We woke up in a temporary accommodation, not being able to get into our B&B after a 2 hour drive through the dark and stormy night. We were able to find enough beds for the 5 of us at a nearby hotel, Achill Isle House in the nearby town of Keel. We enjoyed a delicious breakfast and headed to explore the area before moving to our original accommodation.

We met our tour guide for one of the last tours of the season at the ‘Deserted Village of Slievemore‘.

On the south slope of Slievemore mountain near Keel are the remnants of a village site that was occupied for about 6000 years. Rows of the remains of about 100 houses line an ancient road with sweeping views down to Keel beach. The last residents moved on in the 1960’s when it was considered more of a ‘booley’ village, occupied primarily in the summer by cattle herders.

Now it is home to rainbow colored sheep!

After settling in at our B&B house in the town of Dooega we took a drive around the south coast of Achill island on  a tiny portion of the 1600 mile Wild Atlantic Way.

We stopped to admire the white cliffs of Ashleam.

We then stopped at Kildavnet Tower, a stronghold of the famous “Pirate Queen” Grace O’Malley.

Grace O’Malley, Gráinne Ní Mháille in Irish, was an Irish noblewoman in the 15th century, who inherited a sailing fleet and trading business from her father, and lands from her mother. She was a strong leader and even met with Queen Elizabeth I as an equal.

Today we headed into the countryside to learn some family history and meet some of the distant relatives. I am a member of only the 2nd generation on our father’s side to be born in the US, our paternal grandparents having emigrated from Ireland to the US in the early 1900’s. We are traveling to the town of our Irish grandmother’s birth, Strokestown, county Roscommon, central Ireland. She hailed from the farming area known as Cloonfree, about 2 miles from Strokestown which was one site of the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49, witness to some of the worst starvation and emigration of the time.

We began our history tour at “The Big House”, Strokestown Park House, the estate owned and run by the Mahon family for over 300 years. In the 1660’s Captain Mahon was given the lands by Oliver Cromwell as reward for his services in the Crowellian War of Conquest of Ireland, the most devastating of the long history of invasions of Ireland.

After a hearty lunch in the cafe, we started our tour in the walled gardens of the estate.

The Victorian era glass houses (greenhouses) are impressive. The walled pit at the front of the photo is the ‘pineapple pit’ where potted pineapple plants were placed, packed around with composting manure to keep them warm!

Inside the largest glass house is a small room with a wood burning furnace that directed heat via cast iron pipes to all corners of the greenhouse and out to other smaller glasshouses. ‘Garden boys’ would keep the fire burning all night which allowed the estate to furnish their table with fresh vegetables and fruits year round.

We moved inside to tour the National Famine Museum, established by the Westward Group and opened in 2022. In 1979 the Westward Group purchased the derelict estate, for its acreage, from the last member of the Mahon family to live there, Olive.

Olive, in the center, continued living in the Big House until 1981. When Jim Calley (red arrow), founder of Westward Group, took possession of the estate he discovered 300 years of furnishings and written records preserved by the Mahon family. This trove included over 50,000 written records of the Famine years and the impact on the local population. These became the basis for preserving the house and displaying the history of the Famine, through the eyes of the landlord and the tenants alike.

Some of the records explained the program by which the landlord, Denis Mahon, paid the passage for the transport to North America, of the tenants he deemed undesirable. He failed to pay their way to Dublin, 100 miles away and basically evicted them, forcing them to walk, in winter, and starving, to the ships ultimately called ‘coffin ships’ to be sent to Canada or the US. A sculpture in the courtyard commemorates the gift of $170 dollars (equivalent to several thousand dollars today) raised by the Choctaw Nation, donated to relieve the suffering of the starving Irish in 1847.

In 1847 Denis Mahon was murdered, the perpetrator(s) never being identified, although 2 locals were convicted and hanged.

Our family ancestors somehow avoided the evictions and transportation as well as starvation through those difficult years.

From the Famine Museum we joined a tour of the Big House.

The imposing edifice, built and expanded on through the years from 1660.

The history of the Mahon family as told by our tour guide described a family obsessed with ostentatious outward appearances of wealth and subsequent debt. The main sitting room, the library, was papered with gold leaf wallpaper! The thick walls of the master’s bedroom incorporated the walls of the original fortress built on the site pre-1600!

The kitchen, in the servant’s wing, is the best preserved 18th century ‘gallery kitchen’ in Ireland.

The ‘gallery’ balcony overlooking the kitchen was the domain of the Mistress of the house from where she would drop written instructions to the servants, so at to not have to talk to or even walk amongst the servants, busy at the stoves and preparation tables.

The gallery kitchen was preserved due to it being walled off and a smaller modern kitchen built in the center of the room in the 1950’s!

Our tour completed we drove the 2 miles to the home of our relatives, cousins several times removed.

The lovely house with the modern accoutrement of solar panels!

With the guidance of our cousin Tom we drove around the block to the site of our grandmothers house.

Under the brambles and trees in the field is the rubble of the house our grandmother was born in and lived until she emigrated to New Jersey in the early 1900’s.

We joined the extended family for dinner at a local restaurant, with a birthday cake dessert!

It was after dark when we said our goodbyes, the light in the doorway inviting and warm, carrying on the legacy of family.

1. This morning Robert embarked on a tour of iconic sites in London.

Robert passed through this gate at Buckingham Palace…

…and got a picture of a member of the Queens Guard in the huge bear skin hat!

He continued on to see Big Ben in the Elizabeth Tower…

…and across the square, Westminster Hall with Victoria Tower.

In between is the Palace of Westminster where the British Houses of Parliament are found.

Along the Thames River Robert saw the “London Eye” Ferris wheel, “Europe’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel”!

Meanwhile, in Dublin…

We embarked on an afternoon Personal Whiskey Tour to celebrate Tommy’s 70th birthday!!! Tommy was truly surprised when introduced to our tour guide.

Our first stop was those shiny pot stills along the road we walked past last evening!

These are the remnants of the last Irish Whiskey Distillery, Powers, operating in Dublin until 1975. Now part of the campus of the National College of Art and Design, they were restored by Powers Distillery recently. In the early 1800’s Irish whiskey dominated the global spirits market, with about 90% of the market. Three main factors led to the century long decline of Irish whiskey. The first was the invention of the column still which allowed continuous distilling, rather than the pot stills that created whiskey in small batches. The second factor was the potato blight of 1845-49 that brought about the Irish Potato Famine which led to the repeal of the Corn Laws that had restricted the import of cheaper foreign grains like corn from the US. Distilling cheaper corn in column stills to create a neutral spirit that could be blended with other whiskeys was adopted by Scotland while Irish distillers refused to ‘adulterate’ their pure pot still whiskeys. The third factor was the Irish War of Independence, the subsequent civil war and trade war with Britain which cut off exports of Irish whiskey to the largest market of England and all Commonwealth nations. The final blow was the adoption, from 1920 to 1933, of Prohibition in the US, the second largest market for Irish whiskey. By the 1930’s Irish whiskey’s share was about 2% of the global market!

Our tour guide then took us to the first distillery of the tour, Teeling Whiskey Distillery, the first new distillery opened in Dublin in 125 years! Opened in 2015 it has an interesting connection to Oregon! The Master Distiller, Alex Chasko, hails from Portland, Oregon! Also, Oregon pine is used to make the wooden fermenters (huge barrels) where the malted grain is mixed with water and fermented with a mix of yeasts creating the high proof ‘beer’ that is then distilled.

The pot stills.

The most important part of the tour! The tasting!

Our next stop was around the corner, The Dublin Liberties Distillery, opened in 2019, one of the newest distillers in what was known as the Golden Triangle of whiskey distillers in 1800’s Dublin.

Our distillery tour guide introduced us to the neighborhood, the Liberties, known as the working class ‘hell’ outside of Dublin proper and free of it’s rules and laws.

Among the mills, fermenters and pot stills is this small brass and glass box with tubes connecting to the stills.

Every distillery had this contraption near the stills. We learned that it is a ‘spirit safe’, used to decant small amounts of the neutral alcohol to test for ABV percents. “The introduction of the safe dates back to 1823 when duty laws were brought in to enforce taxation on distilleries. For this reason spirit safes feature a large elaborate padlock which casts back to a time when only an exciseman, who enforced tax collection, could unlock the safe. The spirit safe stills plays an important role in modern whiskey making.” The ‘revenuers’ have to take their cut, otherwise it’s moonshine or ‘poteen’ (pronounced poo-cheen in Irish)!

Again, the most important part of the tour!

The third and last distillery of our tour was the Pearse Lyons Distillery, started by Mr. Pearse Lyons, born in Dublin but moved to the US where he started the Alltech company, an animal nutrition and spirits company based in Lexington, Kentucky. Experts “in yeast fermentation, solid state fermentation and the science of nutrigenomics, Alltech is a leading producer and processor of yeast additives, organic trace minerals, feed ingredients, premix and feed.” He and his wife bought a derelict 18th century church in the Liberties neighborhood of Dublin and spent 4 years restoring and remodeling it into a distinctive distillery!

The stone spire which had been struck by lightning was replaced with a steel and glass spire dubbed the Liberties Lantern!

The church is reflected in the modern glass main distillery building, alongside the cemetery.

The small cemetery adjacent to the church holds several of Mr. Pearse’s distant relatives. Amazingly there are over 10,000 people buried in the tiny cemetery, they were laid to rest stacked on top of each other over the centuries!

Entering the church you see the melding of the two religions of Ireland! The pot stills replace the alter in this church!

The stained glass windows tell the story of distilling whiskey and honor the craft of coopering (barrel making) that Mr. Pearse’s ancestors honed.

Available here are the whiskeys distilled right here, as well as the beer and bourbon made in the Lexington Brewing and Distilling Co. of Kentucky, also started by Mr. Pearse Lyons in 2008!

We had a wonderful and informative afternoon and soon headed out for dinner and to look for pubs featuring Irish traditional music, which we dubbed ‘Diddly-dee’ music, to round out the evening!

Bright and early we were up and I was packed to head to Dublin, Ireland. Robert will stay near London while I join family in Dublin for a week of meeting Irish relatives and exploring ‘the old country’!

At Heathrow the souvenir shops have all things royal!

The flight from London took only an hour and I was able to wait at the Dublin airport for other family members who’s flight had been delayed by 2 hours! Finally we all connected, collected our rental car and met at our accomodation.

A model of the building where we stayed in the 2 story apartment above ‘Lowes Pub’ in Dublin. Quite by accident the Fallon siblings met in Dublin and stayed above the pub with the name of our maternal family moniker!

Despite the flight delay and the interminable wait for the car rental we had time to walk from our apartment into Dublin proper for dinner at The Brazen Head Pub, touted as Dublin’s oldest Pub!

On the way to dinner we passed 2 symbols of Ireland’s ‘religions’; whiskey distillery pot stills, and a church spire!

We strolled along the Liffey river as the sun set…

…and heard the clip-clop of horses pulling carriages on the cobblestone streets!

From Above! We spent the day traveling! A very early bus ride took us to Oslo airport where we caught our flight east to Helsinki, Finland. We flew on Finnair, so we had to go through their hub in Helsinki.

Leaving Oslo, we flew over the dark green Norwegian woods, checkered with fields of ripe golden grains.

We had a 3 hour layover in Helsinki which we were able to spend in the Finnair lounge, snacking from their food and beverage buffet.

We didn’t have much of a view outside at the airport.

Leaving Helsinki, we had long views over fields interspersed with industrial sites, and the boreal forest stretching into the distance.

We had a 4 hour flight from Helsinki back west to London.

As we approached London we were between 2 layers of clouds and we could see the Thames river snaking across the landscape below.

As we flew over London, descending towards Heathrow airport, the clouds dispersed revealing a fantastic view of the city! How many landmarks can you spot?

One final mode of transport, a city bus, took us to our Airbnb in Slough (pronounced sl’how’) with plenty of daylight to do some food shopping. Our host drove us the few blocks to the closest store where we got some staples and we walked back in the uncharacteristically hot and sunny weather!