Travel in county Clare

One summer, many years ago when I was 17, I met a Dutch girl in a pub who was backpacking around Ireland. She said she was staying in hostels and was off to Doolin in County Clare the next day. Somehow, I hadn’t realised it was that easy to strike out and see the world. The next morning I took the bus to Doolin and began a lifelong love of independent travel and the open road. I never saw the Dutch girl again despite a full search of every pub in the village.

I first fell in love with the idea of moving abroad five years ago after spending a semester in England.

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‘Go to the Aran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression,” was, according to the poet WB Yeats, how he persuaded the playwright John Millington Synge to discover his muse – the desolate beauty of the Aran archipelago. Whatever was the true genesis for Synge’s Atlantic coast hiatus, his times on Inishmaan culminated in the critically acclaimed Playboy of the Western World (1907).

As a seasoned travel and adventure writer who has soared solo all over the planet, I’ve learned a few things about what makes a journey truly extraordinary. It’s a bit like entering into a social experiment over and over. What will it be like if I join X group in X country doing X activity with X assemblages of people? Flip it, change it—what’s it like now? What I’ve gleaned is that the perspective, confidence, and positivity of individuals matters; attitudes—good or bad—are contagious; experiences aren’t nearly as meaningful unless they’re shared; and a guide who sets the tone for the group of strangers with enthusiasm, encouragement, and inclusiveness is everything.

Landscapes as green and lovely as everyone says. Literary giants in Dublin; Titanic history in Belfast. A pint and good craic in a traditional pub. The lure of Celtic legends.