While it’s many moons since the clanging of the hammer on the anvil last rang out around the village of Butlerstown, it’s a sound that Michael O’Brien, 81, tells Mary O’Brien, he still hears as clearly as if it were yesterday. The small coastal village between Courtmacsherry and Barryroe once upon a time boasted two forges, three pubs and five shops, all within easy throwing distance of each other. While today the sleepy village, with it’s pretty pastel-coloured houses and one pub, is probably best known for being located on the Seven Heads Walk, Michael remembers a time when the sound of cockerels crowing followed by the chatter of women at the village water pump marked the start of each day with the shuffling of footfall leaving the public houses bringing it to a close. A storyteller and songwriter, Michael has been fondly crowned locally as the ‘bard of Butlerstown’ for his many evocative and often humorous compositions that capture life, past and present, in West Cork.

Music is in Michael’s blood. His father, a quiet man, taught his young son how to play the fiddle. However it was his mother’s instrument, the rich, reedy sound of the accordion that captured Michael’s attention, his natural aptitude for music allowing him to become self-taught in the instrument. ‘“My mother played but she would never pick up the instrument in front of my father, as she was very shy about it,” he says. For many years Michael played regularly in sessions at local pubs and, later on, in the 1960s, he was the guitar player for a band called The Concordes, playing at socials and weddings for over 20 years.

When The Butlerstown Variety Group launched in 1978 (starting as a fundraiser for Barryroe GAA), Michael’s talent as a wordsmith was put to good use and he became scriptwriter, as well as active participant. He passed on his musical talent to all of his children with his daughters Anne Marie and Evelyn both becoming involved in the Variety Group and his son Timmie also becoming a musician.

While his lighter compositions cover everything from port-a-loos – ‘I remember in the old days you could have a piddle free, but now that we have the Celtic Tiger, it will cost you 20p if you want to have a wee.’ – to potholes; he has recorded more sombre events in history too, such as the story of the soldier who sleeps at Lislee. Private Daniel Sullivan of the US Army was a native of the parish who died fighting in World War I. Repatriated from France, his final resting place is at Lislee Cemetery in Courtmacsherry.

Michael also wrote an article for The Echo’s Holly Bough publication on the sinking of the ‘Cardiff Hall’ off the Seven Heads in 1925, an event during which 28 men drowned.

In 1974, Ireland experienced one of its most severe weather events of the 20th century with a violent gale bringing gusts of over 100mph. “When an older man commented to me that the noise of the wind was worse than that on the night of the sinking of the ‘Cardiff Hall’, and with the following year being the 50th anniversary of the ship sinking, it struck me that many young people in the area knew nothing about this event,” he shares.

Travelling from South America, the ship was carrying a cargo of 6000 tonnes of maize headed for R&H Hall grainstore in Cork City. Michael’s father told him stories of locals harvesting the maize along the coast after the ship sank and drying it before selling it on.

Michael’s reminiscences go back to before he was born. His namesake, his uncle Mike, left Ireland for America in 1924, only returning for a visit 40 years later, in 1964. His uncle’s last vision of Butlerstown, as his ship sailed past the West Cork coastline  – the early morning shimmer of sunlight on the rooftops of his home village and the big farewell fire blazing in his honour on the cliff – left a lasting impression on young Michael, whose grá for words, history, and music perhaps preordained that he would go on to preserve memories of the old way of life through storytelling and song.

When Michael was growing up there were three pubs in Butlerstown village: O’Donovan’s (known as the Eastern house), O’Regan’s (known as the middle house) and O’Donovan’s (known as the western house). If someone from the village left to start a new life in America, then an all-night ‘racket’ with singing and dancing was traditionally held to bid them farewell in one or all of the pubs. “It was usual for the person emigrating, like my uncle Mike, to leave directly from the pub in the morning to catch their ship from Cobh and a farewell bonfire was always lit for them at the old watch tower on the peninsula,” explains Michael.

Built in 1804 by the English to watch for French invaders, the old watch tower was one of a series built along the southwest coast. Interested in the history behind the towers, Michael says the open ruin on the Seven Heads “was built well back from the edge of the cliff so it wouldn’t be vulnerable to cannon fire.”

Before he left for America, uncle Mike, like so many others of that era, relied on his bicycle for transportation. He worked and lived in Cork city and every Sunday morning he’d attend mass at St. Augustine church on Washington Street – which this month saw its almost 800-year history coming to an end with its closure – and afterwards travel by bicycle down to Butlerstown for the day. 

“He’d have his dinner at the homeplace and afterwards cycle over to Dunworley to take part in the platform dancing there,” says Michael. “The accordion player would arrive in one of the boats rowed over from Dunowen in Ardfield, ready for a grand evening of entertainment.”

Uncle Mike’s employment involved driving a steam lorry so, after the dancing finished, he’d stop off again quickly in Butlerstown for his tea, before returning to Cork by bicycle, where on his arrival he’d light the fire in the steam lorry, so it would be ready for work on Monday morning, before finally retiring for the night.

“Different times indeed,” says Michael laughing. His own memories of travelling by pushbike include day trips to Dunworley beach with his parents. “My brother Pat and I were passengers on their bikes. My mother would pack a bottle of lemonade and a packet of biscuits and we’d picnic on the beach.” In the old days rural communities near the sea believed that if a boat went down, knowing how to swim only prolonged the inevitable drowning. “None of my family learned how to swim,” confirms Michael, who recalls his father rolling up the legs of his trousers and paddling in the shallow water.

After finishing primary school, Michael travelled by bicycle every day for two years to attend the technical college in Clonakilty. “By the time you’d reach the pier at Ring, the rain would be down inside your shoes,” he remembers. Every evening he’d return home to warm clothes placed in front of the fire by his mother.

He mentions how he had the offer of a scholarship at Hamilton High School in Bandon but the family couldn’t afford the 12 shillings and six pence for the bus fare.

As a young boy Michael found part-time work with local farmers, thinning beet by hand. ‘it was very hard work,” he recalls. “We’d tie hessian bags around our legs so we wouldn’t wear out the knees of our trousers and the going pay at the time was half a crown a drill.”

Farms were small back then. “Most farmers had five or six cows and the milk was taken to the co-operative by horse and cart.”

Fish was sold in the village by the Hurley brothers, known locally as the Raghnall brothers. “They’d bring fresh mackerel and pollock to the shop in the summer and stockfish, usually dried hake, in the winter. Michael remembers his mother soaking the fish in water overnight to remove the salt and cooking it with onions and white sauce the following day. ‘You’d be licking your fingers after that meal,” he says smiling.

 “We’d go fishing ourselves too,” he adds. He recalls how after salting the fish they had caught, his mother would place the lot into a big tub, before covering it up with a sheet of asbestos in the yard outside. “I can still hear her warning me not to sit on top of the sheet, but of course I did, breaking the asbestos, which fell into the fish” shares Michael. “The fish was eaten nonetheless!”

He says his mother would break an egg into milk for them every day after school and cook rice with milk until it was almost congealed. “I had to put a clothes peg on my nose to eat that meal and I’ve never been able to drink milk since,” he shares.

She would bake cakes on the bastible over the fire and in summertime, when the weather was fine, Michael and his brother would be sent out into the fields to collect dry cow dung to burn instead of turf. “Sometimes the dung would be mixed with whitewash, as it created a barrier to stop smoke stains coming through a wall,” shares Michael.

As the children got older, they were allowed to help out at local threshings, always a major event in the calendar for everyone in the community. Michael recalls the great feasting and night of singing and dancing that took place afterwards.

While he was too young to remember his paternal grandmother, who died in the early 1940s, she was well known and respected in the locality for her voluntary work during the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic. “She travelled around the parish helping to lay out corpses in houses,” shares Michael. “When she died, each of those families she had helped brought a bottle of whiskey to her wake. Any whiskey left over after the three-day funeral was sold in one of the local pubs with the funds passed on to my mother.”

Just across the road from Michael’s home, where he still lives today, was the village post office – it closed in 2001 and, in recent years was bought and renovated by Michael’s son Timmie and his partner Siobhán O’Mahony – where for many years parcels would regularly arrive from America. “My aunt Mary lived in Boston and would collect clothes from family there to send home in a parcel every year at Christmas,” says Michael. “There was always a lovely smell from those parcels, maybe of disinfectant!” he adds laughing.

Michael’s mother told him that during the war years her sister-in-law would sew teabags into the arms of the overcoat in the clothes parcel for fear they would be stolen by customs officials before reaching their intended destination.

The first phone in the village was installed at the post office in the 1950s. Up until then all communication with America would have been by telegraph. Michael recalls seeing his mother and her friend crying on the street outside the post office, overcome with emotion, the very first time a local woman spoke to her daughters in America over the telephone.

In 1961, Michael secured a trainee technician position with the Posts and Telegraphs (P&T) service and the still regular arrival of the clothes parcel from America was suddenly very much appreciated when he acquired a heavy fur-lined pilot’s leather jacket, keeping him from freezing during an exceptionally cold winter in the P&T van. “The van had holes in the floor by the pedals and no heater,” he explains.

Ten years later, June 20, 1971, marked one of the most important dates in Michael’s life story, as it was the day he met his future wife, Marian. She had come over to the parish with her family to celebrate the centenary of the church in Barryroe but was eager to attend a dance in Ballinascarthy afterwards. Fortunately Michael loved to dance too and he and his friends happened to be heading the way. “She got a lift with us and I asked her for a dance towards the end of the night,” shares Michael. “That’s how it all started, we just clicked!” Marian was 17 and Michael was 27. “She celebrated her 21st birthday in Clonakilty as Mrs O’Brien,” he says with a smile.

Michael retired from An Post in 1999, enjoying the extra time this allowed to dedicate to his passions of music and history, even working part-time for a while as a tour guide at the Michael Collins Centre just outside Clonakilty.

While today the passage of age means that his fingers are stiffer and the stage has been replaced with his sitting room, the music hasn’t stopped for Michael… This bard will always be singing.

One of the dangers of living in beautiful West Cork is that it can sometimes be difficult to leave but, as Mary O’Brien finds out when she heads east, Ireland’s largest county has much to offer beyond its western shores. 

We first stumbled across Inch Hideaway, an award-winning eco-glamping retreat, after travelling to the Ballymaloe Festival of Food. Looking for somewhere a little different to stay, we booked a tiny shepherd’s hut through Airbnb, unaware that it was located in an eco village. The campsite is tucked away near Whitegate, just a 20-minute stroll from the beautiful Inch Beach. We arrived late that evening, so it wasn’t until the following morning that the beauty of the place revealed itself.

On exploring, we discovered a stream winding through the property, chickens scratching around the gardens, Doris the pig happily going about her day, two horses, Bluebell and Lulu, grazing nearby, Teddy,  the very friendly resident dog, and a selection of beautiful and out-of-the-ordinary accommodations.

That first brief visit was enough to convince us to return, and a few weeks later we were back during the recent heatwave, this time with three children and a dog in tow.

Inch Hideaway began almost 15 years ago when Australian-Italian couple Colleen and Fabrizio, bought what was then a flat, boggy field. While restoring the old cottage on the property, they lived for three years in a yurt themselves. That experience has shaped the campsite, which today offers an eclectic collection of comfortable accommodation, each with its own personality.

This includes the beautifully-handcrafted Fairy Fort Yurt, tucked into its own private garden, the authentic Mongolian Yurt with its colourful décor, and the spacious Sunset Yurt, positioned to catch the evening light. Our children enjoyed the quirkiness of the Wanderly Wagon, fashioned from an upcycled double-decker bus, while we appreciated the comfort of one of the newer cabins, complete with central heating and en-suite facilities.

It turned out to be the perfect arrangement with everyone having their own space to relax in, while meeting in the communal areas.

One of the greatest achievements of this campsite is the fact that each accommodation enjoys its own privacy. Although there are yurts, cabins, wagons and shared spaces throughout the property, clever landscaping and thoughtful positioning means that every accommodation feels wonderfully secluded.

Much of the site has been built using reclaimed materials rescued from old buildings and construction sites. More than 400 native Irish trees have been planted, alongside herbs, vegetables and flowering plants laid out using permaculture principles to encourage wildlife. Sustainable onsite practices such as solar power, filtered well water, eco-friendly cleaning products, recycling and composting have earned Inch Hideaway recognition from the Cork Environmental Forum as Cork’s Most Sustainable Small Business.

There is no wi-fi so phones were left aside for much of the trip while children bounced between the outdoor trampoline and table tennis in the beautifully-restored barn or explored the grounds.

The communal kitchen in the pretty hobbit-like building is very well laid-out with everything necessary for cooking. We made food in the outdoor covered barbecue area and, while we were one steak short after Teddy, the dog, helped himself, there was more than enough to go around. After dinner, we drifted towards the campfire, where a returning family from Belfast kindly shared their marshmallows with us.

Despite the relaxed atmosphere, everything at Inch Hideaway is well organised. The owners host weddings, retreats and family gatherings, and have even invested in silent disco headsets so celebrations can continue without disturbing other guests. Fabrizio also offers massage and craniosacral therapy on site and provides catering, including pizzas and barbecues, for larger groups.

Inch Hideaway also makes an excellent base for exploring East Cork. Inch Beach is an easy walk away, while Ballycotton and Midleton are all within easy reach.The cabins are fully insulated and centrally heated, so Inch Hideaway stays open throughout the winter.

Colleen and Fabrizio describe themselves as caretakers of the land and there is a genuine sense here of working with and not against nature.

For anyone looking for a break that offers a slower pace without sacrificing comfort, this very special place is well worth the trip east.

For more information or to make a booking go to www.yurtecocamping.ie.

There are meals you enjoy and then there are dining experiences that transport you entirely. Mary O’Brien’s recent visit to Terre, the two Michelin-starred restaurant nestled within the historic Manor House at Castlemartyr Resort, was firmly in the latter category.

For a few wonderful hours on a recent rainy Thursday evening, we escaped everyday life and immersed ourselves in a culinary journey that will stay with us for a long time.

Our invitation to dine was to mark the launch of ‘Friends of Terre’, Executive Chef Lewis Barker’s exciting new guest chef collaboration series. Fresh from retaining Terre’s two Michelin stars within his first six months at the restaurant, Barker welcomed his longtime friend Michael Wilson of Singapore’s Michelin-starred Marguerite for a unique collaborative menu showcasing both chefs’ distinctive styles.

From the moment we arrived, every detail was carefully choreographed. Our evening began in the elegant reception room with two exquisite opening bites. Belfego Akami tuna was paired with delicate hints of melon and fennel pollen, while beautifully dry-aged Shanagarry beef delivered a memorable finish of Japanese spice. It was an exciting introduction that hinted at the creativity to come.

Before dinner, Kevin O’Shea, who manages the Terre Kitchen Garden, shared some of the history of Castlemartyr Resort, as we made our way through a beautifully designed passageway, where the backlit shelves lined with preserved foraged ingredients sat opposite Executive Chef Lewis Barker’s collection of Michelin Guides, subtly reinforcing Terre’s philosophy of respecting both tradition and innovation.

One of the evening’s highlights was taking our seats at the Chef’s Table overlooking the striking open kitchen. Softly lit and quietly theatrical, the open kitchen allowed us to watch the calm precision of the team at work. Beside us, a glass cabinet displayed carefully ageing fish and game, offering a glimpse into the craftsmanship behind the menu. We were served an impossibly beautiful Skeaghanore duck creation before being introduced to the exceptional ingredients featured throughout the nine-course tasting menu.

Much of the produce comes from the surrounding area, reflecting Terre’s deep connection to the Irish landscape. Beef sourced from just across the road, specially reared milk-fed lamb from Ladysbridge, Ballycotton blue lobster, vegetables from the restaurant’s own kitchen garden and Skeaghanore duck from Ballydehob all showcased the very best of local provenance. International influences were equally evident through ingredients such as Lough Neagh smoked eel, Australian truffle and citrus-cured Hamachi, demonstrating Chef Lewis Barker’s global culinary experience while never overshadowing the exceptional Irish produce.

A delicate pea tartlet with goat’s cheese perfectly captured the essence of summer in a single bite.

The experience then moved into Terre’s beautifully appointed dining room, where warm wood tones and rich chocolate hues created an intimate yet understated setting. Here, dishes were elegantly finished tableside without unnecessary theatrics, allowing the quality of the ingredients and the technical brilliance of the cooking to take centre stage.

Service throughout the evening was faultless. Every member of the team was warm, knowledgeable and effortlessly professional. Rather than feeling overly formal, the experience felt genuinely personal, as though every detail had been created especially for us.

The wine pairing elevated each course beautifully. The citrus-cured Hamachi was matched with a crisp, juicy Fritz Haag Riesling that perfectly complemented the freshness of the dish.

Lough Neagh smoked eel topped with Kaluga caviar was another first for me on both counts, and an unforgettable combination of richness and refinement. This was followed by a naturally sweet and tender Ballycotton blue lobster dish.

Further pairings included two outstanding white wines: the 2023 Ocampo Listán Blanco from Tenerife and the beautifully mineral 2022 Hatzidakis Aidani from Santorini.

An elegant 2020 Baron de Brane Margaux introduced the rich flavour of beautifully cooked lamb served with local wild asparagus.

Dessert was every bit as memorable as the savoury courses. Accompanied by a fragrant White Tea Chai from Fujian, China, a delicate garden strawberry tart celebrated the season, before the evening concluded with what was perhaps my favourite dish of all – a theatrical chocolate gâteau infused with truffle that delivered indulgence without being too rich. This was served alongside a luscious 2018 Dobogó 6 Puttonyos Tokaji Aszú whose notes of dried apricot, tobacco leaf and dates provided the perfect conclusion. My glass was quietly and discreetly refilled, one of many thoughtful touches that defined the evening.

Finally, we returned to the salon, sinking gratefully into comfortable armchairs to enjoy beautifully crafted petits fours with tea and coffee while reflecting on the remarkable journey we had just experienced.

Chef Barker and Wilson’s shared commitment to precision, ingredients and storytelling was evident throughout the evening, blending Irish provenance with global influences to create something very special at this wonderful restaurant. 

To book go to www.terre.tablepath.com/reservations or email info@terre.ie for more information.

This September people in West Cork will have the opportunity to step back into the 1930s and let loose on the dancefloor with Edwina Guckian and The Big Gralton Band, who will bring their performance ‘The Devil’s in the Dance Hall’ – a powerful, joyous live show celebrating jazz and Irish music from the era – to Bere Island during the island’s annual arts festival. Mary O’Brien hears more about the dances of yore from Edwina Guckian and some of the older generation in West Cork.

“It’s a night for all ages to come and dance and laugh…and nobody gives a hoot what you’re doing because they’re all too busy dancing themselves,” shares dancer and artistic director Edwina Guckian, whose aim is to revive social dancing in Ireland.

“A lot of the younger generation, particularly the under-20s, aren’t dancing. They’ll go to the nightclubs or pubs where the music is blaring but everybody just stands around,” says Edwina.

Her immersive three-hour theatre and dance experience is designed to change that. “It’s music that just makes you want to move,” she says passionately.

 Centred around a fictional 1930s big band, the performance is inspired by the true story of Jimmy Gralton and the suppression of Ireland’s rural dance halls in the early 20th century.

The 1930s brought jazz and swing to Ireland but following the Carrigan Report (1934), which blamed “moral degeneracy” on motorcars, dance halls, and the “creeping in of jazz music”, the Public Dancehall Act of 1935 made unlicensed dancing illegal and was aimed primarily at controlling house dances and crossroads gatherings.

Jimmy Gralton was a socialist who was deported from Ireland for running a community hall on his land that promoted free thinking, music, and dance. Today, Edwina is part of a local committee that has bought the site of Jimmy Gralton’s original hall and is fundraising to rebuild it.

“He was a fighter for the working class people and really stood up to church and state,” she shares.

The dance project grew out of Edwina’s research into women in 1930s-40s Ireland during which she gathered stories from the older generation, including her own grandparents who shared how they cycled to dancehalls. “They’d all meet up at a local crossroads beforehand and there would never be enough bicycles, so people would be carrying, you know, like two or even three people on a bicycle…I have a lovely image of my grandmother on the crossbar holding on to grandad, you know, cycling to a dance,” says Edwina.

Another anecdote recounts how some men would put a dab of petrol on their collar. “As aftershave,” says Edwina. “So when they were dancing with a woman, she’d think that they had a car.”

In West Cork, Tim Joe Whooley started Lisheen Dance Platform near Skibbereen in the early ‘60s, along with John and Timmy Whooley and Jerry Minihane. Up to 350 people, many arriving by bicycle or on foot, would attend the dance sessions on the concrete platform at the side of the road next to Minihan’s pub in Lisheen. Entry was a shilling. Tim Joe recalls with humour a headline in his local paper at the time that read something like ‘Judge cuts short holiday to issue licence to Tim Joe Whooley for Lisheen dance platform’. Other popular dance spots included Crowley’s Hall in Union Hall, The Lilac in Enniskeane and the Town Hall in Skibbereen, where Tim Joe first met his future wife Eileen.

Pascal Hurley, 80, who grew up in Castletownbere, started attending dances in parish halls as a teenager in the 1950s. She met her husband, Danny Hurley, at a dance hall in Glengarriff. She recalls the etiquette in those days was to ask early on in the night if you wanted to dance with someone. She also remembers the excitement of getting dressed up for the dance even though most people just had the one “good dress”, which they would have made or bought locally.

Ninety-seven-year old Eileen Collins lives in Drimoleague and has always loved to dance. She recalls going to the ‘four penny hop’ and ‘Cinderella dance’ in Hannah Gurrane’s hall in Drimoleague every month and attending crossroads dances (known as ‘The Pattern’) west in Inchingerig every Sunday evening in summer. There were also ‘all night’ dances with big show bands that ran until 2am every three months. While working in London in her 20s, she visited the famous Galtymore dance hall.

Her memories include set dancing, waltzes, foxtrots, quicksteps, and dancing the ‘paraglide’ (to the tune of ‘Underneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree’).

“They were good times,” she says nostalgically. “I was often the first in and the last out of the dancehall.”

Eileen bought her first bicycle on hire purchase and cycled to dances in Drinagh.

She recalls how at dances the men would stand on one side of the hall and the women on the other until the music started. “Then the men would fly across the room!” she adds with a smile.

There was the ‘Kiss Me Waltz’ where you’d have to kiss whoever you stopped in front of,” she recalls. “Some people used to run off to the bathroom,” she says laughing.

At Christmastime there were ‘turkey balls’ – dances held in people’s homes where men played cards for turkeys while others danced in the kitchen.

In Summer there were threshing balls with dancing and singing in the house that night and “plenty of porter for the men”. “We’d come home across the fields at two or three in the morning and you’d hear the corncrakes singing.”

Edwina and The Big Gralton Band want to reignite that joy and sense of freedom on the Irish dancefloor. “We’ll also be setting the scene,” she shares “so you’ll come away knowing a lot more about that era.”

Dancers of all ages are encouraged to dress in the style of the 1930s and get ready to be swept up in the frenzy of jazz. There will also be sean nós, shim-shamming, lindy hopping, set-dancing, surprises and scandal. No experience necessary, as Edwina will teach you all the dance moves.

The Bere Island Arts Festival runs from September 17-20. For more information and to book tickets go to www.bereislandartsfestival.ie.

“If it scares you, you should probably do it,” Éidín Griffin tells Mary O’Brien, laughing. It’s an outlook that has served Éidín well throughout her 53 years, during which time she has taken more than a few leaps into the unknown across two continents, with humour always as her compass. From Ireland to South Africa and back again, Éidín’s adventures have been anything but ordinary. She now lives in Kinsale where, as well as discovering her sea legs and a peculiar penchant for pirates, she has become a fixture in the local arts and creative community.

Éidín will take on the rather swashbuckling form of Captain Lavinia Silverwood in her latest escapade. Together with her salty crew of melodious female pirates, aka the Shanty Aunties, (Pearl Periwinkle, Burgundy Swift and assorted unexpected guests), Éidín (Captain Lavinia Silverwood) will launch her ‘Sea Shanties and Salty Tales’ performance at this year’s Kinsale Arts Festival at Black’s Brewery on Saturday, July 11. If you miss meeting her pirate persona (described by Éidín as posh, slightly narcissistic and not quite as clever as she thinks) on land, this participatory show, promising plenty of shenanigans, will repeat throughout the summer aboard the ‘Spirit of Kinsale’ in collaboration with Kinsale Harbour Cruises.

Éidín first landed in Kinsale in 2019 after spending 25 years in South Africa. What began as a gap year for her younger self – then a 19-year-old student with a work permit and the promise of a job at a small alternative hotel – turned into a much longer adventure, during which time she ran her own horse trail business, studied and taught permaculture and even dipped her toe, or rather jumped feet-first into stand-up comedy in her mid-twenties “I was back and forth between Ireland and South Africa for a while, so I did a few comedy stints in Dublin, at the Ha’penny Bridge Inn and International Bar, before performing at 500-seater venues in Johannesburg,” she shares. “That was some jump from a crowd of 30 in Dublin.”

After being fortunate enough to train under permaculture founder Bill Mollison at the farm where she lived in South Africa – “He told us to just go out and ‘do’ permaculture,” she says – the determined young woman succeeded in building her own home with the help of her community, a mix of internationals and locals who traded skills with each other, up in the mountains near Lesotho at a place called Rustler’s Valley. “Big sky and big wildlife country…lots of sandstone ridges, water dams and grasslands, kind of like Montana,” describes Éidín. The result was a charming little thatched house made from sod and cow dung and whatever materials she could find. With the help of a small credit union loan the DIY-er equipped her home with a gravity-fed water system, two small solar panels, and a solar shower made from corrugated iron painted black. “It was pretty basic, not necessarily comfortable or level or any of those things…I had no money, no skills, and no idea whatsoever,” she shares. After the house burned down in 2008, she moved to KwaZulu-Natal where she helped install outdoor classrooms, food gardens, libraries and taught permaculture skills at schools and communities.

Life got in the way of her comedic career when Éidín became pregnant. “Casinos don’t really mix with life in the countryside and a young child,” she explains.

Jump forward to 2019 and, after deciding to embrace her greys, the Wicklow native moved home for a fresh start. As her permaculture qualifications weren’t recognised in Ireland, Éidín researched her options and enrolled in the Sustainable Horticulture course at Kinsale College just before the Covid pandemic. So started a whole other chapter in her life.

Never one to shy from a challenge, Éidín lived on a boat for a while in the marina in Kinsale. While she admits being a ‘liveaboard’ wasn’t easy or comfortable in all weathers, she says she enjoyed living on the edge. “The seals popping up, herons hunting, and jellyfish floating past…your life is tide based and it changes your perspective around time.”

Around this time she decided to study art at Kinsale College, gaining a newfound confidence after selling one of her larger sculptures. “It’s really interesting to start again at something later in life,” she says. She also put pen to paper, basing her first play ‘Fierce Awkward’ on the vaccine divide and resulting friendship fractures during the pandemic. Her most recent project ‘Captain Wagtail’, an all-female, bawdy comedy play following infamous Cork-born pirate Anne Bonny, was well-received at the West Cork Fit-Up Festival and most recently at the Cork Fringe Festival.

The call of the sea is strong by the coast and it wasn’t long before Éidín tried her hand at sailing, something her late father had excelled at before his untimely death. “He took sailing up later in life too…after my mother’s death,” shares Éidín, who was just nine-years-old when she lost her mother to cancer and eleven when her father died suddenly from a heart attack on a sailing trip to the Jersey Islands. That shy little girl way back when was raised by her five older siblings. “I think I talked myself into being brave,” she admits.

“Initially it was the connection to her father that attracted Éidín to sailing, but later, somewhere off the Old Head, with the wind in her hair and the boat surrounded by wildlife, the realisation hit that that this was something she was doing for herself.

The novice sailor got the chance to test her mettle, during what she describes as “an epic, scary journey”, battling a south-westerly gale off the Waterford coast. “I was terrified and exhausted and remember bargaining with God,” she says. After making it to Dunmore East, a rested Éidín went back out the following morning with skipper Lisa Murphy and crew Mel Richter. “I came to the realisation that there’s no out, only in, when it comes to sailing and you have to trust your skipper and your crew,” she says. She has since sailed to Scotland and Norway. “I wouldn’t say I’m a good sailor, but I’m definitely enthusiastic,” she says with a laugh.

In the short time she’s been in Kinsale, Éidín has set up a seed bank at Kinsale library, taught Skills for Life workshops on seed saving and gardening and been granted the Arts Council Agility Award three times to develop her practice.

Most recently, after completing an MA in Arts and Engagement, the artist, gardener and writer is looking forward to having more time to commit to her playwriting and artistic endeavours. “There’s definitely a one-woman show in me and I have a story that’s been brewing for the past 20 years around my family surname,” she shares.

A self-described extroverted introvert, when she’s not playacting on the social circuits or working in the community, Éidín enjoys her more solitary roles of gardener and writer.

While it’s hard to imagine her sitting still, in the spirit of the best ideas coming from the most unexpected of places, she says she spends “a lot of time rummaging around in the hedgerows and staring off into space!”

Follow Éidín’s adventures at www.rebelseed.ie.

There’s a heavy drizzle falling on the country road. Framed by the lush green of the softly humming hedgerows, a man sits on his bicycle in the mist, waiting to greet the farmer coming his way. “Soft,” remarks the cyclist with a smile, acknowledging the weather. “Soft indeed,” replies the farmer with a nod. Dreamer Fred La Haye moved from the Netherlands to Ireland almost 50 years ago drawn by the possibility of a self-sufficient lifestyle. These are the sort of interactions that kept him here. “It’s beautiful you know,” he tells Mary O’Brien. “To be able to hold a conversation around just one word. I love that about the people in this country.”

Words, but perhaps more importantly listening, are all-important to Fred, (78), who is well known around West Cork for being a passionate proponent of dialogue, as well as for his pioneering work introducing sustainable practices into local communities.

A poet and philosopher, Fred’s writing is inspired by the thoughts and writings of the philosopher and scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit priest, who sought to bridge the gap between faith and science by showing they are interconnected. He also looks to the teachings of American physicist and philosopher, David Bohm, who believed that beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper, implicit order of undivided wholeness; and that transformation in society could be brought about by dialogue.

“Listening to the world is essential and the quality of listening so important,” says Fred passionately.

In his poem ‘Noosphere’ Fred describes ‘The ringing out of a thousand million human vibrations! / A whole layer of consciousness exerting simultaneous pressure on the future! / And the collected and hoarded produce of a million years of thought! / Have we ever tried to form an idea of what such magnitudes represent? / Have we?’

After discovering a shared interest in the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, musician Justin Grounds composed the oratorio ‘The Embracing Universe’ to elevate Fred’s poetry, which shares the thoughts and writings of the visionary French philosopher.

“Teilhard de Chardin was banned from lecturing and publishing his own work, as he was told by his superiors that the Jesuit society was not founded to support religious pioneers,” explains Fred. “I wrote this work to rescue him from historical oblivion.”

Actions speak loudly too for Fred, who got his first taste of community activism as a young man in the Netherlands when he hitchhiked to Amsterdam to join the thousands of demonstrators opposed to the Vietnam War and the expansion of nuclear energy. “We were so furious, so angry that we couldn’t even celebrate Christmas,” he recalls.

Although he struggled at school and dropped out early, Fred’s hunger for change and ambition to fight injustice led him back to education and eventually to study law at university specialising in criminology, in particular institutional and structural crime.

Married with a young child and eager to explore the possibility of living a self-reliant life in a more natural environment, Fred moved with his family to West Cork in 1978. The original plan was to continue his law studies in Ireland, however life and its struggles got in the way of that ambition, with the young family finding themselves focused on mere survival. “It felt like we had stepped back about 25 years in time going from a modern city in the Netherlands to rural West Cork,” he shares.

Fred found work in a piggery six days a week that brought in eight pound a day and, with the help of other odd jobs, eventually the couple saved up enough to buy a ruin of a cottage near Ballygurteen.

“Life was so basic but our surroundings – the wildness of the land, the ocean – were so fantastic, that it made the challenges and insecurity bearable,” says Fred. “The questions we asked ourselves at that time were very simple: ‘Will we keep the roof on tonight or will it blow off!’.” The family didn’t have a car for the first year and Fred recalls cycling to the village of Ballineen from Rossmore to do the shopping. “All I came home with was a white loaf, a floppy cabbage and a few carrots,” he laughs.

While life wasn’t easy, there was a strong sense of community with many lifelong friendships forged. “We were a part of the community and participated in many ‘meitheals’ – bringing in the hay or cutting the turf with our neighbours, helping to do up each other’s houses, that kind of thing,” says Fred.

A member of the West Cork Organic Growers cooperative, which he helped to get off the ground in the mid-eighties, Fred grew a selection of vegetables on their acre of land, as well as rearing fowl, which were sold through the distribution centre at Bridgemount House in Dunmanway. 

A mix of different nationalities mainly farming in the Ballineen area, the West Cork growers broke new and exciting ground in 1987 when they were granted use of the brand new IOFGA (now known as the Irish Organic Association) soil symbol. “It stood for produce grown without the use of pesticides and fertilisers in high quality soil,” says Fred. “We belonged to the first wave of organic farming in Ireland and our aim was not only to grow high quality food but to show our farming neighbours the advantages of organic methods and to influence the way Irish food is produced.”

After he and his wife separated, Fred moved to Clonakilty for a period, where he lived in a tiny flat, finding work with the local Council and joining the famous street theatre group, Craic na Coillte.

In the early 90s, after his divorce was finalised, he settled in Bantry with his two children. It was while living here that he met his longterm partner of 35 years, gardener Julia Kemp. In 1992, they were both involved in the start-up of the healthfood store Essential Foods – better known today as Organico – with Alan Dare, a project which began on a shoestring budget. Around this time Fred was also instrumental in the setting up of the country market in Bantry.

A few years later, in 1996, Fred chaired a group that set up a system of trade in the Bantry area that worked without money, through which people exchanged goods and services.

The LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) in Bantry had its own currency known as BATS (Bantry Area Trading System). It encouraged people to help each other out, operating successfully for a number of years with transactions recorded by means of cheques written in LETS units.

“We traded in whatever anybody had to offer, knitting, babysitting, walking the dog, you name it” says Fred, who was best known for organising ‘meitheals’ and bringing a chef along.

Then the opportunity arose for Fred – who at this stage was an enthusiastic advocate of organic growing and sustainable agriculture – and Julia to be part of a collective purchase of 30 acres of land edged by the River Lee in Ballingeary. They lived at this site, which they named ‘Slí an Uisce’ (Way of the Water), for over 20 years, during which time Fred – living by the principles of permaculture – earned the moniker ‘the man who lives in the polytunnel’, after creating a home and a garden within the confines of a tunnel measuring 9m x 16m. “I wanted to live among my plants,” he says of this extraordinary lifestyle. “It was a continuous learning experience and experiment and inspired so many people.”

In the summer the tunnel was opened up to allow fresh air to circulate and in the winter it was heated by a large stove. Nothing was wasted, with ‘grey’ water and tea leaves emptied directly around the base of the plants to feed them. Fred shared his home with frogs (who helped keep the slug population down), lizards and a friendly musical robin. At night it transformed into a space lit by candles and the full moon. With the smell of flowers, ripening peaches and grapes filling the air during the summer and fresh beans an arms-length from the cooker, it was as close to Utopia as he could get.

Eager to share their experiences and learnings and to bring the community together around food growing, Fred and Julia launched the ‘Bia Ghleann na Laoi’ group, hosting a number of innovative talks and workshops on sustainable practices at Creedon’s Hotel in Inchigeelagh and raising important points around peak oil and food security to different community groups in the Mhúscraí area

A Harvest Festival initiated by ‘Bia Ghleann na Laoi’ provided the launching pad for a  farmers’ market in Inchigeelagh and a community orchard in Ballingeary. Designed by Julia and kindly sponsored by local plant nursery Future Forests – ensuring that local children would be able to pick fruit for years to come – the orchard was planted in collaboration with the village Tidy Towns.

“We wanted to bring the people who produce food and the people who consume it together and open up new ways of doing things in the community, particularly around food resilience,” shares Fred.

In 2016, on World Water Day, the group organised an initiative entitled ‘Salmon Come Back’, focusing on the health of the River Lee and its impact on local communities. 

With the current oil crisis and the world’s food systems dangerously dependent on fossil fuels, Fred’s hope is that the work done by ‘Bia Ghleann na Laoi’ will continue to make a difference at local level.

Fred eventually retired to Bantry back to the same house he lived in before. It’s on a quiet street overlooking the town with a garden that mostly looks after itself. The house is small but comfortable, easily heated by a large stone stove and filled with books, plants and interesting items collected over the years.

He gets around locally by walking or cycling and, if he needs to travel further afield – for instance to visit his children and grandchildren in Glengarriff who he values spending time with – he plans his route using the bus timetable. “We used to be so isolated in West Cork but we have such a good public transport network nowadays that it’s very easy to get around without a car,” he says.

While the Dialogue sessions in Clonakilty ran their course, he still hosts a regular session in Bantry, at the Bridge Street Community Cafe every fortnight on Wednesday mornings.

After a lifetime of doing, today the soft-spoken Dutchman is happy to mostly just be. From his kitchen he has a view of the hawthorn and the wildlife that visit his untamed patch. Fred spends a lot of time here at his table…writing, thinking, listening.

The how and why will always be more important than the finished product to process-driven artist Kathy Kirwan. In fact the end may never be reached, as demonstrated by her most recent and ongoing passion for flax and its many threads writes Mary O’Brien.

Kathy Kirwan’s interest in flax – a plant whose cultivation and use dates back over two thousand years in Ireland – was first sparked close to her home in Clonakilty, a town whose history is inextricably interweaved with this versatile plant in the production of linen. Walks past an old retting pond – where flax would have been soaked to rot away the unusable plant parts – inspired Kathy to explore the labour-intensive process behind flax to fibre and collect stories about the industry from older people in the area.

Born in Birr, Co Offaly, or as she puts it “in the bog in the middle of Ireland”, Kathy has always felt deeply connected to nature. After moving to West Cork to teach geography and PE, she ended up sailing around the world for a couple of years before returning to put down roots with her future husband, a Clonakilty man, and pursue a career as an eco-social artist and educator in sustainability.

As part of the Flax Lín (flax to linen) community, she has been connecting past with present through a ‘Flax – Threads of Time’ project, organising immersive exhibitions and talks and quietly planting the seeds for the revival of flax growing in West Cork. Looking to the future, she says she would love to see the old Linen Hall in Clonakilty turned into a creative space to preserve its rich flax and linen heritage while fostering a vibrant hub that supports local artists, performance, and the evolving cultural future of the community.

This year, 2026, is particularly significant, as it marks 200 years since the collapse of what was once a thriving linen industry in Clonakilty. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the linen industry underwent explosive growth in the area, employing tens of thousands of people until its collapse – almost overnight – in 1826. Local historian Con O’Neill has written a fascinating paper on the economic transformation of Clonakilty through linen in the 18th century. He writes that “the collapse of 1826 was not merely a precursor to the Great Famine; it was the event that dismantled the region’s primary economic defence, leaving a generation of dispossessed weavers and struggling smallholders entirely dependent on the potato…. The long shadow of 1826 stretched across the century that followed, leaving the town economically diminished.”

With the 1936 Flax Bill, the growing of flax experienced a short-lived revival in West Cork, as it offered a good return on investment for local farmers, later encouraged by the guaranteed high price offered for flax following the outbreak of WWII, when linen was needed for RAF aircraft, parachutes and uniforms. “Flax and therefore linen has anti-microbial properties so it was used to make bandages,” adds Kathy. “It was dyed using nettles to create camouflage fabric.”

She shares how flax inspector Patrick Kerr – the father of retired Clonakilty estate agent John Kerr – played a key role in the revival of the flax industry in West Cork following the introduction of the Flax Bill. “Drawing on his extensive experience – particularly from his time in the North of Ireland and Donegal – and comprehensive understanding of the sector, Kerr travelled across West Cork, encouraging farmers to take advantage of the strong opportunity to earn income, emphasising that flax prices were secured at a guaranteed minimum level.”

Five years after the War, in 1950, the suspension of the Flax Act (1936) signalled the beginning of the end for the flax industry in West Cork. The rise of synthetic material, increase in cotton production and changing consumer habits, all contributed to the decline of linen in the 1950s.

“I felt an urgency to collect some of those memories before they were lost,” explains Kathy. ‘Some of the older people I spoke to have since passed away.”

Growing flax takes about 100 days. Once the pretty blue or white flowers have dropped and the seed heads appear, the plants are then pulled, gathered into bundles and dried for two weeks before being retted for up to 15 days, which releases the fibre strands, from which linen is produced. In Ireland, retting was traditionally done in streams or ponds and the resulting foul odour of the decomposing plant was notorious. It was then spread out in fields to dry before being bound and stored, ready for transportation to the mill for scutching, which separated the flax into long finer fibres called line, short coarser fibres called tow, and waste woody matter called shives.

“Nothing goes to waste with the flax plant,” says Kathy. “The shives, used for manufacturing composites, are now being used to make car seats for the McClaren Formula One racing team.”

In an article in the Ardfield/Rathbarry Journal, Michael Collins writes how ‘a good acre of flax would produce between fifty to seventy stone of flax plus a certain amount of tow. This would be sold at the Flax Market in Clonakilty, which was held every four to six weeks, when buyers from Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland would be in attendance.’

The late Johnny Crowley, a well-known owner of a service station in Clonakilty, worked in a retting pond as a young man.

He recalled to Kathy how the workers “would scrub themselves with carbolic soap after a day at the retting pond before going dancing at The Lilac Ballroom in Enniskeane.”

“He laughed as he reminisced to me at the petrol pumps, sharing how as the temperature rose in the ballroom, so too did the smell!”

The late Michael Santry from Lisavaird told Kathy how they would “keep the flax in the ‘seomra maith’ (good room) to mind it” before bringing it to the market in Clonakilty on a Friday.

He also remembered his mother using the flax shives for cooking outside in a bothy (small hut). “As flax was highly flammable, the cooking was done outside the home for safety,” explains Kathy.

In‘Ghosts, Gargoyles and Garages’, a book of childhood memories, Michael Pattwell, a retired Irish District Court judge from Clonakilty, recalled the “long queue of flax laden horses and carts” running the entire length of the street where he grew up.

As a young boy, Michael created the enterprising role of minding the farmers’ places in the queue when they “would drift into Santry’s pub for a pint or two or three”.

“I was employed to hold the reins and move the horse along and when the owners turn was about to be reached, to dash into the pub and get him out to take control again.

“With that, shilling in pocket, I ran back up the queue and it  wasn’t long before I was employed again. This continued for the entire day – especially when the market was held on days when there was no school – or for the evening if it was a school day. The longer the queue the better, because the longer the farmer was in the pub, then the more he drank and this often blurred the difference between a shilling, a two-shilling piece or even a half-crown.”

Michael O’Sullivan from Rosscarbery, 91, is a treasure trove of memories. He learned about the complex process of flax production from his father, James O’Sullivan, a flax inspector. He shared how his father tested the quality of seed collected from local farmers on blotting paper at their home.

Michael also recalled how fine rushes were placed on the flax in the retting pond before being weighted down with heavy stones to keep the flax from rising. “I remember we had to walk on the flax morning and night during this period to ensure that it was kept below water level.”

His remembers accompanying his father to the Linen Hall in Clonakilty where Wilsons of Belfast would come to purchase flax for linen production. “Very often Wilson’s of Belfast would ask my father to assist them with the vetting process when determining the quality of the flax. This was an unenviable task for my father to have to vet his neighbour’s flax but people trusted his judgement, as he was known to be such an honest man.”

With the once busy mills now lying in ruin around West Cork, memories are all that remain of West Cork’s linen legacy. However, flax enthusiasts like Kathy are driving a resurgence of the hardy and versatile plant in their communities around the world. Kathy is a member of Fibreshed Ireland, a global movement that focuses on regenerative fashion using locally grown fibres. “As demand grows for sustainable fibres, flax may offer a potential diversification route for smaller farms,” she says. “It’s also being looked at as a tool to restore soil health and decarbonise industries.

“You could say I’m obsessed with it,” she admits laughing. “It really is a fascinating plant, even more so because of its history in West Cork”

While she currently has her head down joining pieces of cordage together for the ‘Flax 405: From Mallon to Mizen’ shared island project, which will launch online on May 1, future flax projects are never far from mind.

“405km is the winding distance between Mallon Linen in Co. Tyrone and Mizen Head in Co. Cork so the objective of the project,” she explains “is to engage communities across the island in creating 405 equivalent pieces of flax rope, thread and linen that symbolically weave together our shared past, present, and future.”

Over the coming months, Kathy is organising a number of flax events in West Cork, including the planting of flax around Clonakilty through local community groups and farmers, an interactive experience outside the Linen Hall in Clonakilty as part of the Old Time Fair and a flax harvesting event and craft workshops during Heritage Week.

One of the flax planting projects will take place at Fernhill House Hotel, a site historically surrounded by retting ponds and flax fields. This year’s planting coincides with the bicentenary of both the collapse of the local linen industry and the founding of Fernhill House. In September, Kathy and the hotel will also welcome a group of 25 textile enthusiasts from the United States.

If you’ve walked the Old Head of Kinsale loop this past year, you will have passed by the McCarthy family farm and Old Head Milk shop. If you’re a daily milk drinker then undoubtedly you will also by now be a regular customer. The Atlantic ocean offers a spectacular backdrop to the cows contentedly chewing the cud on the green pastures a stone’s throw from the shop – you won’t get much closer to the ‘from farm to fork’ (or in this case ‘from farm to bottle’) experience than this. Happy cows lead to happy customers and the rich creaminess of the pasteurised, non-homogenised milk from the McCarthy herd and the consistent footfall since the coastal farm shop opened last July is testament to this writes Mary O’Brien.

The 39-acre dairy farm on the Old Head has been in the family for generations – inherited from the Dempsey’s – and today is run by Gerard McCarthy and his son Stephen. Originally operating as a dry stock and tillage farm, Gerard and his wife Anne transitioned into dairy in the mid-1990s when new entrant schemes made it viable, starting modestly with just 14 cows. “Times were very different back then,” notes Gerard, reflecting on a time before milk quotas were abolished in 2015. That regulatory change allowed the herd to expand significantly and today the McCarthy’s milk around eighty cows.

For years, the natural rhythm of a busy dairy farm meant early mornings and long days, with both Gerard and Stephen also working off farm – Gerard as a general builder and Stephen as a carpenter.

“We were burning the candle at both ends,” says Stephen, who was eager to spend more time with his young family.  The solution came in the form of a farm shop, an idea sparked by similar successful ventures in the UK and Northern Ireland.

After researching equipment and visiting other farm milk shops, the family took the plunge in 2021 once approval was granted from the Department of Agriculture. Stephen and Gerard designed the layout of the shop and started building, making a sizeable investment into vending machines and a top-of-the-range pasteurisation system. The result is a sleek, user-friendly operation that bridges traditional farming and modern convenience.

With Stephen’s wife, Louise, the creative force behind the initiative, the farm shop, which opened at the end of July last year, has transformed their operation.

Behind the scenes, raw milk travels via pipeline from the milking parlour’s bulk tank across the yard to a dedicated pasteurisation room – an immaculate space with resin floors and stainless steel fixtures. There, the milk is heated to 76-78 degrees Celsius, cooled through regeneration, and chilled to 4-5 degrees before storage. Every batch undergoes rigorous testing: antibiotic checks pre-pasteurisation and phosphatase tests post-pasteurisation to ensure harmful bacteria are eliminated. “It’s spotless,” says Stephen of the room, where data loggers track temperatures for Department of Agriculture compliance.

Front of house, customers find a self-service experience designed with sustainability at its core. Glass bottles – €3.50 for a litre, €2.50 for a half-litre – are purchased once and returned for refills, eliminating single-use plastic. The milk itself, pasteurised but non-homogenised – €2 for a litre and €1 for a half-litre – retains its natural cream line. “If you leave it settling for a couple of hours, you’ll see a layer of cream sitting on top,” explains Stephen. “Give it a shake and you’ve got that fuller consistency.” The difference from standard shop-bought milk is immediately apparent – parents frequently report that children who refuse milk at home will happily drink the McCarthys’ creamy offering, often enhanced with flavourings available via an honesty box.

The shop also serves freshly ground coffee and hot chocolate – milky and delicious due to the creamy milk – and has outdoor seating, which is particularly popular with beach-goers and walkers exploring the Old Head loop. “We get a lot of walkers,” says Stephen, noting that even on quiet winter mornings, half a dozen cars might fill the car park on a nice day. The family atmosphere extends to the business itself: daughters Amelia (6) and Shóna (4) have their own jobs, emptying bins and stacking bottles, while Louise manages the decor and daily cleaning.

The operation remains deliberately local. Unlike supplying the co-operative, which they still do with the bulk of their milk, the shop requires customers to come to the source. “We kind of want to stay around here,” says Stephen, explaining that delivery would add unsustainable complexity.

Instead, they focus on the experience: fresh milk drawn from cows grazing with ocean views, served in a spotless facility where the connection between land, animal, and product is tangible.

As the McCarthys look ahead, possibilities include school tours and expanded community engagement, though for now, the business remains focused on quality and sustainability. With the cows just metres from the vending machines, Old Head Milk offers a genuine taste of place, bottled fresh by the family who raised it.

At the end of last year Cork County Council informed the Bandon Community Allotments group that their lease would not be renewed beyond 2027 due to the land being zoned for housing.

“It’s been a devastating blow to the town,” says Bandon Community Allotments Chairperson Adrienne Murphy. “Over the past 16 years we have built strong partnerships within the community and run many activities and workshops here so the impact of losing the Allotments goes way beyond the individual plot holders.”

Started in 2010 on Cork County Council land behind Coláiste na Toirbhirte off the Bandon Bypass; following the sale of the original site to the Department of Education, in 2019 Bandon Allotments relocated to an alternative site nearby provided by the Council. Today the Allotments, which has charitable status, is an established group of 37 members with a number of local community groups also benefitting from use of the space.

Cork ETB Further Education and Training Service has been delivering courses there for the past five years and West Cork Development Partnership (WCDP) has been using the Allotments to facilitate wellbeing activities for marginalised groups under the social inclusion programme (SICAP). WCDP also hosts workers at the Allotments under the Tús initiative, a community work placement scheme for the unemployed. Bandon Education and Action Group (BEAG), an initiative that has been commended for its commitment to biodiversity, recently created a small tree nursery and leaf mould system on-site, which shows the wider value of the allotments as a hub for environmental projects.

Throughout the world, green spaces like community gardens and allotments are recognised as offering numerous advantages, not only for the gardener, but also for the community, yet today Ireland has one of the lowest number of allotments and community gardens in Europe – only 2,500 compared to Denmark’s more than 60,000 allotments, a country with a similar population to Ireland.

Interestingly, back in the 1940s Ireland had far more growing spaces, with up to 40,000 allotment sites across the country. In Bandon, land in Town Park, Kilbrogan was divided into allotments for people of the surrounding area during the ‘Emergency’, with four ridges of potatoes assigned to each family. Locals remember playing on the uneven surface created by these ridges up to a few years ago. There were also allotments on the grounds of the town’s cottage hospital in the 1940s.

Today, for areas like Bandon, which have experienced significant and diverse population growth in recent years, spaces such as the allotment gardens are crucial in meeting the needs of the community.

During the period 2002-22, Bandon’s population grew by 59 per cent, a higher-than-average population growth across all age profiles. The 2022 Census also showed that 24 per cent of the total population of Bandon were born outside of Ireland (non-Irish citizenships) which is significantly above the national average of 16 per cent.

According to the West Cork Development Partnership, which runs SICAP, some new communities, especially those with limited English, struggle to integrate into the local community.

Providing funding to tackle poverty and social exclusion at a local level, SICAP has been renting one of the allotment plots to facilitate wellbeing activities on the programme, which has had a hugely positive impact on marginalised groups in the town. There are four disadvantaged SAs (small areas) in Bandon equating to approximately 14 per cent of the total Bandon population.

Research has shown that the benefits of allotments are far-reaching beyond providing fruit and vegetables. These include mental and physical health, community resilience, social connection, experiencing nature, and a culture of sharing knowledge and produce.

Community Development Worker Damien Quinn, who works as part of the Social Inclusion and Community Activation programme under the WCDP sees the Allotments as a microcosm of the wider community of Bandon.

“For many in Bandon, this space is a vital source of social connection,” he says. “Often it can be so hard to break down walls and barriers between people and the Allotments provide a fantastic space for fostering integration and developing connections between communities that might not otherwise mix.”

Damien has seen firsthand the impact the Allotments has on people from disadvantaged backgrounds. “I work with many people who struggle with drug use, social media addiction and solo parenting and I’ve seen the conversation change once individuals are exposed to the Allotments. This environment has a strong social purpose beyond the gardens.”

Dana Orosan from Romania and her family have been renting a plot at Bandon Allotments since 2020. Dana keeps chickens there and grows enough vegetables to feed her family through the summer months and to make jams and pickles for the winter. Within walking distance of their home, Bandon Allotments has become a wonderful social space for the Romanian family, helping them to integrate and make friends in the local community.

“We see our sameness rather than our differences here,” says plot holder Ann Conwell, who invested her savings into her plot after retirement. Ann suffers from depression and says being a member of the allotments has been hugely beneficial to her mental health.

Janet Pearson suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and joined the allotments after her doctor recommended gardening to improve and maintain joint mobility. Today she’s not only a plot holder, but the site manager, involved in everything from mowing grass paths to taking in fees to salvaging materials. “It’s a wonderful space that means so much to so many,” she says.

Eddie Collins grows plants for the Bandon Tidy Towns Group on his plot. As a retired person living on his own, he says “it’s been a wonderful way to make neighbours”.

The community is made up of many nationalities and people from all walks of life, which is reflected in each growing space.

Sharon Tonner says it’s a peaceful space where every plot-holder shares knowledge, skills and personal stories, as well as produce, throughout the year. “The continued existence of Bandon Community Allotments is essential in our growing town where green space is scarce and immersion in nature is a privilege.”

While in the UK the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908 places a legal duty on councils to provide allotments if six or more residents request them, here in Ireland supportive legislation was only introduced a few years ago under the The Planning and Development Act 2024.

Section 48 of the Planning and Development Act 2024 requires every planning authority in Ireland to prepare strategy relating to creation, improvement and preservation of sustainable places and communities. This must include objectives for the reservation of land for use and cultivation as allotments and prescribed community gardens.

Social Democrats councillor Ann Bambury has spoken up for the group, calling on Cork County Council to actively support the Bandon Community Allotments group in securing an alternative permanent site.

“The Bandon Community Allotments have delivered enormous benefits for the town, and it is vital that we do everything we can to protect their future,” she said.

She stressed that supporting the allotments would represent a relatively low-cost intervention with long-lasting positive impacts for the town.

“By supporting this project, the Council would be demonstrating a clear commitment to community wellbeing and sustainable development in Bandon.”

“We’ve been guardians of this land of 16 years,” says Adrienne. “I think the Council has an obligation to find land for us.”

“When you intensify living space with little green space available for the public to congregate, you create ghettos – the rate of isolation goes up and crime follows,” says Community Development Worker Damien Quinn. “Social profit can’t be monetised. You can’t just look at the Allotments as just a garden where 30-odd plot-holders are doing things, you have to recognise the positive impact it has on the broader community.”

Bandon Community Allotments is currently looking for land to lease in order to continue to support community members who do not have access to private gardens, maintain partnerships with local organisations, and promote biodiversity and sustainable living in Bandon town.

At the time of going to print, Cork County Council had not yet responded to the question of what is being done by the authority to help secure an alternative site for the group.

While his academic background is in archaeology and anthropology – he holds a PhD in  archaeology and has taught at university level for over two decades – it was Dr Schindler’s  interest in food, diet and subsequently health that prompted his research into primitive  technology and experimental archaeology, relating to how food is actually made.  

“Almost every prehistoric technology for three and a half million years had something to do  with food, either allowing us to get food, process food, store food, share food or  redistribute food,” he says.  

Dr Schindler is convinced that using technologies to transform a raw material into  something that’s safe and nourishing for our bodies is literally what helped make us  human.  

It was this realisation that directed his research into ancestral and traditional diets – a  journey that transformed both his and his family’s relationship with food.  

While filming ‘The Great Human Race’ for National Geographic, Dr Schindler lived for  periods using prehistoric technologies, sourcing and preparing food as early humans might  have done.  

“I realised that there’s so much incredible traditional knowledge still today that can really help transform and inform our modern approaches to food and they’re disappearing very quickly,” he shares.  

This life-changing experience reshaped the direction of his work. Taking his family with  him, Dr Schindler travels around the world, living with indigenous and traditional groups  and learning about their food traditions.  

From being taught how to make mursik (ash yogurt) – a fermented milk product – in Western Kenya to getting instruction in how to harvest and prepare insects for a meal in Thailand, Dr  Schindler began documenting this knowledge to redefine how we connect with food.  

“We are incredibly disconnected. Our food chains have never been longer than they are  before,” he explains. By removing some of those links and improving our diet, Dr Schindler believes that we can reclaim our health.

Ireland entered this chapter of Dr. Schindler’s life during a sabbatical year spent living at Airfield Estate, teaching at University College Dublin, and conducting global research – a period during which he also wrote his book ‘Eat Like a Human’. He describes his time in Ireland as transformative, shaped in part by his work with experimental archaeologist Aidan O’Sullivan and the Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture. Equally influential was his time with Jason O’Brien, founder of Odaios Foods, whose deep interest in hunter-gatherer societies helped inform the creation of a luxury food business rooted in ancient grains and high-quality ingredients.

“I fell in love with Ireland and its food traditions,” he shares. “When you start looking closely,” he adds, “you see that Irish food traditions were incredibly informed.”  

Oats are one of the clearest examples. For generations, oats in Ireland were soaked  overnight before cooking. This practice reduces phytic acid and other naturally occurring  compounds that interfere with mineral absorption. It also makes oats easier to digest.

“Even going back a very short time in Ireland,” Schindler notes, “oats were always soaked. That wasn’t a preference – it was just how you prepared them.”  

The widespread use of instant oats, eaten without soaking, is a modern departure from  that knowledge. It reflects a broader shift away from process – the steps that once made  food work properly in the body.  

Butter tells a similar story. Ireland has one of the oldest dairying traditions in the world and there is a good chance butter originated in Ireland possibly as long ago as 6,000 years. For almost all of that time, butter was fermented.  

That fermentation process produces vitamin K2, a nutrient essential for bone health and  for directing calcium to where it belongs in the body. It also plays a role in how the body  uses vitamin D. In a northern climate with limited sunlight, this mattered.  

In other words, the diet worked. So it endured.  

Milk reflects the same long familiarity. Ireland has one of the highest rates of lactase  persistence in the world – the ability to digest milk into adulthood – a genetic adaptation  linked to thousands of years of reliance on dairy.  

“Traditional cultures,” he explains, “developed methods to make milk more digestible by  replicating outside the body what infants naturally do inside it. What we used to do in our  stomachs, we now do in a fermentation tank when we culture dairy into yogurt, kefir, butter, and cheese.” Just as cows rely on fermentation in the rumen to break down grasses and birds effectively pre-ferment grains before digesting them, humans learned to ferment sauerkraut and make sourdough bread.  

Even the potato, often treated as the simplest of foods today, was handled with care in the  past. Potatoes contain natural toxins, particularly concentrated in the skin, and any potato  showing green indicates wider toxicity.  

“That green isn’t the toxin,” Dr Schindler explains. “It’s a warning.”  

Peeling potatoes and discarding damaged ones was once routine. It was not excessive  caution, but learned behaviour.  

Dr Schindler doesn’t suggest that traditional diets were perfect. Rather he explains how in  the past there was a deep understanding of how to make limited food sustain people.  

Modern food systems, he believes, have loosened that connection. Ingredients arrive  quickly, often eaten out of season, with little sense of where they came from or how they  were once prepared.  

He points to maize as an example of what happens when food travels without knowledge of its processing methods. In the Americas, corn was traditionally treated through nixtamalization, a process that unlocks nutrients such as niacin and prevents deficiency 

disease. When corn travelled without that knowledge, a disease called pellagra followed. This disease was seen in Ireland after the Famine when the country relied on corn supplied from the United States as a relief ration.  

Foods today promoted as ‘superfoods’ would once have been eaten sparingly and  seasonally.  

Spinach is one example. It is rich in oxalates, natural compounds that in large amounts  can contribute to kidney stones and joint inflammation. Traditionally spinach would have  appeared for a few short weeks in spring. Today it sits on supermarket shelves all year,  often eaten daily in smoothies and salads.  

“I’m not saying don’t eat spinach. Just look at how often you eat it,” advises Dr Schindler.

Almonds are a similar story. Harvesting almonds by hand limited how many a person could  consume. Modern almond flour, almond milk and snack packs deliver quantities never  previously encountered. “For people sensitive to oxalates, like me, that can cause real  problems,” he says.  

Dr Schindler believes that modern diets have drifted away from the understanding of what  makes food nourishing, with speed and convenience replacing proper process.  

While he is not calling for grand changes out of reach to busy families, he suggests small  acts like soaking grains, choosing real butter and buying food closer to its source.  

“You don’t need to change your whole life,” he says. “You just need to start noticing food  again.”  

Speaking about the course, Dr Schindler said: “In a world dominated by ultra-processed  convenience, the most innovative food solutions might come from the oldest diets. This  course is about bringing those ancient lessons into modern kitchens, farms, and markets  in ways that respect culture, support sustainability, and create real economic  opportunities.”  

‘Food Heritage in Action: Turning Tradition into Sustainable Enterprise’ runs for 10 weeks,  commencing April 1 2026, and is open to domestic and international participants with full  details available at: www.ucc.ie/en/ace/food-heritage/.

“Smile, breathe and go slowly, says Charlie Stevens, quoting the famous Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, as he sums up his own life learnings. Charlie Stevens, 78, first sailed into West Cork in the summer of 1975 on a test run before a planned sailing trip around the world. Over 50 years later and he’s still here writes Mary O’Brien, after shaping a lasting legacy on these shores: Charlie was one of the first to introduce yoga to West Cork and the driving force behind the foundation of An Sanctóir, the purpose-built yoga centre in Ballydehob that has become an integral part of the local community and celebrates it’s 30th anniversary this year.

Born into a middle class family in Surrey – his father a surgeon, mother a dance teacher – Charlie ran away from the pressures of his parents’ expectations as soon as he was old enough.

After dropping out of school at the age of 17, he travelled for a while, before moving to London where he found work in a Notting Hill antiques store by day and as a DJ by night – at the famous ‘Tiles’ Mod music venue on Oxford Street. ‘Tiles’ was part of London’s vibrant underground scene hosting many bands that later gained fame, including Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Who, and Led Zeppelin and the Bee Gees.

It was an exciting time in London. The streets were flooded with anti-war demonstrations and civil rights movements and the dance floors pulsed with a new energy, fuelled by music that pushed boundaries and a desire to break from the past. Charlie remembers the sound of pockets of pills being emptied onto the dancefloor. ‘Purple hearts’ (a combination of amphetamine and barbiturate) were a popular mood-enhancer among Mods in the 1960s.

Charlie’s journey with drugs began with marijuana before he moved on to psychedelics like LSD, promoted at the time by figures like American psychologist Timothy Leary as a tool for expanding consciousness and spiritual awakening. “We wanted to open the ‘doors of perception’,” he says. Around this time Charlie was introduced to yoga and the teachings of Krishnamurti and Zen Buddhism.

Germany’s first large-scale discotheque ‘The Blow Up’ opened in Munich in 1967 and Charlie’s reputation as a DJ saw him offered a job there. He recalls introducing Deep Purple and The Equals who were big names at the time. After spending a few months working nights and living out of a hotel room, the young DJ decided this lonely existence wasn’t for him. Although offered an attractive opportunity in the music industry in Denmark, he decided to return to his life in London.

The travel bug had however bitten and the young Mod decided to leave his career in antiques behind for the delights of Morocco, where he spent a number of months smoking hash and eating oranges. The dream ended abruptly after he came home one day to find his girlfriend in bed with his friend.

Down and out back in London, Charlie ended up squatting in London’s west end. It was a time when squatters became ingrained in London’s social history. The city was full of young creatives and hippies living on a shoestring, housing was scarce and there were a lot of neglected council houses and flats. Charlie moved into a dismal flat in the east end, where he remembers replacing a light bulb in the corridor only to find it stolen the next day. “All of my friends had moved on, it was difficult to find work, and life was pretty miserable,” he shares.

In a fortunate turn of events, after selling their tennis court, Charlie’s parents decided to pass the proceeds of the sale on to their offspring. Charlie’s share was £2,000. “It could have gone on drugs and rock ’n roll but instead I invested in a friend’s boat and sailed out of London on the ‘Nell’,” he says.

Watching the water turn from brown to blue, as he sailed down the Thames, was very symbolic for the young Charlie. “It felt like I was leaving my ‘low life’ in London behind,” he shares.

Out in the open sea, the beginning of their journey almost marked the end, after the novice sailors got into trouble in a gale and had to be towed to safety by a lifeboat. “It was one of those times when death was more than tapping on my shoulder,” he says.

After finally reaching Devon safely, Charlie was fortunate enough to find work as an extra on ‘The Onedin Line’, a BBC television drama series set in 19th-century Liverpool, that ran from 1971 to 1980.

He spent the next two years on the ‘Charlotte Rhodes’ in Dartmouth where most of the outdoor scenes of ‘The Onedin Line’ were shot. He looks back fondly on this fun time in his life, recalling a shoot in June that was supposed to be in the middle of an arctic winter. “It was a roasting hot day and I remember wearing swimming togs under these huge fur coats and boots with icicles stuck on our beards and sweating profusely.”

After a few years in Dartmouth, during which he met his future wife Sue (they are now divorced) it felt like the time to move on.

Charlie bought out his partner in the ‘Nell’ and started a new chapter of his life with Sue. Dreaming of travelling around the world, the couple first sailed down to Cornwall where Charlie spent a month detoxing from drugs and alcohol. “I ate only grapes for 30 days, which amazingly worked!” he laughs.

With Kinsale marked on the map as the ‘shakedown’ before the big trip, Charlie and Sue and another couple set sail on their grand adventure. But like so many ‘blow-ins’ they fell in love with West Cork and their path changed. “The first thing to greet us was a shout from another boat saying ‘Welcome to Kinsale’,” says Charlie. It felt more like an invitation than an arrival. In those days you were supposed to hoist a yellow flag for customs, but when there was still no sign of customs after two days, Charlie went ashore to find the harbourmaster. Greeted with the words ‘Ah sure, don’t worry about it,’ Charlie was charmed and decided to stay awhile.

The summer of 1975 was blessed with sunshine and, after sailing the coves and harbours of West Cork, the couple decided to winter in West Cork. The other couple headed back to England, leaving Charlie and Sue alone on the boat. Soon after, they sold the boat, bought a cottage in Ballydehob and settled into life here, marrying in 1977 and having two children together.

Charlie soon found work skippering boats for holidaymakers. A keen yogi, after spotting an advertisement for a yoga teacher in Clonakilty, he chanced his arm and applied for the job. “I was the only applicant and got the job,” he says.

After training with The British Wheel of Yoga, Charlie started yoga classes all over West Cork, going on to complete yoga teacher training. There were no yoga centres in Ireland at the time and while travelling around the country giving workshops in “cold community halls and classrooms”, the seed of an idea planted in Charlie’s mind. “I had the idea to form a yoga centre in West Cork,” he says.

The ambition was to open a centre that didn’t identify with any particular style or way of being. “It was to be a place that would be available to everybody in the community,” adds Charlie.

Finally, after years of fundraising, the enterprise board awarded a grant for the yoga centre, which was matched by a bank loan. “I can still picture the bank manager in Bandon saying ‘we need more than golf and Guinness in this country’” shares Charlie.

His marriage in trouble at the time, Charlie met his future longterm partner Marianne Gabriel while training his first group of yoga teachers in Ballydehob.

“It was a great time but also a very painful time,” he adds. Charlie and his wife separated just after An Sanctóir opened.

The next chapter of Charlie’s career journey began when a friend gifted him some psychotherapy sessions. His interest sparked, he took a higher diploma in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy at UCC and went on to do a Masters in Integrative Psychotherapy. In 1999, Charlie and Marianne set up Contemporary Yoga, a yoga teacher training school, which they ran together for over a decade. All the while, Charlie was continuing his training in counselling, adding the Family Constellation Method to his psychotherapy practice.

In 2009, he moved in with Marianne in Bandon, running his practice from their home. He went on to qualify as a clinical supervisor for therapists, which is his main occupation today.

“I think the most common problem I’ve seen in my years of practice is that we override our true nature, saying yes when we mean no, and getting caught in patterns from childhood,” he says.

While the method is unproven and somewhat controversial, Charlie is a great believer in the Family Constellation method. “I’ve seen that it works,” he says. “The method can be used, not only to see the possible resolution of hidden family dynamics, but also to explore issues such as systemic causes of illness, blockages in business development, relationship to money or those people with whom you struggle.”

Throughout it all, yoga has been a gift. Charlie still practices every day and feels as flexible and strong as ever. Turning 79 in a few months, he says he doesn’t have an ache or pain in his body. These days, he follows his own advice and moves more slowly, making space for the things that bring him most joy. He loves freeform dance, joins a weekly music session at DeBarras, continues to run workshops with Marianne, and still sees a few clients in his practice. “It’s never felt like work,” he says. “I’ve always just done the things I love doing.”

Retired pilot Charlie Coughlan pictured at this home in Rosscarbery

While his academic performance at school was poor, Charlie Coughlan, or Captain Charlie, as he later became known by, demonstrated a very high mechanical aptitude since he was knee-high. He was a late-starter as a pilot, only gaining entrance to the Aer Lingus pilot programme, age 20, after his father sent in the application form on his behalf.

“I used to maintain his car, so he knew I had it in me,” shares Charlie. Following a job at John Atkins and Sons in Cork City, Charlie joined Aer Lingus in 1962 as a temporary traffic clerk at Cork Airport, working for the weekly sum of £6 10s or €8.23.

After being accepted onto the pilot programme – he got 98 per cent in the mechanical aptitude exam – Charlie spent 11 months in the Air Corp at Gormanston, Co Meath, before completing his 200 flying hours in the Chipmunk, a single engine tandem-seat primary trainer aircraft, in order to gain his commercial licence.

The first commercial aircraft Charlie flew for Aer Lingus was the twin-engined Fokker F27 Friendship aircraft, one of the most successful European airliners of its era. He quickly graduated to the Viscount, the first turboprop airliner to operate a passenger service, before moving on to the Carvair, an unusual aircraft that flew both passengers and cars, followed by the Boeing 707 and then the Boeing 747, nicknamed ‘Queen of the Skies’. 

After becoming a captain at the age of 37, Charlie graduated to the BAC One-Eleven, Boeing 737 and finally the DC-8, known for its spacious cabin and speed.

Respected for his confidence and calm, particularly in tricky situations, there wasn’t much that phased this pilot during his 40-year tenure.

He describes a hijacking incident at Shannon Airport during a flight scheduled to carry lamb carcasses to Libya.

As the crew prepared the aircraft, a man who had slipped past cattle drovers on the ramp climbed aboard, pressed a gun into the systems pilot’s stomach, and ordered him to close the door.

“Thinking fast, the systems pilot told the hijacker he needed to retrieve the key from the cockpit,” he shares. Charlie immediately radioed for help, calmly announcing, ‘There’s someone out here with a gun’. After confirming the message had been received, Charlie suggested the crew escape through the lower 41 hatch – accessible by pulling forward the jump seat behind the captain’s chair – which led down into the electronics bay and out onto the ramp. Once the crew evacuated, the hijacker was left alone with the running inertial navigation systems, each worth half a million and at risk of overheating if the aircraft lost power.

While Charlie and the others pushed to be allowed back aboard to pull the circuit breakers, the immigration officer in charge refused, insisting on waiting for the army.

“Eventually the officer decided to take matters into his own hands, marched out and shouted, ‘Hey you, get off that f**king airplane!’” laughs Charlie.

“The hijacker surrendered immediately, waving his gun and yelling ‘Freedom for black Africa’.

“It later emerged he was a barman from Six Mile Bridge, who had been on the batter for a few weeks, carrying only a cap gun bought on his way home,” continues Charlie. “He spent the next six months in a sanatorium sobering up. I’m not sure he would have been given that second chance anywhere else in the world!”

On another flight from Shannon to the US, Charlie had to deal with a bomb scare. Descending the plane to 10,000 feet to match the lower pressure of the ground before landing – a step that’s necessary to equalise the pressure in the cabin and allow the doors to be opened safely – Charlie flew back to Shannon as fast as possible. “There were alarms going off because of the speed,” he recalls. “Ironically our biggest dilemma was, from a religious point of view, whether or not we should inform passengers about the bomb scare,” he adds.

The crew eventually decided not to make an announcement because of the panic it might cause and, after the aircraft reached Shannon safely and was isolated, the bomb turned out to be a false alarm.

In 1966, Charlie was charged with flying the Carvair, a since-retired air ferry. “it was very unreliable,” says Charlie, recalling how on two nights in a row in the same region, an engine failed on two separate aircraft.

On another occasion, when Charlie was flying from London to Dublin, the hydraulics of the aircraft overheated and the cockpit filled with smoke. “It was a very frightening experience,” he recalls. While the hydraulics were too hot to be handled, Charlie did manage to turn them off using a pen. “It was melting from the heat,” he says. He turned the aircraft around and landed it safely in London.

Another time, when he was a co-pilot on a Boeing 707, the aircraft flew into a flock of starlings just after take-off from Dublin. “There were over 60 bird strikes on the plane and the birds flew into two of the four engines,” he says. Luckily they were able to land safely back at Dublin Airport within minutes.

Charlie remembers how the ‘redcap’ – the guy on the ground who supervises departures – told the captain, ‘We’ll have another aircraft ready for you in an hour.’ “The captain just shook his head and said, ‘I think we’ve had enough for one day.’”

In 1962, Flying Tiger Flight 923, an aircraft transporting military personnel, ditched in the North Atlantic after a catastrophic engine failure, resulting in 28 fatalities and 48 survivors.

Charlie was standing on the ramp at Cork airport when the survivors were landed by Royal Air Force helicopters.

He remains in awe of the extraordinary achievement by the Flying Tiger’s pilot, Captain Murray, to make a controlled emergency landing in difficult conditions.

“It happened at night, way out in the Atlantic,” says Charlie, “yet so many survived.”

One of the passengers, Fred Caruso, was so delighted to pull through that he changed his name to O’Caruso, became an Irish citizen, and bought a house in Glengarriff!

In the eighties, Charlie was one of the pilots charged to fly 8,000 Ethiopian Jews with Trans European Airways from Sudan via Brussels to Israel under ‘Operation Moses’ – the covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews (known as the ‘Beta Israel’ community from Sudan) during a civil war that caused a famine in 1984.

A co-operative effort between Israel, the US and Sudan, although thousands made it successfully to Israel, many children died in the camps or during the flight to Israel.

“There was a doctor at the door of the aircraft checking everyone, but sadly many of the parents – afraid of the unknown – hid their children under their clothes, and many babies died onboard,” he shares.

Some of Charlie’s happiest memories are of his time spent flying for a Nigerian airline. He captained the BAC One-Eleven for almost two years, flying for Okada Air, the privately-owned airline of Sir Chief Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion. “I grew very fond of Nigeria and its people,” he says.

He recalls how pedestrians used to walk across the runway all the time in Nigeria. “You got used to it,” he says, laughing. “People used to dig up the glass lights on the runway to make jewellery.”

He chuckles remembering the Nigerian co-pilot who used to go around saying Captain Charlie taught him everything. “In fact he knew nothing and was the worst co-pilot I ever had,” Charlie laughs, remembering how one time the co-pilot, who had somehow graduated to Captain, abandoned take-off after take-off (something that’s unheard of), subsequently running the plane off the end of the runway.

Charlie flew for Aer Lingus until 1992, leaving to work for Aer Turas, an Irish airline and freight operator based in Dublin. He retired in 2002.

While for some retirement can be challenging, after leaving a demanding job with such irregular hours, Charlie is relishing the freedom of later life, especially as he has Sylvia to share it with.

“I do miss the camaraderie,” he shares “and it’s a wonderful feeling being up there just above the cloud, especially when you pilot an aircraft to the best of its ability, but I’m very happy in retirement,” he says.

“I think I could drive a tractor all day long without getting bored!” he adds laughing.