Running up Cuckoo Hill in Costello’s ‘Field of Dreams’

PEOPLE said he was mad but Tommie Costello was a man with a vision and, more importantly, someone with the courage to follow it through. Now, seven years later, Cuckoo Hill Bootcamp, located just outside Ballinasloe, has become an epicentre for team building and bonding.

Cuckoo Hill is Costello’s ‘Field of Dreams’. A former publican, he left the trade to build the facility – consisting of hill runs, obstacle courses and bog endurance exercises – on his land in Taughmaconnell, the Roscommon side of Ballinasloe, in 2013 and he hasn’t looked back since.

Over the years, teams have been broken and remade into champions at Cuckoo Hill. For some, that has required team bonding; for others, it has been pushing players and athletes to their physical limits. Whatever is required, Costello, a qualified strength & conditioning coach and personal trainer, has been there to see it gets done.

“To be fair, I love what I am doing here,” he states. “I have never got any grants; anything I have ever put into it, it’s from money I earned. Look it, I was lucky it was our own land. People said I was mad but I was always into fitness myself and I just had a vision to do something.

“Everything back then (in 2013) had turned towards fitness and obesity and my own lads were into training. I said, sure, if I don’t give it a go, I’ll be sorry. Thankfully, it has got stronger and stronger as the years went on and every year it gets busier and busier.”

Recent months, of course, have been the exception. During the Covid-19 lockdown, the only sounds to be heard in Cuckoo Hill were those of the local wildlife and Costello’s strimmer. “It is a pity to lose so much this year but that is the way it goes. Once they stopped the kids going to school, that was the end of my business (in the spring). It shut it down completely.

“I lost all my school tours, lost all my active days in the schools, lost my camps and birthday parties and lost all those county and club teams (who were booked in). I’m not the only one that lost out though. Hopefully, we will get them back again.”

Indeed, since restrictions have eased, Costello’s loyal core group of athletes who turn up to his weekly classes, particularly on a Saturday morning, have begun to return. “So, we have been working in groups of four and I have been doing out work-outs for them, handing them out, and letting them off to different places (around Cuckoo Hill).

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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