A Trip to Ireland

A SEPTEMBER TRIP TO IRELAND
by Dick Redmond

After years of telling my mother we were going
to take her to Ireland we finally decided to make
the trip in September 1983. My mother was 80 years
old at the time and in pretty good health.

We left Portland, Maine early in the morning and
arrived at Newark, New Jersey, where we took a
helicopter (a first for the three of us) to JFK.
We left for Shannon at 9.00 p.m. and arrived at
daylight. Without any plans or reservations we
rented a car and headed for Galway. My mother
turned on the radio and got a French station.
She looked at me and said 'are you sure we're in
the right country.'

When we got to Spiddal I pointed to a building
across the street and asked my mother if she
remembered it? It was the Spiddal Post Office
and my mother used to tell us about sending
letters to Ireland care of the Spiddal Post
Office.

We visited several relatives on our first full
day in Galway. My mother's cousin Joe Coyne asked
to stop in and see Granny Coyne in Creduft. We
couldn't find Creduft on the map so we stopped at
a store. The teenage girls didn't know were
Creduft was, but the father came in and confirmed
we were in Creduft and Granny Coyne lived across
the street. He also gave us directions to Nora
Naughton's house down the road towards Galway. We
met Nora and her granddaughter Luisne later the
same day. I met Luisne again 13 years later when
she and her family was staying at my brother
Dave's place on Little Diamond Island in Casco
Bay in Maine. Luisne and her sister Aisling are
both teachers in Ireland and their father is an
author and appears on a television program. Their
uncle Padraic is a priest in South Africa.

Later the same day we found where Nora Faherty
lived in Darrylaughan East. This was the original
homestead of the Flaherty family where my mother's
father grew up. The original house looked awful
small for such a large family, but Nora pointed
out that they had a loft.

We stayed at Park Lodge Spiddal for the first few
days and went to Ashford Castle in Cong, County
Mayo. Later we drove over to Connemera and visited
Kylemore Abby, a private school for girls. We
talked with an Indian girl and a girl from Kenya.

We then made a cross-country trip to Dublin hoping
to stay a few days there. We only stayed one day
because we couldn't find a room. Someone told us
they had an international conference taking place
in Dublin. With no reservations we had to find a
place to stay so we went to Wicklow for a few
days. We visited Mount Usher Gardens; Glendalough,
the Meeting of the Waters; and the home of Charles
Stewart Parnell (Avondale).

We stopped in Gorey for a few hours where my
father's father lived before he came to the United
States. There were an awful lot of Redmonds in
Gorey if you went by the names on the storefronts.
At Wexford we spent a few days at White's Hotel,
whose original owners daughter married Thomas
Moore. One night as we were heading back to our
hotel we met some people coming out of a pub. My
mother said to them 'the top of the morning to
you' and one of them replied 'and the rest of the
day to you'.

As we were leaving Wexford heading for Waterford
we came to a crossroad with no signs. I asked my
mother to roll down the window and ask that guy
on the corner if he knows the road to Waterford.
When she rolled up the window I asked her what
he said. She replied 'he said he was from
Philadelphia.'

Before heading for Shannon we visited The Rock of
Cashel, JFK Park in New Ross, Reginald's Tower in
Waterford and Bunratty Castle.

In all we spent 10 days in Ireland and we never
met a disagreeable person. My mother lived for
another 17 years after this trip and she never
tired of talking about the great time she had.


Ocala, Florida