May is in my opinion the best month of the year in Ireland with fresh growth on trees and hedgerows, flowers in bloom including bluebells carpeting woodlands and hillsides all over Ireland just like in the image here.

May is also the month of the Bealtaine Festival, celebrating arts and creativity for older people, a program of thousands of events throughout Ireland for older people to engage with arts and crafts through learning and teaching.

This festival takes its name from the ancient Irish festival of Bealtaine, held at the start of May and which marked the start of summer in Ireland.

Running since 1996 it was indeed the first such festival in the world; previous years have seen the likes of Colm Tóibín talking about his novels and other works. 

A recent journey took me to north Tipperary and the town of Nenagh.

It's a fine, large town, though not the largest in Tipperary, that accolade goes to Clonmel in the south of the county.

Nenagh has a distinctive castle, or at least a tower - remains of the much larger original built around the year 1200 by the local Theobald FitzWalter, Baron Butler, whose descendents would become the Earls of Ormond and was constructed of limestone rubble.

It is tall, at around 25 metres, with additions built in the 1860s - the crenellations at the top.

Seen here on a bright spring day in this panorama with some of the walls of the original castle.

I discovered that Nenagh Castle is free to visit, and while visiting the town's tourist office I was informed that the local library, as well as the other libraries in Tipperary, also host free events and exhibitions throughout the year.

So I went for a coffee at the nearby Steeples cafe then headed to the library.

Irish jeweller and designer / maker Christina Keogh has an exhibition on in the library of beautiful silversmithing, gold and gemstones as well as traditional goldsmithing tools and will give a talk on Tuesday 18th of April in Nenagh Library.