The Rocky Road Stops Here – Winter Is Over

 

Carrick-On-Shannon Marina at sunset

The island of Ireland is the westernmost country of the European Union (for now), and politics aside, its location in the eastern Atlantic makes it simultaneously the safest place in the northern hemisphere in the event of a new world war, and the most dangerous place to go outside when there is an R in the month.

The howling wind that blows off the Atlantic combined with the endless cloud, horizontal rain and short daylight hours made the winter a particularly cheerless time, but most importantly, it didn’t feel at all like we were going to die: a stark contrast from the devastation wrought on the Valencians back in 2024.

For the most part, the children got up, went to school, came home, ate, watched TV and went to bed. But in all that, Things Were Actually Happening. For example, Livia had some life-defining tests that confirmed – officially – that she has a light form of autism.

What happened next was a complete breath of fresh air compared to the treatment she received elsewhere: she can be assigned a qualified Special Educational Needs professional in the classroom, who will support her, give her moral guidance, and crucially help her learn at her own pace.

Livia’s school is located in a tiny town in rural Ireland, but the staff have made her feel at home – she no longer stays in bed as long as possible in the mornings trying to avoid the inevitable: she doesn’t relish school, but she isn’t having mini panic attacks at the thought of spending the day there.

What’s more, Livia has actually started applying the things she has learned: she even wrote a full sentence without any help, which caused me to spontaneously stand up in surprise and sheer wonderment at how far she has come in such a short time. She is expressing herself fully, making fewer monosyllabic noises when she wants something, and answering questions, albeit often after having repeated them.

She has always had a mischievous sense of humour, verging on the slapstick with a side-order of absurdism, and this has developed a great deal in the meantime. She can be either great company or a total blight on the experience, but this is the very essence of her versatile character.

Dainoris has flourished at school. He has developed a keen interest in the animal world, and can tell us facts about all sorts of creatures that we have never heard of. He will often watch a full Attenborough documentary, pausing only to blink or occasionally breathe. His room is full of animal figurines he has collected – some from the German Schleich brand, which are anatomically extremely accurate.

He also likes to play board games, as does his mother, so they spent the dark winter evenings bonding a lot playing mainly Frustration and Snakes and Ladders. I occasionally joined them, but it was mostly their thing. Besides, I am more into Scrabble and 15-ball pool.

On top of all this, he has a close relationship with a young lady from his class, that we shall call Manon. Her mother is coincidentally Belgian (Walloon this time) and father British, both with hints of German. The mirroring to our family history is quite uncanny. They hang around in school a lot and also after school on Fridays at the playground. Manon has a younger sister, Marie, who likes to play with Livia and Milda: she also has spectrum-like overtones, which puts her in pole position to make Livia a perfect playmate.

As for Milda, she is going places. She pays attention to everything going on around her; she listens to adults’ advice and tries to apply her new-found wisdom; she is super easy to tend to, and she’ll eat what you put in front of her, although less so these days than she used to.

Despite being the youngest, she is also the most articulate and erudite – she loves a good chat on anything, no matter its nature, and has a penchant for making complicated phrases out of straightforward explanations, much like this sentence. I am surprised she stops for air sometimes. Her brain is so methodical and rational, that she gets angry with herself for making mistakes. Methinks we have a perfectionist in the household – I am going to try to teach her to understand that mistakes are good ways of learning and remembering better ways to accomplish things.

Bonny Bee has been very busy this winter with her translations – she has a great number of things on the go at the same time, and relishes her daily activities. I have been doing the auxiliary tasks, like driving everyone around, shopping, cooking, and developing the garden. Now that spring has arrived, I have started on the project of landscaping the grounds, including putting in two ponds, five trees (to start with), and some decent paths, rocks, flowerbeds, and seating areas.

As well as this, I have almost totally completed my pivot from adult language training to writing and my debut novel made it to the shelves in February. It’s been a difficult birth, but finally it saw the light: I wrote it back in Luxembourg in 2022, and after a year getting the illustrations right, I found myself in Spain. So I had to coordinate that as well as our integration into Spanish society. By the time it was finally published, we had moved to Ireland.

So what’s next? Well… we are getting on with the house renovation, slowly but there are signs of progress – we hope to have a bathroom and utility room fitted by the end of spring, then we will move on to the roof and ceilings before tackling the bedrooms. Once they are properly installed and equipped, the central room will need attention, and then I think we can move in. I’m hoping by this time next year.

Imagine: if it weren’t for a group of defeatist boardroom directors in a private school in Luxembourg, we would probably never have had these experiences. I love to turn adversity into positivity.

On 22 January, Milda turned 6. We decided from now on, every child will have a party for their birthday and a cake. This particular one was made by Anna Kaczmarek, owner of Cake Me Away in Carrick, and it was better than some people's wedding cakes.

Full moon, 3 March - it was so bright, I could even leave the flash off my camera.

Dainoris and Manon on the Boardwalk at Drumshanbo, a popular place to go for a walk.

The gawdy lettering in Dunnes Bar, Carrick.

Going for a magic walk at the fairy trail in Slatta, County Roscommon.

The bank of the River Erne at Enniskillen is a fabulous place to go for a walk.

St Patrick's Day is a proper community event.

Even the coffee is green!

They threw sweets from the procession floats - needless to say, the children reached quite a hoard...

Swans glide under the bridge at Carrick-On-Shannon connecting Leitrim with Roscommon. 

Signing books at Fenagh Community Centre.

Meeting our friend Basel in Dublin. He left Gaza and now he is saving lives in a busy hospital

The magnificent Rye River Café in Kilcock, County Kildare.

A spectacular view north from County Westmeath graced further by the appearance of a rainbow.

Down The Rocky Road – So That Was Summer

Aughris Beach

Mid-August. The sun was making a very good impression on us all, having been out for most of the month so far. According to several people we know, this has been the best summer weather for decades. We took the road out west to the beaches of County Sligo to make the most of the fading summer warmth. Around here, autumn doesn’t just creep up on you during September. Oh no no no. It comes up behind you and says “boo!” and before you’re ready to put away the shorts, you’re taking the thicker coat off the hanger and ironing a few long-sleeve shirts.

The kids were doing their best to sound intelligent by asking a lot of preposterous questions: “Do dinosaurs brush their teeth?” “Do unicorns eat breakfast?” “Do boats fly?” “Where does spaghetti come from?” I answered as well as I could: “Dinosaurs use children to climb in their mouths and pick pieces of rotting flesh out of the gaps in their teeth.” “Unicorns don’t eat breakfast. They have brunch because they’re American and they prefer to prepare a huge and wasteful meal later in the morning, then leave half of it.” “Have you ever seen a flying boat? Nope, neither have I. Oh look up there above that mountain, it’s a boat! You missed it, it sank inside that cloud. I hope the crew managed to fly to safety.” “Spaghetti comes from Swiss spaghetti farms where they grow on trees. Take a look at this BBC documentary on it.” For developing critical thinking, I believe I’ve taken an extreme route, but it is actually working. Nonetheless, it keeps us amused and allows me to flex my imagination every so often.

Anyhow, we headed out west for a final fling on the beach before the whole summer curtain came crashing down a few days later. I was going to return to the same location we had visited the previous week but I changed my mind as I discovered a lovely place called Dunmoran Beach, a little further this time, and not too far from what seemed like a decent seaside rural pub. The beach experience was fairly short-lived as the skies kept threatening to cloud over and ruin summer. The children seemed content enough to play in the sand, albeit with some extra clothing, but Livia braved the waves and ventured quite far into the sea. This meant I also had to go in: I would need to make sure she didn’t hazard a trip into waters where she couldn’t touch the floor. She is sensible in her own way, but the current can play some awful tricks.

Once she had had enough and the clouds were gathering, she went to wrap up and play on the sand instead, so I took myself for a walk along the beach. The sun, obscured and weak, was in a losing battle against the rampant forces of gloomy weather, but we were determined to enjoy our day at the coast. We packed up our stuff and made a move to the pub, called simply Beach Bar, in a hamlet known as Aughris. It was heaving with people, as well as cars, camper vans, motorhomes, cyclists, and coastal hikers. It was like one of those novels where you passed through a veil into another dimension. Most people were there to soak up the sun, which had mysteriously won its war against the clouds, albeit too late for us to have enjoyed it. I drove around the precariously narrow roadways and parked in a gap close to the pub.

Beach Bar

They had space for us near a window, and we sat down to wait for the menu. And what a beauty it was. Proper beef in Guinness pie, Irish stew, and other culinary masterpieces stood out on the page. Bonny Bee and I had those two, and the children had some crowd-pleasing shiny beige fare. But then came the desserts – I took a warm dark chocolate brownie, which was a most arduous decision because of the constant pressure from the hot sticky toffee pudding and the apple pie and custard. But I did not regret my decision for one second, as it was one of those desserts, that when you put a piece in your mouth, you can hear the nearby playing of cherubim and seraphim on their harps and the voices of ten thousand angels in twelve-tone harmony.

Choco-gasm

At the end of the meal, it was still only half past three. We went for a walk along the beach path to digest all the food. We had reached no more than about fifty metres when we came to a shallow stream discharging its clear water over some light-coloured rocks across the beach, and into the sea. Of course, the children wanted to stop at this point and play in the shallow waters. I was determined to get in some walking as after the substantial lunch, I felt like a wheelbarrow with a tyre-flattening load.

The sea front at Aughris is like a lot of Western Ireland’s coastline: just enough paved area not to disturb the landscape, and what’s there looks like it’s supposed to be there; it’s a good, honest compromise between human incursion and trying to keep nature unspoilt. The path led from the car park to a grassy campervan park, then having crossed a bridge over the stream, a boreen took us between a farm and the beach, before landing at some windswept farmhouses at the far end. It was quite lovely on this calm August day, but I am quite sure I would not want to be here in the winter when the Atlantic storms blow in.

Boreen by the beach

Seaside farm

We walked along the boreen for a while and greeted the cows in the paddock there before returning to the stream, sheltered by the surrounding buildings and campervans. The children played happily in that area for quite a long time.

Once everyone had run out of energy, I proposed we all head to the car and take a drive into Sligo, a place I knew nothing about, but was willing to get acquainted with. And it was a markedly surprising encounter: the sun was delightfully warm, and the city centre’s riverside bars were teeming with hedonistic and soon-to-be impoverished beer guzzlers, getting tanked on seven-euro pints and singing along to some famous Irish songs like The Fields of Athenry and Tell Me Ma. We could hear them on the other side of the river as we lingered near the main footbridge, a joyful and photogenic flower-festooned pedestrian crossing linking the two car-free halves of the city centre. This could have been Utrecht, Odense, Toruń or Lübeck, but it was north-western Ireland on a summer’s evening.

Sligo Riverside

Sligo road bridge in the background

We stopped at a café terrace right above the water and sat next to the bridge watching the people go by, some stopping for photos. The handsome road bridge, about 100 metres further up, has seven arches and is a very well-used background for selfies. After cake and coffee, we sauntered around the riverside square where there is a city logo in huge wooden lettering with seating and ladders for children to climb up. Sligo is a fun, young city with a lot going for it. I would recommend it on any road trip around the island.

Weekend revelry

On Sunday 17 August, we had our really last summer outing to Derrycassin Wood, sadly devastated in last winter’s Storm Darragh and Storm Eowyn, but still a haven of wildlife and a decent walk in the evening sun. The children have really taken to Ireland, and they have gladly accepted that there’s no going back. I don’t think they want to, in any case: they too had their issues with Spain.

Derrycassin Wood

The following week, I was to give my final course to the EU before the contract was handed over to an organisation with no loyalty to the long-term team members. They would be bringing in their own personnel, and we were too expensive for them. It was a two-week course for interpreters at the Commission. One very interesting feature of Ireland is how well connected it is: all over Ireland there are digital hubs or coworking spaces where you can book a desk or an office. I gave my course from the one in Mohill, and it was a good bookend to my time as a provider of language consultancy to the EU. I may be back, but for the moment, the rates the newly-installed provider proposed to me were not enough to warrant my continued participation. This type of company I call a WAMPIR: Wants A Master, Pays Intern Rates. If after nearly 25 years in the trade I am to earn less than when I started, that is a no-no. I replied with a very explanatory and far-too-courteous email why I felt insulted by their offer.

On the Wednesday of the second week of the course, the children’s school term was due to begin, making my days rather eventful. Nonetheless, the process pales into insignificance when compared to the average routine in Germany/Luxembourg a mere 30 months earlier. That was the purest definition of strain: the day would start a little before 6, which was its most harrowing in midwinter. We would get ready in the bathroom, eat breakfast, then jump in the car a little after half-past seven in order to go to another country to learn and work. The journey to Luxembourg took a little under 40 minutes when the traffic was clear, but could take well over an hour at peak times, especially if there was an accident. Their school started at 8.30, and was nearer Belgium than Germany, so I had to go round the ring of Luxembourg City and enter on the western side of town. I created several playlists on Spotify in order to pass the time in the car.

Now, though, we are getting up after 8am, as it takes a maximum of two songs to reach the school and the days pass so much more slowly than before. That means we can all get so much more done if we really want to. Bonny Bee can spend a lot more time translating, and I can get on with my writing as well as driving the children around, grocery shopping, cooking, gardening, preparing the house, going for walks, photographing the landscape, feeding my muesli to next-door’s lovely chickens, staring at sheep, and other essential activities. In a way, I am now a full-time author with a lot of side-duties.

School uniforms

On Saturday 23 August, we wanted to go to a museum commemorating the Battle of the Boyne in County Meath, a good hour and a half away. The drive there was, as usual, very scenic – this still hasn’t got boring. However, when we arrived there, the place was experiencing a water outage and they were closing up. This was especially tragic for them, as they had been advertising a battle reenactment on the magnificent grounds of the stately home where this was to take place. We decided to get back in the car and go to Dublin, a mere 45-minute drive away.

There were two things I wanted to do there: first and foremost, I wanted to view an art exhibition in Dublin Castle. The family of a friend of mine, someone dear and significant to me, had lent some works of art made by a Polish artist to the castle from their private collection and I wanted to learn more about it. Second, I wanted to see more of Dublin City, as each time we had gone there, we didn’t have enough time to enjoy anything.

Dublin Castle courtyard

Staircase at the entry

Dublin Castle is dripping with history. It’s a place with a dark past: the seat of oppressive rule for seven centuries, it has nowadays become the location of state visits, EU summits, and presidential inaugurations. The exhibition was in one section behind the presidential gallery in a couple of spacious rooms, but we couldn’t stay for any decent amount of time because the children flitted from room to room not really paying much attention to their surroundings.

A reception room in the castle

The city of Dublin itself is a mix of fun and business. Architecturally, it’s never going to rival cities in the same category like Prague, Kraków, Turin or Barcelona, and it doesn’t really have a famous building or landmark that represents it on the world stage, such as the Atomium in Brussels or the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. But it more than makes up for all that by being a playful and welcoming city, and the epicentre of joy. It flaunts shabby, swaggers in scruffy, and wallows in jumbled architecture where ornate terraced houses with colourful doors, stone steps and wrought iron railings are juxtaposed with former factories that have been converted into shopping centres, hostels, offices, more offices, fitness centres, car parks, offices. theatres and massive pubs with perpetual live music and endless sport on the TVs. Oh, and did I mention offices? If Dublin were a person, it would be a functioning alcoholic with a fabulous salary and a battered old Ford Focus parked in the street.

Dublin

I put our car in a crammed multi-storey car park near St Stephen’s Green and walked from the damp and soulless storage cupboard for vehicles into a many-layered atrium of light, glass, metal and marble that is St Stephen’s Shopping Centre. Taking the glass lift downwards, we were briefly reminded of Valencia and its Aqua retail centre but the atmosphere was cosier and less volatile.

The streets of Dublin were teeming with shoppers, daytime revellers over from the UK or the continent, and in some places traffic roared very close by, loud and menacing. The Dubliners have made the most of their city and its potential. It is chock full of monuments to its past, but the difference is this: whereas London has statues to its leaders both military and aristocratic, Dublin has two types. There are still a few monuments to its military connections, but they are more about revolutionaries than those of the time Dublin was the second city of the British Empire. There are such illustrious warriors as Bernardo O’Higgins, the Chilean freedom fighter with a Basque and Irish background; Theobald Wolfe Tone, a very important figure in Irish independence from the 18^th century, and Admiral William Brown, who served in the Argentine navy 200 years ago.

Molly Malone

But the vast majority of statues in Dublin are of prominent poets, musicians, philanthropists and fictional characters from Irish culture. Arthur Guinness, naturally, has a prominent place on the Green, but out on the streets and squares you can find Molly Malone, Constance Markiewicz, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce of course, Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy, and two of Luke Kelly. If you don’t know who Luke Kelly is, then you have definitely heard him at some point without knowing it, I promise. He was a larger-than-life member of The Dubliners, arguably the greatest folk band of all time. Luke Kelly had a striking face with a prominent set of teeth peeking out from behind his golden beard, topped with his abundant curly ginger hair.

But it was his voice that identified him the most: his raspy, smoke-addled spoken tones gave him an air of gravitas. When he gave orations, crowds hushed, put down their drinks and listened. Search for his rendition of For What Died The Sons Of Róisin? Likewise, when he sang, he had the audience in thralls. Listen to his versions of famous songs like Dirty Old Town, The Wild Rover, and The Old Triangle, and then try The Black Velvet Band, Hand Me Down My Bible, and Raglan Road. Every performance of his was dispatched with the kind of gusto that made it obvious he was having the time of his life entertaining the crowds.

He also had that rare gift of being able to make you both laugh and cry. Try not to shed a tear as you listen to Peggy Gordon, a most heart-rending Canadian love song, follow that with the sweet anthem of The Nightingale, where the crowd sings the chorus, and then put on his saucy live delivery of Monto, about a notorious red-light district of eastern Dublin. His uproarious interpretations of bawdy or satirical songs would frequently bring the house down, and he could deliver punchlines in song too, such as the hilarious anti-war numbers The Button Pusher or Protect And Survive, or the raucous Maids When You’re Young Never Wed An Old Man, which was made doubly funny by the fact he was far younger than the other band members Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna, who would be cringing comically behind him as he looked at them gleefully. It was his delivery of Phil Coulter’s Scorn Not His Simplicity, a song about the composer’s son who had Down Syndrome, that endeared him to the nation. The Night Visiting Song is the ballad that I think many will have heard before, and was one of the last songs he sang in November 1983, two months before he passed away.

One of the main roads by the River Liffey

River Liffey

He left us far too early – and a piece of Dublin went to the grave with him. A brain tumour, compounded by his busy touring schedule, hard partying, and love of the drink was a fatal and malevolent blend that caused him to have memory blackouts and episodes of fainting. Thousands attended his funeral in the north of the city, including politicians from all sides, a tribute to his raw talent, and confirmation of his importance in the hearts of many Irish people. Ronnie Drew, the leader of the Dubliners, said at his funeral that he was the best singer of the folk idiom in the world. That is why there are two statues dedicated to him in Dublin, and I will always regret that I never had the chance to listen to him live.

And this is the important point about Ireland: it is the epitome of what it means to be human. The nation’s priorities are clear – promote art and culture as an instrument of unity, stand up for the little guy, give a voice to those who have been silenced, encourage those in less fortunate situations, and let talent flourish. Luke Kelly is the personification of this philosophy: he left school early and had an extremely hard youth, but he had a very strong will, and could count plenty more achievements than most by the time he passed. One does not need diplomas if one has raw talent combined with the drive and passion needed to succeed: one needs exposure.

School life was about to start for the children in their new habitat – we were about to see whether we had made the right decision. If my description about Ireland is correct, I am sure they will be all right.

SUPPLEMENTARY PHOTOS:

The Rocky Road To Ireland, Part Three: The Week Before The Week After

 ITINERARY:

Monday 30 June 19:50: arrival in Dublin

Monday 30 June 20:30: take our hire car to Dublin City Centre and check in to our overnight accommodation

Tuesday 1 July morning: drive to Leitrim, stay at a local holiday home for a week while we prepare our new home

The rest of the week: make the place liveable

Tuesday 8 July: move in

We're here

We landed in Dublin bang on time at just before 8pm. The flight was incredibly uneventful, thankfully, and the children had a marvellous time just enjoying the fluffy clouds and talking to the lovely Irish lady in the same row as us. The doors to the plane opened to a fresh Irish Sea breeze and the soft light of a northern summer evening. We walked across the tarmac and into the airport terminal. The word terminal is actually a very good word for this building – it goes on for miles. And miles. And miles.

Reaching the luggage carousel, the bags were dancing round already. We gathered the array of belongings we brought, stacked them on three trolleys, and went through to the public area to locate the hire car office. I had booked an SUV for 4 weeks, but the guy at reception took one look at our luggage and said it would never fit in the one he’d reserved for us. So he went to the back and brought some other keys. He upgraded us to the largest monster he could find for no extra cost. I know there are other customer service motives behind all this but it certainly left an impression.

We had to continue our pilgrimage from plane to car via terminal, as he told us it was parked at the very end of the car rental zone, but I don’t think any of us minded because we had so far managed the impossible: we seemed to have extricated ourselves from Valencia with all the belongings we could carry, and got to the car that would take us to our next abode.

It was an almost brand new Volkswagen Tayron with enough boot space to hold the Champions League Final, and fit all our bags with a little to spare. It was still a tight squeeze, but we managed it. We had even brought the three child seats with us as it was cheaper than hiring them from any car rental company.

Not the place we stayed in, but a typical Dublin scene nonetheless

But it was late, so in anticipation of our late arrival, we had booked a night in Dublin to give us a good run the day after. Our accommodation was apparently a guest house by the River Liffey with views onto the embankment. There was still an hour or two of light, but it had turned overcast and by the time we had pulled into the car park near the guest house, it had started to rain. We left most of the bags in the car and pulled out a couple of pre-packed overnight bags and our laptops. This was the moment Livia chose to have a complete meltdown: entering the rain-soaked streets in her summer clothes was always going to be risky, but that was just a little too much for her and she went into a full public hysterical diatribe that caused even passengers on passing buses to glance down to see what the issue was.

The map on my phone was telling us we were outside the guest house, but all I could see was a row of shuttered shops, except for a particularly dingy-looking sandwich shop, and a rather dodgy bus stop in front. I looked at the doors as we passed and there was nothing that resembled the entrance to a guest house. I looked at the app and checked the messages the owner sent me the day before, which said the door shared space with a tea and sandwich takeaway shop. Oh yes, we saw that…

The windowless door required a code to enter, which was in another email. This was now looking like a rather bad choice, but it was half the price of the place we stayed in last time. We lugged our stuff inside, not forgetting the appalling complaints still being emitted from Livia, and I looked in yet another email to locate our room. It was number 11 on the first floor. We got to the door of number 11 where we heard cries from a baby inside.

Using a code to open the room door that was sent in yet another email, I found an entire family of five, the mother feeding a baby, the father folding a packet of biscuits into an overnight bag, and two other young kids munching on them.

“I think we’re supposed to be here,” I said to him.

“Yes, we arrived here only an hour ago to find someone else.”

I suddenly got a huge sense of foreboding. We hadn’t come all this way to have our belongings stolen by one of the previous occupants who knew the code. The guy said he and his family were only going to be there another half hour as they were leaving. This made no sense to me, so of course I smelt a very stinky rat. The guy called the owner for us, to enquire about the current uncomfortable situation. He put me on speaker and told me he was going to send us another email and give us a room further up.

We had a little chat with the family and headed up to find our room. We wondered what we would find up there – a lonely cat lover with a bunch of felines spread out on each bed? A French Revolution reenactment group practising for a beheading in the morning? A bunch of nuns in their briefs having a pillow fight? A Swiss on an Alphorn and an Australian on a didgeridoo having a parp-off? The opening scenes of Les Misérables being performed by the employees of Hooters? Two oiled-up Turkish wrestlers grappling with each other? Or the worst of all, a couple of teenagers ignoring each other as they stare at their own phones? As it was, the room was empty, and we opened the window to let in some air before we went straight out for food. Bonny Bee thought we shouldn’t leave our laptops in the room, and I agreed.

On the way to Leitrim

Walking a few hundred metres with some uppity hungry children at 10 in the evening (it would have been 11 for us), we stumbled upon a famous burger joint. To desecrate my chain outlet principles twice in a day would probably drive me to the edge of existential doubt. But next door was a fifties-style diner, which had a more appealing menu and people who brought you your food. The adjacent place could learn something about that… We tucked in to some tremendous fare – I’m not a big fan of vertical food, but they made it look worth eating. And the chips were the best I’d eaten since I was last in Belgium.

We were all tired and ratty, so we just ate up and left. It wasn’t the cheapest fast food dinner we’d had, but at least we could sleep now. When we arrived back at Iniquity Towers, everything was still there. We used the communal bathroom to give ourselves a decent wash and went straight to sleep.

The morning revealed a moderately humdrum sky and a fair amount of rain was forecast. In all truth, there wasn’t that much in the end, but I once spoke to the makers of a weather app and they told me they always went with the worst-case scenario, so people were pleasantly surprised rather than furious because they had to cancel their barbecue.

We removed the car from its overnight stay in a nearby car park and made the choice to drive to Longford on the way. We knew a splendid little café called Ménara tucked down a side street in the city with a range of imaginative sandwiches and cakes. The kitchen is the size of a telephone box, but what comes out of it is remarkable.

We then took a short drive to Dromod, to the pub run by the auctioneer who sold our house to us. He had the keys to our house and he told us we could come past and pick them up. His pub is a regional landmark; a place where things happen. And he is a mover and a shaker – a person many of us would follow into battle. He appeared at our car window with an envelope and a chunky bulk of metal, wishing us a very happy time at our new installation. He invited us in for a cup of tea and drinks, and then we were on our way.

We had booked a week in a bungalow run by a holiday homes agent about 15 minutes north of our new place, with a garden and a proper kitchen; a kind of last week with all the modern conveniences before we moved into our rickety old caravan next to our new house. I got a few provisions from the local supermarket and we drove to the bungalow. It had a lovely driveway but the car was only a few centimetres narrower than the brick gateposts.

The house and garden we stayed at for our first week

Aside from that, the house was spacious and somehow snug at the same time. There were two bathrooms, a luxury we were about to lose for the time being, and a well-manicured lawn. The TV would also be something they’d be losing for a while, so we weren’t going to push it if they wanted to watch a few episodes of Peppa Pig or Vida the Vet.

We spent the week getting to know the area and introducing ourselves to a number of locals, such as the girls in the coffee shop, the staff of the butcher shop, and the lady at the bits and bobs shop.

A local traffic signal in Cloone

We also got to know the best place to get what: we went to McHugh’s Furniture in Cloone to look at beds, sofas and wardrobes, but they were new and we weren’t going to be spending a lot of money on something that could be temporary. Jordan’s Furniture in Ballinamore was a far cheaper option – most of the stuff in there is from either salvage or house sales.

Then there’s Carrick-On-Shannon, a lively town of just a few thousand inhabitants that punches well above its weight: with a vast choice of pubs and restaurants, this place is known as Ireland’s stag- & hen-night capital.

Longford was also a place we would be frequenting – not the prettiest or the safest city in Ireland, but a real hotbed of activity. Both places have a refreshing number of international food and drink shops, and I introduced the children to some sausages from Poland: kabanos to nibble on, kielbasa for the frying pan; both greatly appreciated.

Great pancakes at this place

We collected a few items we would need to move into the static caravan the following Tuesday, such as bed linen, kitchen equipment, cutlery, plates and bowls, an air mattress, some cleaning fluids, and a couple of extension leads. We also ordered a fridge, a washing machine, a mini induction cooker, and an electric fryer with a lid. The larger things were to be delivered the following week, which would be a great start to our residence.

In the meantime, we took a few trips to some of the local pubs and cafés. Considering this is the most sparsely populated part of the country, there is a surprising amount to do, and the place is often teeming with people. I freely admit we’re not in a metropolis, we’re not even in something equal to a suburb of a small country town, but that was the reason for moving: we needed a gentler pace of life. In Valencia, things never stopped – it was a relentless bombardment of obligations, hindrances, and requests that gave us so little time to enjoy life, and when we did have the time, we were too tired. Paradoxically, because of all the venues and events around us, we suffered from extreme choice paralysis.

A trip to the Druid's Altar

Being here in this weathered, undulating landscape, with its bulbous hills and mountains, its lush, fecund valleys and water-speckled lowlands, the sunlight playing an equal part to the clouds, it felt like the perfect place to relieve ourselves of the unrelenting stresses of the three preceding years. The people we had met – those at the cafés, bars, shops and parks, had made it much easier to come down off the relocate to this much less eventful place. At this stage, it was a novelty, but like a lot of these things, I can imagine it becoming a bane if we don’t embrace life here fully.

The Druid's Altar

They say if you show up to a place in fear and dread with no intention of participating in local life, you will hate it. If you come with an open mind ready to integrate and adapt, you will thrive. This is our intention here, as it always has been wherever we go: as Irish people are so kind-hearted, decent, sociable and witty, it just might be a little easier to succeed.

Pub and Funeral Director: ideal for wakes

One of the many magical trees

In the next part, we will describe our first impressions and experiences of moving in to our new dwelling.