Before our extended family of parents, children, aunts, uncles and cousins made the trip back to the Irish motherland in Fall ’22, we were all-in on family history and genealogy. I have cousins who scour ship manifests from the late 1800s searching for Suttons; I myself have visited family gravestones in Montreal; and my father has even hired a retired historian to do firsthand research in Ireland. Needless to say, we’re heavily invested in our Irish heritage.
So when an idea for an extended family trip to Ireland to visit the towns our ancestors left when they came to America started brewing in late 2019, it wasn’t difficult to convince me to board the next AerLingus flight. Much like other plans put on the back burner thanks to the ‘vid, our trip was pushed back a couple years and finally got off the ground in late September 2022.
Day One: Roscommon & Knockcroghery
Fresh off a red-eye from Boston, Bill and I landed in Dublin in the early morning and headed two hours west to the town of Roscommon to meet up with the rest of my family for lunch. After lunch in downtown Roscommon, it was onto Knockcroghery where my father gave an impromptu family history presentation next to something called “Hangman’s Hill,” which did not bode well for some of our relatives.
After a meandering drive through Scregg, where we knocked on strangers’ doors thinking they were long-lost relatives, we ended up in Athlone, a small city that would be our hub for the first part of our trip. After dinner in downtown Athlone, we stopped by Peddlar Mac’s for a pornstar martini (we’d return the next night for live music and a bar singalong to both the traditional “Rattlin’ Bog” song and, oddly, “Wagon Wheel”) and checked out the 1,000-year old Sean’s Bar (where my dad made quick friends with the locals) for endless rounds of Sean’s own whiskey and a lot of Powers.
Day Two: Glassan & Ballymahon
After a morning walk around Athlone and a full Irish breakfast, it was time to hit the road and head north towards Ballymahon, where we had several scheduled appointments to learn about our family history. We stopped in the village of Glassan, where we had brown bread and Guinness stew and the restaurant owner got on the phone to make a tee time for Bill at a local course.
We walked through the Newcastle Woods and tried to scale the fence of Newcastle House, an imposing estate where our ancestors were tenant farmers. We stopped at St. Munis Church of Ireland to see the new gravestone of my great (x4?) grandfather John Sutton, who died in 1850 and whose widow and children were the first Suttons to emigrate to America later that year. We returned to the church later that night for a service and to meet members of the congregation whose families have attended the church for 200+ years.
After dinner at Skelly’s with a few “church ladies” and a colorful local character who serenaded us with anti-Trump poetry, we were back in Athlone for the aforementioned bar singalong at Peddler Mac’s and a couple more pornstar martinis.
Day Three: Road Trip to Sligo & Northern Ireland
Since it was Bill’s first time to Ireland and we were bypassing all of the scenic spots, I wanted to make this road trip to Northern Ireland as scenic as possible. Instead of a straight shot to our next destination of Ballymoney in Northern Ireland, we headed towards Sligo in the northwest corner of Ireland. Acting as navigator, I was tasked with finding somewhere to eat and started to randomly search Google Maps, which is how I came across the greatest accidental discovery of the entire trip: Atlantic Sheepdogs. Billed as a sheep-herding demonstration, it required booking via Facebook Messenger a mere one hour before the next demo started. Thinking we’d go see some cute dogs run around, we made our way through farms up a snaking rural road and found the home of Atlantic Sheepdogs.
Home to heritage breeds no longer kept in Ireland due to the decrease in profitability of sheep’s wool, Atlantic Sheepdogs now keeps sheep for meat but I don’t want to think too much about that so let’s focus on the cute dogs! We watched and learned about the different whistles and commands for the dogs, and learned that the dogs can help move thousands of sheep fast and they love what they do. If you’re ever hear Sligo, you *must* check them out.
We then drove north, stopping for a couple Guinness and saw the first of many pornstar-martini-on-tap offerings. We pulled into Downhill Beach in Northern Ireland around sunset, where we drove onto the beach and Bill took a brave dip in the freezing cold waters of the Inner Seas off the West Coast of Ireland.
Day Four: Dark Hedges, Giant’s Causeway and Belfast
For our last full day of the trip, we made our way east to Belfast, stopping at the Dark Hedges (made famous as the King’s Road in Game of Thrones) and Giant’s Causeway. Google Maps in Northern Ireland has a wicked sense of humor because we ended up on a tiny grass path cutting through fields and ran into a cow who was stuck between pastures and couldn’t make its way off the path.
Once in Belfast, we hit a few local spots for lunch and drinks then took a historical tour to learn about the Protestant vs Catholic “Troubles” and visit neighborhoods on both sides of the 40 foot fence that still divides the city today.
Our night in Belfast ended with an excellent seafood dinner at Mourne’s and a good craic and some diddley-dee at a pub.