Irish odyssey

I’ve been taking some time off after UX London. That was a big project I was working towards all year and it went great, so I think I’ve earned a reward for myself.

My reward is to head off to Ireland to immerse myself in the language and music. A week at an Irish language school in Donegal followed by a week at an Irish music festival in Clare, with a little weekend in Galway in between.

First I had to get to Donegal. My plan was: fly from Gatwick to Dublin; get the train from Dublin to Sligo; spend the night in Sligo; take a couple of buses to get to my destination in Donegal.

I fell at the first hurdle.

I consider myself a fairly seasoned traveller at this point so I’m kicking myself that I somehow messed up the time of that flight to Dublin. I showed up after the bag check had closed. That’s when I realised I was off by an hour.

The next available flight to Dublin wasn’t until late in the evening. Jessica and I contemplated spending all day waiting for that, then spending the night in Dublin, and then doing all the overland travel the next day.

But we didn’t do that. We went to Belfast instead. As it turned out, we had a great evening there at a lovely piping session that only happens on the last Friday of the month—the very day we were there. It was meant to be.

The next day we got the train to Derry, then a bus to Letterkenny, and then eventually another bus to Donegal town (the first one just didn’t show up—probably because Donegal were playing a semi-final match at the time), and finally the bus from Donegal town to Glencolmcille.

I had never been to Donegal before. Everyone always goes on about how beautiful it is. They are not wrong. The closer we got to Glencolmcille, the more our breath was literally taken away by the stunning landscape.

So here we are. We’re both doing Irish language classes. It’s all very challenging and very rewarding at the same time.

Best of all, we’re doing it in this unbelievably beautiful place.

This is the just the start of my little odyssey on the west coast of Ireland and it’s already absolutely wonderful …apart from that unexpectedly bumpy start.