There is a version of this idea that floats around constantly, especially among people who have spent years paying Dublin rents and watching their money vanish every month. Move west. Get a house with a bit of land. Breathe out. It will…
The first year on my allotment plot in Sligo taught me one thing above all else: the Atlantic does not care about your plans. I lost courgette plants to a single June gale, watched rows of spinach go horizontal and never recover,…
The stretch between Westport and Clifden is one of the most-cycled sections of the Irish Atlantic coast, and for good reason. You get mountains, bogs, the occasional long climb into a headwind, and that particular quality of light that makes Connemara look…
Most beginner cycling advice on the internet was written with somewhere flat and dry in mind. The Netherlands, maybe, or a sunny rail trail in California. It is friendly advice, and some of it is fine, but it does not prepare you…
If you've spent any time cycling or driving through Mayo, you'll have noticed the scattered houses across the hillsides and bogs, whitewashed gables set back from boreens, new timber-framed homes on sites that have been in the same family for generations. Building…
The Kerry section of EuroVelo 1 takes you around the Iveragh Peninsula, better known as the Ring of Kerry. It is one of the most spectacular stretches of Atlantic coastline anywhere in Europe, and also one of the most debated among touring…
October is the window. Once November arrives on the west coast, the weather stops giving you chances. Rain comes in sideways, the ground gets soft, and anything you meant to fix before winter is now a job you are doing in the…
I had it all planned out. Seven nights along the Mayo coast, moving roughly every day or two, wild camping with everything on my back or strapped to the bike. I had read about Leave No Trace principles, I knew the basics…
If you live in a draughty old farmhouse a kilometre from the nearest village, with Atlantic rain hammering the west gable every winter, the idea of a heat pump sounds very appealing. Running costs lower than oil, less dependence on fuel deliveries…
There is a stretch of road along the southern shore of Killary Harbour where you can cycle for twenty minutes and not see another person. The fjord sits grey and still to your left, the Mweelrea massif fills the sky to the…
There's a particular kind of daydream that gets people. You're scrolling through property listings late on a grey Tuesday, and there it is: a stone cottage somewhere outside Clifden or up a boreen near Roundstone, asking price somewhere between tempting and "well,…
Gardening on the Clare coast is a lesson in humility. You pick something out at a garden centre, plant it with care, and by February it looks like it lost a fight with the Atlantic. Salt burn, waterlogging, wind scorch, the occasional…
