I poked my head into the men's side on a hunch that it would be interesting. This was the best find…read moreI made in Cork! There is a huge selection of men's blazers/jackets as well as a good stock of shirts and ties. The owner. Mr. John Mannix is an expert fitter, and a great storyteller as well. His father opened the store in 1928 and Mr. Mannix has been running it since he was 19 (during the 1950s). You simply MUST go here!

It's less manic than it's Oxford Street sister but still has loads of great value items. Everything…read moreis just so cheap! It's impossible to visit without stocking up.

Rails and rails of inexpensive clothes only thing is if you are a size 16 or upwards you will find…read moreit difficult to get your size because the larger sizes are snapped up the minute they hit the store.

TKMAXX I enjoy my visits to the TKMaxx store in Paul Street…read more Labels for less is the motto and it also seems to be the practice. I usually head to the footwear shelves. My initial bargain was a pair of Daddy Yankees from the US and just recently I picked up a pair of Swiss waterproof runners which had been marked down from €150.00 to €30.00. Not bad. The service is not bad either as they quickly assign staff to the checkouts if the line starts to stretch. Sometimes when it is your turn you get an almost mechanical recitation of your rights of return. That can annoy but I suppose is it all part of learning on the job. Most of the staff though can build those return details into a normal conversation as they put your gear through.

It's surprisingly nice to browse this branch of TK Maxx as it's usually a bit quiet and not too…read moremessy. Having said that, I have never bought much from their clothing selection. Lately, I've found their homeware and shoes more attractive...

CENTRAL SHOE STORES Great to see the Central Shoe Stores up…read moreand running again and giving the big boys a run for their money. The traditional Grand Parade venue (trading here for over 120 years) are celebrating their re-opening at present and the customers are winning. Last Saturday, I bought myself a pair of classy runners for just €20.00. Hard to beat that and, besides, the friendly service is as good as ever.

Cork is a very small town that has a very notable frontier-town quality to it. Another thing to…read morenote is that there are about 11 shops in Cork, and 10 of them are shoe shops (check qype if you don't believe me*). I couldn't work out at the time why this was. Did it rain so heavily that people just needed to replace their shoes every few days? Certainly a very possible explanation. Or was it that they still hadn't grasped crop diversity and, fearing another 'bad season' for potatoes, needed a backup food option? As trapped Chinese miners so often demonstrate, shoes can be particularly handy on occasion. Anyway I was forced into this shop by the combination of boredom, my father's insistence, and my father's boredom. This shop sold "ecco" brand shoes and advertised so prominently in the window. My parents and I were browsing a mall in Hong Kong about 10 months previously when he had first raved about ecco shoes, upon seeing an ecco shop there, and insisted I buy a pair. I told him then and I told him in Ireland 10 months later that I didn't need any more shoes. The second time I told him though was a lie. He knew it and I knew it. I had come from China wearing cloth shoes - ideally suited to strolling in Beijing's dry climate, cycling between its generously spaced bar areas, and jumping through its bureaucratic hoops - which at 8rmb (76p / 92¢ presently) clearly weren't made with the sort of materials needed to endure the climatic limits of mankind's habitable environment. It's actually a wonder that people in the UK and Ireland haven't evolved with webbed feet. Saying that I did actually have a boss once who had a webbed hand... I suppose it just takes time... and incest. Anyway as we walked past this shop I could smell my rancid shoes degrading with every squelching step and I wasn't going to argue very much with my dad, who already had his wallet out. The staff were very polite, given the state of my current shoes, and helped me to find a suitable pair of ecco's finest "genuine leather" slip-ons (no time for lace-ups in the 21st century, and whatever happened to velcro?). They didn't really fit but were comfortable enough and shoes always take time to wear in anyway. I was just very glad to have relatively dry feet for about 10 seconds. Dad was right too.. they are very good quality... very durable... and you can tell they were made to last. Really this review is about ecco shoes, as I didn't really notice anything worth mentioning about the shop. On a final note I did eventually find the 'Achilles Heel' (not even sure if that counts as a pun... and I'm certainly not sorry if it is) in ecco's design. A few weeks ago I drank a heroic amount of Chinese rice wine and was consequently sick on my ecco shoes... they had almost completely dissolved by morning. Told you, dad.