As a transplant from the country, long living in Dublin, I find my mind wandering every few weeks across the Shannon and further westwards to the Atlantic coast. As often as possible my body gets to follow my imagination west to Sligo, Connemara or Clare to reset, prepping me for another stretch in the city.
During one of these trips to the west last year I heard about Summerage, a 1930s Land Commission cottage on a high plateau in the Burren, in the throes of a transformation into a 21st century self-catering retreat. I followed Summerage’s progress to completion on social media over the past few months, vicariously living my own dream to restore a house in this part of the world one day. After a seemingly never-ending winter, my horizon needed expanding and a booking at Summerage was just the ticket.
My wife, son and dog have a similar hankering for the west, so off we set, and a couple of podcasts after hitting the road, the lights of Kinvara come into view. Tales of badly behaved Roman emperors are swapped on the car stereo for Declan O’Rourke’s sublime The Stars over Kinvara. We roll down the windows to see actual stars, after an 11-day stretch of endless cloud cover.
In Ballyvaughan we hang a left and follow the winding, mountain road through endless fields of rock, before navigating a final farm road to Summerage. Alighting from the car, we are enveloped in darkness. Kinvara’s stars are no match for the theatre of the skies playing out above our heads; with craned necks we pick out constellations and galaxies we’ve never seen before.
The blackness of the night is swapped for the cosiness of the cottage interior. An A-rated makeover has swathed this refuge with underfloor heating and insulated walls, and warmth radiates from every corner. We light the stove and the rest of the night is spent on the couch with Manchán Magan’s 32 Words for Field, a book about the etymology of the Irish language, that suits this setting perfectly. The idea that the Irish language is at least 1,000 years older than English is a fact we all need to be reminded of constantly. The wind howls outside and we will the weather to do its worst.
Aoibheann McNamara bought this house on 32 acres of hazel woodland a few years ago, and has worked hard since to bring it back to life. We follow her instructions to wake up for sunrise. Out in the rocky fields in our pyjamas, we’re rewarded with a Turner-like brightening in the clouds. McNamara’s Mercedes estate soon draws a line across the landscape before pulling up before us in the driveway, which is surrounded by stone walls.
When not restoring Summerage, McNamara runs ArdBia, the much-loved restaurant and community hub located in a stone building behind Galway’s Spanish Arch. With her costume designer friend Triona Lillis, she also runs the Tweed Project, a clothing company based in Galway that uses exclusively Irish fabrics. All the beautiful yellow and red cushions and throws on the couches and beds in the house have been made by the label.
She leads me through the hazel wood with her dog Puffy in tow to find the ruins of a famine village in a hidden dell. She explains that these limestone hills absorb heat in the summer, holding on to it throughout the colder months and warming the pastures for the cattle in a process known as winterage. Hence the reverse-naming of her house. Hundreds of oak trees have been planted here in the last year, along with an orchard of apple trees and a vegetable garden and green house to supply the restaurant in Galway. I’m in awe of all she has achieved.
It would be very easy to never leave this house. It’s set up so beautifully that six days could be spent here among all the books and bespoke furnishings, gazing out at the Burren, the views framed by every perfectly placed window. But a lunch booking at Michelin-starred Homestead Cottage near Doolin manages to lure us away temporarily from this refuge.
Chef Robbie McCauley and his wife Sophie set up their restaurant in this charming 200-year-old cottage in 2023, using vegetables from their own garden and other ingredients sourced or foraged locally. We’re seated by the wood-stove, and soon plates of home-baked sourdough and brown bread appear, followed by a parsnip velouté and a starter of local oysters in a champagne sabayon. A beetroot and St Tola cheese salad sets us up for the fish course with delicious halibut, and our carnivorous son is delighted when a beef dish appears soon after. The “build it and they will come” maxim is very much in evidence here today with a full house of diners, all equally amazed as we are that food at this level is increasingly available in Ireland’s hidden corners.
We follow the steely grey coast road home through Fanore, where giant boulders have come to a stop between the clints and grikes of the limestone pavement above the sea. The Aran Islands are just about visible in the distance and then Black Head Lighthouse comes into view, awaiting a cameo in a Wes Anderson movie.
The lights of O’Loclainn’s pub in Ballyvaughan beckon, and as we squeeze through the front door we’re immediately caught up in an Irish music session so oversubscribed that we never actually manage to cut through the throng to order the whiskey that this beautiful little bar is known for. Even without a drink, this is exactly the scene you always hope to experience when entering a pub in the west of Ireland.
Back at Summerage, the clouds have descended and there’s no repeat performance of the celestial display from the night before. We light all the candles in the cottage instead and crank up The Gloaming on the speaker: the ultimate soundtrack for this barren but intensely beautiful setting.
Waking the next morning, no scroll through Instagram could compete with the view from our bedroom of stone walls, cattle on their warmed pasture and rock-covered hills.
We arrange to meet Triona Lillis in nearby Ennistymon. Many of the soft furnishings in Summerage have been designed by Triona and Aoibheann’s label the Tweed Project and I’m interested to hear more about their process. Triona leads me up to the studio in the eaves of her riverside home, explaining as she goes how all the linen they use comes from Wexford, and their tweed comes from Molly & Sons in Donegal and from the Kerry Woollen Mills. The colours and textures of the Burren are a huge influence, and we admire tassled grey blankets shot with metallic threads.
Triona asks us to bring a suit back with us to Dublin: as it turns out, the Tweed Project make all of the suits Tommy Tiernan wears on his RTÉ chatshow. I decide to visit their showroom the next time I’m in Galway.
Before leaving Ennistymon, we call in to the wonderful Market House Food Hall. Triona tells me that half of Clare keep their winter colds at bay with Moss Boss Tonic and we stock up with a few bottles of this elixir made with sea moss in Ennis.
More seaweed awaits back at Doolin. Wild Atlantic Seaweed Baths operates an open air spa on the foreshore near the pier, looking out at Crab Island with the Cliffs of Moher in the distance. A cloud of steam rises from a line of oak barrels filled to the brim with seaweed and piping hot water. A rope of festoon lights is strung across the site. We spend a very happy hour soaking in the iodine-rich sea water, taking in the panorama of the cliffs. Who needs Bali?
We continue the day’s ocean theme by driving over the hills to Linnane’s Lobster Bar at New Quay for dinner. Seamus Heaney advised visiting these parts in September or October in his poem Postscript, but the wind and the light are still working off each other at the Flaggy Shore in early spring. Linnane’s doesn’t feature in Heaney’s poem, but the seafood being served up here is just as breathtaking as the wild ocean that we look out at from our table. Plates of Flaggy Shore oysters soon appear, and we feel it would be a shame not to try the lobster, given the location.
It’s our last morning in Summerage and I repeat the ritual of lighting the stove and the candles before breakfast. We’re envious that our house in Dublin can’t compete in the cosy stakes, and we make mental notes about how to bring extra warmth into our own habitat. We eat our breakfast from orange-flecked plates; a local potter was commissioned to design a bespoke set of tableware to match the colour scheme of the house. It’s gorgeous to stay somewhere where every single thing, from the bone-handled cutlery to the J Hill’s Standard crystal glasses, has been selected because it brings joy. The walls are dotted with framed photographs of British film-maker Derek Jarman’s famous tar-black house in Dungeness on the Kent coast. McNamara made a pilgrimage there last year to take these images, and draw inspiration for her own house in a similarly austere landscape.
It’s very hard to leave, but Summerage is now available for short-term stays and I’m sure we’ll be back.
Poulnabrone Dolmen has presided over the Burren for more than 5,000 years from its perch on one of the highest spots in the area. It’s just up the road from Summerage and we drop by to pay our respects before heading for home. This is arguably Ireland’s most famous dolmen and for me, the unofficial symbol of the Burren. With all the turmoil we seem to be living through at the moment, it’s grounding to spend some time with an ancient structure that has weathered many the storm, and survived.
Fergal McCarthy was a guest of Summerage, see ardbia.com. For help planning your own trip to the Burren, see discoverireland.ie
