Travel: Clifden Arts Week, Connemara

As Edinburgh subsides into autumnal languor following its annual cultural jamboree, another festival may be the last thing on your mind. But for a unique and rather more relaxed arts bash, head for the west of Ireland, where the picturesque little town of Clifden, "capital of Connemara", holds its 33rd Arts Week starting next Thursday, until 26 September.

Cusped between the mountains and the riven Connemara coastline, Clifden's triangular main street circuit becomes decked with bunting for the Arts Week, convivial hostelries such as EJ King's and Mannion's resound with traditional music sessions while a trailer stage in the street hosts everything from folk-rock to country and western. This grass-roots music-making runs hand in hand with concerts in halls, churches and community centres, with this year's typically eclectic bill including the Irish Chamber Orchestra, acclaimed pianist John O'Conor, the renowned folk troubadour Christy Moore, Irish "chamber art pop" star Julie Feeney and Canadian swing quartet Van Django.

There's much more to the Arts Week than music, however. Its all-embracing ambience attracts poets, philosophers, academics and even economists - this year David McWilliams, economist and author presents his show Outsiders, which he describes as "part stand-up, part discussion and part social observation". And on the poetry front, this year's guests include British Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy (billed, intriguingly, with the National Chamber Choir), as well as notable Irish poets such as Tony Curtis (and, yes, that's his real name), Michael Coady, Paul Durcan, and Galway poet Moya Cannon with harpist Kathleen Loughnane.

The wonderfully multifarious nature of the week is largely down to its founder and director, teacher Brendan Flynn, who established it more than three decades ago as very much a school event. Its community-rooted ethos remains pivotal, with school visits from guest artists, and major participation by local youngsters in a spectacular parade.

When I visited last year, shop windows displayed paintings by local artists (the butcher sported an imposing canvas of the Andromeda Nebula), while Foyle's hotel became a poets' parlour of an evening, hosting much stout-fuelled convivial discourse. Where else but Clifden might one's itinerary encompass a frenetic sean-ns (old-style) dancing display, a limpid recital of Albeniz by guitarist John Feely and a percipient state-of-the-nation lecture (wryly entitled The State We're In) from Dr Gearoid O'Tuathaigh, professor of history at the National University of Ireland Galway?

Then there was Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, leaning over the lectern of the local catholic church in grizzled beneficence, bardic voice rumbling warmly as he read to packed pews.

If culture palls, you can escape into the surrounding rugged magnificence of mountains and bogs, beaches and loughs and pine-studded islands.

&149 This article first appeared in The Scotsman, Saturday September 11, 2010 I remember driving back from an outlying exhibition opening as evening light threw the rocky Connemara landscape into gilded relief under a vast blue sky - the same sky out of which, in June 1919, Alcock and Brown lumbered in their Vickers Vimy biplane, managing to land it nose down in the bog, having completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight. Some ten miles away, Letterfrack is the gateway to the Connemara National Park, with a not-too-demanding walk up the 1,300ft Diamond Hill providing a spectacular viewpoint.

Local dining ranges from excellent pub fare to polished restaurant cuisine, while country house hotels with historical associations include Ballynahinch Castle, once the residence of the 18th-century MP Dick Martin - known as Humanity Dick or Hair-Trigger Dick, reflecting his campaigning for animal welfare or his prowess as a duellist.

At last year's "One for the Road" farewell session in the bar of Foyle's Hotel, during a breather in the jigs and reels that were pulsing in irresistible waves to propel us on our way, the Carrick-on-Suir poet Michael Coady hailed the week, with some feeling, as "an occasion of civilisation". Few would disagree with him.

THE FACTS Clifden Arts Week, 16-26 September (www.clifdenartsweek.ie); Stena Line run ferries from Stranraer to Belfast, from 69 (www.stenaline.co.uk); Aer Arann flies from Edinburgh to Galway from 38 one-way (wwwaerarann.com); Bus Eireann (www.buseireann.ie) and Michael Nee (www.michaelneecoaches.com) run between Galway and Clifden. For further information, see www.discoverireland.com