Ladies with breast cancer enjoy free fly fishing retreat in Co Mayo

Casting for Recovery UK & Ireland, the unique fly fishing programme for ladies with breast cancer, held a weekend retreat at the Mount Falcon Estate at Ballina, Co Mayo at the weekend. Nine ladies joined the residential retreat to learn the basics of fly casting as well as attending counselling and medical support groups.

Casting for Recovery UK & Ireland is administered by The Countryside Alliance Foundation and has been running for ten years. The team has been coming to Mount Falcon to run annual weekend retreats since 2009. The unique formula of fly fishing, counselling, and medical advice promote mental and physical healing to women whose lives have been profoundly affected by breast cancer. Fly fishing requires no strength at all, yet gets the ladies moving, making it perfect physical therapy. The focus of the weekend is very much on moving forward.

The weekend was a great success with ladies saying they felt privileged to be made to feel so special. The weekend was further enhanced by the team at Mount Falcon presenting a cheque for €2000 to help cover the costs of the charitable project. The amount was raised by a fundraising ladies lunch at the hotel during Breast Cancer Awareness Month last October. Another such lunch is planned for this year to raise money for next year's retreat.

Casting for Recovery UK & Ireland Director Jill Grieve commented: "The ladies all had an incredible weekend and we are grateful to Val and Jim Wilson and the team at Mount Falcon for making us all so welcome and caring for us so well. The beauty of the programme is its simplicity – all we want to do is support these ladies and give them an enjoyable weekend where they can make new friends and learn a new skill. The shrieks of delight as the ladies all caught rainbow trout on Sunday made it all worthwhile!"

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Notes to Editors

The fishing kit used on retreat is provided by Orvis UK, to whom we are extremely grateful
A group shot of the ladies at the Mount Falcon lake is enclosed.
More about the UK & Ireland programme can be found at: www.castingforrecovery.org.uk
This charitable project is run by The Countryside Alliance Foundation.