Tony O’Donoghue Memorial Walk celebrates 10 years of fundraising

SKELPER Quanes and Blennerville were buzzing on Saturday afternoon as the bar and village played host to the 10th year of the annual – and consistently popular – Tony O’Donoghue Memorial Walk.

The event is organised by Tony’s daughter, Andrea, and has raised tens of thousands of Euros in honour of the late Blennerville man, who passed away in September of 2024, for the Kerry Hospice Foundation.

Last year’s event raised an impressive €5,000 for Donal’s Den in the Palliative Care Unit.

Whether it’s Andrea’s midas touch or she had her dad looking down on her, guiding things, the weather, amazingly, stayed dry and sunny – albeit windy – for the event, much to the delight of the near 100 or so walkers who set off from Skelper Quane’s at 4pm.

Afterwards, it was back to Skelper Quanes, where music, courtesy of Ross Brassil, Darragh ‘Jive’ O’Donnell and DJ Mick was provided, as well as burgers sponsored by Séamus O’Sullivan.

Speaking to The Kerryman after the event Andrea said she was delighted with how the day went and revealed that they have already smashed last year’s tally.

“It went absolutely brilliant,” she said.

“There ended up being a great crowd there, I think we had 90 people registered for the walk, and there was a massive crowd there at the finish line, too.

“We’re up at about €6,400 raised so far, which is up on last year’s event, where we raised about €5,500.

“It’s going up every year, people are very kind,” Andrea added.

Andrea also said that she had thought about making this year’s event the last one, but after seeing the success of this year’s outing, she may yet decide to keep it going.

“It’s getting more popular every year,” she said.

“I thought that this year wouldn’t be as big as other years, but it was,” adding that she was so grateful, once again, for everyone’s support.

This year, Andrea said that she hopes to go out on a high and top €75,000 raised in total, to help fund some much-needed equipment for the Palliative Care Unit in Kerry Hospice.

Among the items she hopes to be able to purchase aree a jigsaw table, games table, diffusers, Dyson fans for patients rooms, speakers, adult Lego and some games, just to mention a few.