Our Blaskets bliss
A fortnight ago, Lesley Kehoe, 27, and Gordon Bond, 28, from Co. Kildare, changed their lives and took up a unique offer for seven months – living on the Great Blasket Island, with no electricity, a wind turbine to occasionally charge their phone, and man
BEFORE the move we were up at dawn to catch the 7am train from Kildare to Heuston Station in Dublin. Now, we only get up to watch the sunrise over Slea Head.
We’re up and about with the first light in the morning. Our life is dictated by when the sun comes up as we can’t be fumbling about with a head torch on, trying to put the kettle on.
As soon as we see light outside, we potter about for a while, have a cup of tea, and look outside to see what the weather is like.
We live above a shop and don’t have a commute; it’s just a walk down the stairs.
There’s no heating, but we have a wind turbine which powers the phone – just about – so we really limit our usage of it. It’s a good way to get yourself focused on the priorities of life.
We have a battery-powered radio that we have on at times and it’s interesting to hear things going on in the world. But when you hear about traffic on the M50 it feels as if you are a million miles away!
We send our shopping list to Alice on the mainland, and her partner Billy brings it out on the boat.
You have to get very good at planning your meals which I thought I was good at doing, but it turns out, we are both awful at it.
We don’t have a freezer so it’s not a case of getting six chicken fillets to stock up, and sometimes you have to plan ahead for four days.
In the morning, if we have guests, we make them breakfast. If there are no guests staying overnight in one of the three houses on the island, we’ll have our own breakfast and get ourselves ready for any visitors for the day.
Every day, we get so many people who come over on the boat from Dingle, but Ventry and Dunquin will soon start to send out ferries as well.
We give them tea, coffee and serve scones, or get the accommodation ready for guests, making sure they have fresh bed sheets, and that they walk into a nice clean, warm house. When the boats leave, things wind down for the night. It’s just you and whoever else is there.
Sometimes it’s just the two of us so, we chill out, light the fire and read a book for the night. When the light goes, we go to bed.
We moved in on Saturday, April 6, so we’re here two weeks and have found a rhythm very quickly.
We both love the island so much and are so happy to be here. The only thing I have had trouble with is the cold. There’s no heat, no electricity, but plenty of hot water bottles and jumpers have helped out a lot. Our life is definitely different, we’re probably much more relaxed in ourselves. There is no problem that can’t be overcome with a bit of hard work.
You’re not sitting there mulling over an email for two hours before you send it off. You just get up and get your job done.
It’s a case of: ‘You sweep that floor, and I’ll put the kettle on.’ It’s a much simpler way of dealing with things, I think. We’re pretty busy, but it is a lovely kind of busy.
Back in Dublin there were days when you might send 20 emails and f e e l like you’ve got nowhere, but here, you get up, do your work and you can see the difference you have made every day. We visited the island in 2017 when I was writing my dissertation on the Great Blasket, on its culture and heritage.
I just wanted to be there and get a sense of the island. We stayed in this accommodation then and absolutely loved it. I liked the Great Blasket Island Facebook and Instagram pages and regularly saw their updates. Then, one evening I was on my way home from Dublin on the train and the job advert popped up on my Facebook page, so I rang and they remembered us. We found out that day that we were selected.
In a way, I was nearly afraid to tell my family, as I thought they would think we are mental. But nobody was that surprised. In fact, most people said they could only imagine us doing it, as they know our interest in heritage and how passionate we are about the outdoors. Some people said: ‘So, there’s no electricity, there’s no hot water and you’re going to live there for seven months?’ I think they were most shocked by that, rather than us making the move.
Gordon has a cold shower every day, and he says nothing else that day will be as cold as that. I just heat up water in a saucepan, though it’s not like standing under a steaming hot shower. I have four layers on me now, and I am actually standing inside wearing a waterproof jacket. But once you get moving, you forget then for a while.
It is absolutely stunning here. The Blaskets are such a unique place. I just think there is something magical about the Great Blasket; it’s effectively a mountain in the ocean and the terrain is steep. It’s nearly kind of a wilderness, as it’s uninhabited. We get tourists who come out and they often comment that you could point your camera anywhere and get a great picture.
You just think how lucky are we that we get to spend a few months here. It’s a handful of people who get to say that they’ve lived here.
We are blessed and absolutely know that. In the evening we give ourselves time to go out, go for a walk, even if all you did was walk down to the beach and look at the seals – it’s very special.
We both wanted a change, even though we were very happy in our jobs. We’re both young and don’t have any commitments so we felt like it was now or never, or that this opportunity may never come up again.
We found a little lamb soon after we arrived. He was probably only a day old and he had fallen down a small hole. We just heard this cry, and saw his little face looking up at us, and he still had his umbilical cord on. I have never seen an animal this small! Gordon got a rubber glove, filled it with milk and he pierced one of the fingers to feed him. We then got lamb feed and a bottle, and that took up a huge amount of our early days.
We decided it was probably best for him to go to the mainland as we don’t have the resources to look after him, so he’s gone to a lovely lady who rears lamb and sheep. There were some tears yesterday when Gordon brought him down to the boat, but I wouldn’t go.
When everyone is gone in the evenings it gives you time to appreciate the island, and think about how privileged we are to have it to ourselves. It’s silent apart from the noise of the shearwaters [birds] flying overhead. They make a weird, screeching sound at nighttime, so there is just that, the wind and the sounds of the waves on the beach. It’s quiet, but it’s a beautiful silence.
I don’t think we have gotten bored once. We just sit and chat, and relive the day together. We have probably talked more now than we have done in our whole lives.
We’re lucky because Gordon took a career break from the public service, and I worked in the civil service in a museum exhibition. I was very sad to give my notice, but I will definitely return to the sector when we go back.
I’d be very sad if someone told us we had to leave the island in the morning as we feel very comfortable here. We might look forward to being back in the comforts of home, but years from now we will always have this experience.
‘It’s a much simpler way of dealing with things’ ‘It’s quiet, but it’s a beautiful silence’