Roundstone’s lost summer: ‘Within an hour, most of my bookings were wiped out’

It’s not as geographically far from the capital as some other glorious seaside villages on the west coast, which is possibly one reason why the Connemara village of Roundstone has long been a popular holiday destination for Dubliners.

Or rather, a certain cohort of Dubliners: people who are wealthy enough to buy what are often expensive houses in and near the village. At some point in the past decade or so, the preponderance of holiday houses owned by people who normally work and live in Dublin meant that Roundstone was (inevitably) dubbed either the “D4” of Connemara, or “C4”.

“Or G4,” says Orla Connelly, who grew up in the village. “People from Galway city have been coming out here too for several years now.”

Like many other Irish western coastal villages in Donegal, Sligo, Clare, Cork, Mayo and Kerry, Roundstone has gorgeous beaches close by, and stunning mountain backdrops. The luminous pale-yellow beaches of Gurteen and Dog’s Bay, with their clear turquoise water, are particularly beautiful, but they are not the only lovely beaches in Ireland, and nor is Roundstone its only charming village.

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Yet for some reason it’s specifically Roundstone that has attracted generations of Dubliners to holiday here, and nobody I ask during two days here can answer why that is.

“I don’t know,” Connelly confesses. “But a lot of my customers are the children of my mother’s customers.” She grew up in Eldon’s Hotel on the village’s main and only street. Her mother, Ann, managed the hotel for years, and still lives there (it’s now leased out).

Connelly herself now runs the Bogbean cafe, where her sister Noleen does all the baking. She also has five rooms over it that are usually available on a B&B basis, where a double room with breakfast is €100. Not this year, however, which should have been her sixth season. She counts up the number of nearby B&Bs that did not open this summer: seven.

There's a feeling of a responsibility to our village. We depend on tourism. If there's nothing available for tourists, it's bad for our village

“Looking at email in March was so demoralising. Every one was a cancellation,” she says. The cafe reopened on July 2nd. In common with most other businesses in the village, it usually opens from St Patrick’s Day to Halloween. It is still open five days a week, but only for five hours a day instead of seven. Trade is takeaway only, and has switched from mainly hot food to coffees, sandwiches, salads and baked goods.

Apart from economic necessity, Connelly had an additional reason to reopen her cafe. “There’s a feeling of a responsibility to our village. We depend on tourism. If there’s nothing available for tourists, it’s bad for our village and bad for business. We have to offer something for people.”

Maurice and Aisling Ryan run Island View, a B&B in the middle of the village – one of the few to reopen this summer. They have three rooms, and a double is €85 a night, with breakfast. “The main reason we reopened was that we have five children, two of them in college, and neither entitled to a grant, so financially, we had no choice,” Maurice says. They also have a self-catering property they let out.

“Sometimes we don’t rent out all the B&B rooms in July and August, because we have our own family coming,” he says. “This year, we had to tell them they couldn’t come, because we needed to rent the room, because we lost April, May and June.”

Maurice is from Roundstone: his mother was the local teacher, and his wife, Aisling, is now a teacher at the village school. His family had a pub here at one point.

“Nine out of ten houses in the village and surrounding area would be tourist owned,” he says. “Mostly by people from Dublin and a section out from Galway. A lot of the Dublin people are very loyal, and come back generation after generation with their families.”

How did it come about that Dubliners chose Roundstone as a holiday destination?

Maurice is stumped by the question. “It’s a beautiful place,” he says eventually, while admitting Ireland has other beautiful places. Like everyone else I talk to, Dubliners have been taken for granted for so long as summer residents that nobody can recall why or how the phenomenon first started.

The day I call to see him, it’s the morning after the night before, when the Government announced their latest Covid-19 restrictions. These include a recommendation that those over 70 should keep the number of people they meet as low as possible, for as short a period of time as possible.

“Within an hour, most of my bookings for September were wiped out,” he says. “It was so disheartening. It nearly felt like March all over again, with everyone cancelling. Traditionally, July and August are for families. September is for older visitors. I am now wondering if it is worth staying open in September. Usually I stay open until November. These mixed messages from the Government are not helpful. Older people did everything by the book, and now they are being told to stay home again.”

Up until now, given the late opening of his B&B, it has been a reasonable summer. One thing he has noticed is that: “People are mad to talk. Even though we are supposed to keep a distance, and we can’t offer coffee and scones on arrival this year, any older guests we had were like they had got out of jail. They are just mad to talk. We are sociable beings, and people have missed being sociable.”

Even though there are only three guest rooms, there has still been an underlying stress in having the business open. “Every morning you are waking up wondering is someone gong to come downstairs sick,” says Maurice. “Even though we are open, we could still have to close any minute.”

Roundstone, population 214 in the 2016 census, is not a resort village. There are no amusement arcades, no fun fairs, no vast apartment holiday complexes, no fast food restaurants and no souvenir shops.

There are two small hotels, Eldon’s and the Roundstone House Hotel (currently closed for the summer, as is its restaurant, Vaughans). There are two small grocery shops, and an antique and curiosities shop (closed the day I’m there). Kings Bar is closed, as it doesn’t serve food. The Shamrock Inn is open and so is O’Dowd’s restaurant, although its bar is closed. Eldon’s Hotel is serving food in the evening, but only to residents.

If you didn’t know the village and were just driving through, it’s unlikely you would realise you were passing a key local gathering point, because it’s not a building. The gathering space is a long low continuous wall near the pier, where people have always converged with drinks from nearby bars, or to chat, or watch the activity in the harbour below. The wall acts as a kind of ad-hoc bench, look-out, open-air bar and community space. It fronts a tiny stone-flagged park in memory of Alexander Nimmo, Scottish civil engineer and designer of the village’s harbour.

“That’s where people go with their takeaway pints and drinks,” says Ellen Andrews, who moved to the village from Essex in England two years ago. The Shamrock Bar serves food so it could reopen, but business, she reports, is down at least 30 per cent this summer. Ellen and her husband, John, have the lease on the Shamrock Bar.

“They can get take-out drinks, but have to go 100m away with them, according to regulations. It’s lovely in fine weather, but they go down to the wall even when it’s raining. They just put up umbrellas and stay there. They’re on holidays. They don’t mind.”

Ellen’s mother, Teresa Keane, was from Roundstone. She left for England when she was 16. Upon marriage, Ellen and her siblings subsequently returned on holiday by ferry to visit family each summer. “Roundstone reminds of Jamaica, but without the sunshine,” she says.

Why is it so popular with Dubliners?

“They say it’s a change from busy city life. Probably about 90 per cent of people from Dublin who come here have their own places. They all know each other because they have been coming for years. Everybody knows everybody else. A lot of them come for Easter too.”

That actor from Fifty Shades of Grey was here a fortnight ago. What's his name?

I see former politician Ruairí Quinn from my hotel window at Eldon’s, as he carries a take-out drink down to the wall. Fellow former politician Mary Banotti and composer Bill Whelan both have houses there.

“Some presenter from ITV, I can’t remember their name; they were here lately,” says Ellen.

“That actor from Fifty Shades of Grey was here a fortnight ago. What’s his name?” Orla Connelly says. She is talking about Jamie Dornan.

Diarmuid Vaughan runs Roundstone House Hotel, which has been in his family for almost a century. The hotel has 12 rooms, but it didn’t open this summer. “We live here too,” he says. “And my mother is 84, so we didn’t want to take risks.”

The restaurant and bar is closed, as the building is more than 300 years old and the configuration of the place would have made social distancing too challenging. “Usually the place would be hopping all day, between the caravan parks and the people who own houses here,” he says.

However, they have opened a pop-up gourmet deli, and also offer some take-out food: crab salad, lasagne, banoffee pies. “The shop is going better than we expected. We won’t make any money on it, but we will retain our customers for next year, we hope.”

It's not just Roundstone, that gets people from Dublin. It's Clifden, and Ballyconneely and all through Connemara in general

He says several Dublin-based families have been coming to the village since the 1950s. “And from Galway in recent years. I think they discovered us quite late, in about the 1990s.” It used to be the trend to come to the holiday houses for six weeks in summer, but he’s noticed that now it’s often more like “two weeks, three at the most. Then other family members come down, or they sublet the houses out.

“It’s not just Roundstone, though, that gets people from Dublin. It’s Clifden, and Ballyconneely and all through Connemara in general.”

In common with others I talk to in Roundstone, Vaughan says tourism is the village’s primary source of income, and extends beyond those working directly in hospitality. “There’s a lot of jobs involved with the holiday houses and rentals. Housekeeping, odd jobs, gardening, maintenance. You could be an electrician and still be supported by tourism.”

With the hotel, restaurant and bar closed, his staff has gone from 18 to five. They would have been doing at least 250 food covers a day previously.

“I think when people were able to travel again and they came down first, it seemed some people thought there were different rules here from Dublin. It’s hard to know what they expected. They were definitely surprised by how many places remained closed. But for instance, a lot of the B&Bs are run by retired people, and they just did not want to take a chance.

Nicholas Griffin is the owner and manager of O’Dowd’s restaurant, bar and cafe. Like Diarmuid Vaughan, his family are long-standing members of the village. He’s the fourth generation to run the business. He’s seen Roundstone’s year-round population reduce over the past 20 years, which has also made it harder to find local staff. “When I was at the school here, there were 120 kids, and now there are only 24,” he says.

Usually, he employs up to 25 people in the summer. This year it’s just seven, and he praises how hard they have been working, under very demanding circumstances.

Griffin observes that it’s not just this summer that has seen “the demise of the pub. So many things used to be organised in the pub, and that’s changed. We were losing a bit of community.”

But what has been happening regularly in recent years to fill this gap are long-time visitors, often Dubliners, stepping in to help organise community events and fundraise for the coastal village they love.

“There are some families coming here for two or three generations, and were worried to see places closing. They asked us how can they help, because in the summer, the people who live here are flat out working all the time and don’t have time to organise any events. And I guess they have access to lot of contacts. They can pick up the phone and get in touch with people who know how to go about doing things.”

Everyone congregates back in the village afterwards, and it's a great fun day, and a way of giving back to the community

Among those who have been proactive in this way is Greig Sweeney, a Dubliner who has a house in the village, and whose wife, Anna Creedon, spent her summers there. Among the events he has helped organise is an annual “Tour de Bog”. It’s a 38km bike ride to Ballyconneely and back by a bog road.

“To enter, you buy a T-shirt for €10,” he explains. “The village sells about 500 of them.” His own company sponsors the cost of the event. “Everyone congregates back in the village afterwards, and it’s a great fun day, and a way of giving back to the community.”

For the past three years, Sweeney has also organised a “Summer Party” dinner dance at the village community hall. He funds the cost of the event himself, which is about €5,000. Tickets are €50 a head. All the money raised from the sales of tickets is divided equally between Roundstone Town Council and the National Breast Cancer Research Institute, which is based in NUIG. Last year they raised €16,000, with an additional €4,000 coming from an auction on the night, facilitated by the charismatic Galway auctioneer Colm O’Donnellan.

This year the Summer Party could not take place. Fellow Dubliner and Roundstone visitor, businessman Paul Davey, came up with the idea of a beach clean-up, which Sweeney then organised.

“I wrote to about 20 people who holiday in the village, asking them to sponsor a team of people for €2,000.” Volunteers in teams of up to 10 then cleared beaches and coastlines on August 8th, at 10 different locations in and around Roundstone. They gathered more than 200 black sacks of rubbish; a considerable civic duty in addition to the fund-raising.

Why did Sweeney want to do it?

“I do it because I have come to love this place and the community. And I’m not the only one,” he says.