The Emerald Isle

Saturday 6th June 2026

Despite having an Irish name, I have never been to Ireland before. So, as you can imagine, I was really excited to be travelling to the Emerald Isle with my students for their internship on an oyster farm in County Donegal. But before I start enthralling you with my adventures, I must say that it is not called the Emerald Isle without reason. Ever since we arrived it has been raining, not constantly, but on and off. However, when it is on, it rains cats and dogs. And then there's the wind, which makes the rain fall horizontally... It feels more like Brittany in the middle of the winter than the beginning of June. Of course, I did not come prepared for the inclement weather and I only managed to bring one hoodie with me, no proper coat , just a thin shower proof jacket and absolutely no long sleeved tops. I thoughtfully packed socks so am able to wear two pairs and I am doubling up on tee-shirts. I rather optimistically brought my swimming costume but as the sea temperature is around 12-13°, I very much doubt that that will see the light of day let along the white horses of the North Atlantic ocean.

We left warm, sunny La Canourgue at 10 O'clock Saturday morning and drove to even warmer and sunnier Toulouse to catch the flight, picking up the students on the way. The flight was no real hassle; airports are my idea of hell, so I was pleasantly suprised when I wasn't forced to remove my boots and get a free body rub-down from a grumpy Security Officer. I felt rather optimistic until my bag got rolled over to one side and the Security guy started moaning as the four pots of trout paté that I had wrapped in my towel were not in a plastic bag. I didn't want him to confiscate them as they are a gift from our school to the Internship Boss. He then decided to squish three of the pots into a bag and removed my toiletries from another bag and then decided to put one of the pots of paté into my plastic toiletries bag and removed my rather optimistically packed sun cream, which incidently did meet regulations as I had purchased a small plastic bottle that could hold the maximum 100ml allowance, and then said that it didn't finto the bag so he was going to confiscate it. Luckily, Lionel my colleague, hastily popped it into his plastic bag, stopping me from having a melt-down and making the security guy happy.

The drive from Dublin airport to our cottage on Cruit Island was long and we stopped en route for dinner in a rather nice restauant called "A Slice of Italy", who deserve a shout out for their gluten free stone baked pizza (other pizza is available) and finally got to the island about half-past ten. Unfortunately, the address was not clear and we arrived on the island in the dark. We drove around a bit and then decided that I had to phone the owner to get directions. Anybody who has seen any episodes of the brilliant 1990's TV series "Father Ted" will understand when I say that Father Jack answered the phone and he was not too happy about me calling him at 11 O'clock at night. He seemed to put the phone down near something electrical and I was treated to white noise for about three minutes (which actually felt more like thirty minutes) before he decided to give me some rather dodgy directions. "You can see three houses on the top of the hill" he repeatedly shouted down the phone. I couldn't actually see much at all by this point as it was pitch black outside. "You see the road opposite the three houses on the hill? You go down there". The road opposite the three houses on the hill went uphill, so I was a little confused. He shouted the same instructions repeatedly and Lionel drove up the hill. "You see the three (other) houses? It's the fourth one!" By this time, we had been on the road for 13 hours and I was ready to sleep in a ditch, but we approached the house, the light was on, the key was on the table and the beds had been made up for us; luckily we didn't experience a Goldilocks moment. The students went to bed, me and Lionel had a cup of tea (which I did remember to pack) and then we headed off to bed having started our Irish adventure.

Sunday 7th June 2026

Everybody slept well after the long journey and woke up refreshed. We needed to get some provisions so we all went shopping in Dungloe. I was suprised to see that the supermarkets are open all day on Sunday, which is very different to France. As we had no food at all at the cottage nobody had eaten breakfast, so the students grabbed some patisseries to munch on the way back to the cottage. We filled a trolley and returned to our rainy island.

After lunch, we ventured into Donegal and mooched around a bit, taking in the atmosphere and decided to make our way to the castle. We went the wrong way due to my map app spinning (something it usually does in the larger cities) and ended up at a ruined friary which was founded by the Franciscan Friars in 1474.

There is very little left, apart from a couple of gable walls as the building was wrecked in 1601 when the gunpowder stores exploded. It is now a national monument. The map app stopped spinning and we were able to walk partially along the river Eske to the castle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donegal_Castle The castle was founded in the late 15th Century by Red Hugh O'Donnell and was renovated by a Captain Brook and a manor house was added in the early 17th Century. It has many interesting features, particularly the grand fireplace in the large hall and a garde-robe that although sounds like somewhere you keep your dresses, was actually a very basic and rather uncomfortable toilet, consisting of a wooden plank with a hole in it which sits over a large pipe within the building for the waste.

We returned to the cottage, cooked some dinner and I watched a bit of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" on the TV. I couldn't answer the football question, nor the Spice Girls question and all the time, the wind was howling and the rain was lashing the cottage. I can't wait for tomorrow!

Monday 8th June 2026

Today we went to the Titanic museum in Belfast. It was brilliant! For the price of the ticket you get to see the exhibition plus a walk around a smalled boat called the "Nomadic"

that was used to transport the Titanic passengers to the port of Cherbourg as it was too shallow for larger vessells.

The Nomadic is in dry dock and has been completely renovated as it was in 1912.

The outside of the museum really is a wonderful piece of architecture, you can walk around the slipway where the ships were put into the water and see the Titanic Studios (where Game of Thrones was filmed) and the iconic Yellow Harland and Wolff gantries.

. The museum is interactive and there are lots of quizzes to do from several "One Arm Bandit" type, generally about commerce and trade in Dublin, to jumping around on the floor trying to discover missing rivets (the number of rivets used on the outer hull of RMS Titanic is astonishing). There is a selection of posters from that time

and lots of artefacts,

which I guess are worth millions today. The history of the construction was fascinating, including a cable car ride around the museum in a choice of languages (we chose French).
One of the most poignant things is the witness statements of the survivors and the roll call of the people who died. I found a Mr Vivian Arthur Ponsonby Payne on the victims list,

which as we share the same family name is certainly worth investigating whether we are related or not. There is also a film of the ruin of the ship The wreck of RMS Titanic on the sea bed . Of course the students did the Titanic "on top of the world" pose for a pic

. Incredibly, we had hints of blue sky in Belfast, which was better than the high winds and torrential rain we experienced as soon as we crossed the border back into the Republic of Ireland. It was a long day but an excellent one. By the way RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship and Titanic was a postal delivery vessel. Most other ships in the UK and Commonwealth are HMS which stands for His / Her Majestie's Ship. HMS' do not deliver the post.

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