010 and 2011, Al-Diesan and Pino Tocco from Sardinia in Italy for them to come back.

Biggest in Europe

I'm told by the guys who come from abroad that the Moville DylanFest is now the biggest DylanFest in Europe and the only one that takes place in multi locations over a number of days both indoors and outdoors.

Its only 'rival' would be the one in Hibbing, Minnesotta which is Dylan's birthpace.

We expect this year's DylanFest on the Lough to be the biggest yet.

How To Get Here

Moville is easy to get to by road as it is just 18 miles north of Derry (Londonderry) on a straight road along the shores of Lough Foyle.

City of Derry airport is about 25 miles away and there are taxis outside which charge around £28 to get to Moville.

Belfast International Airport and Belfast City Airport (George Best Airport) are about 1.5 hours and 2 hours away respectively, although the journey can be cut by 20 to 30 minutes if one heads to the Magilligan to Greencastle ferry.

There is an Airporter bus service which picks people up straight from the two Belfast airports to take them to Derry from whence one can take a bus or a taxi (£22) to Moville.

Accommodation

If you want to book accommodation there is hotel, bed and breakfast, self catering, hostel and camping facilities locally, at very reasonable prices.

For those who want to book accommodation now (before the best places get booked) take a look here Accommodation

Here is the Programme of Events for 2011 (we will update it with the 2012 one nearer the time).

The DylanFest Facebook page is here - Facebook