Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
NOW THAT’S A COMMUTE
Care worker Vanessa starts her day with a 1.5-mile hike, then rows her plastic boat across treacherous waters before driving over an hour
EXCLUSIVE BY
YOU’VE got to feel for Vanessa Rochester when she tells her hubby: “Isle be off to work now, love.”
For the 32-year-old frontline care worker surely has the UK’s trickiest commute.
It involves a 30-minute moonlit hike, a treacherous row, occasional rock climb and over an hour’s drive.
Vanessa and her family are the sole occupants of a remote island cut off from the west coast of Scotland by a raging tidal channel.
The 300-acre peninsula is 300 yards off the island of Eilean Shona, in Loch Moidart – and the same distance from the mainland.
But that doesn’t stop mum-of-one Vanessa from diligently doing what it takes to get to the elderly residents she cares for in Lochaber – no matter what the weather. Day shifts involve getting up at 5.45am. She does nights too so will encounter the dark one way or the other – possibly both. After kissing husband Jeff, 48, and year-old son Duke goodbye, her journey to work starts with a 1.5 mile trek across the island.
She walks down a dirt track and through woodland – with protected Scotch pine and oak – to get to a crossing point on the south of the island.
Vanessa drags their 8ft plastic boat into the water and rows across the fast and often dangerous current, with the moon and stars lighting her way.
The crossing can take five minutes on a calm day – but five times as long during a storm. Vanessa then clambers out and into her Mitsubishi for the drive to work at a care home. Her worst commute, just last month, saw her blown so dramatically off course she ended up back on the island.
She had to abandon her boat, scramble up a cliff, through a bog – and then ring Jeff.
Vanessa says: “I had no idea where I was. Jeff slung Duke on his back and headed to the North Channel where we agreed he’d shine a torch across the water to enable me to find my bearing.
“Finally I spotted a beam of light. Turns out I was still on the island, but had drifted way off course and walked in the opposite direction.”
She made her way to Jeff – and still got to work, using a leaky back-up boat which is just about usable “if TREK ME OUT Dedicated Vanessa you row quick enough”. But it’s all worth it, says dedicated Vanessa.
She adds: “I really enjoy my job. I love working with elderly people, it’s a really good team that I work with, plus I get to see other people – which otherwise doesn’t happen much.” Vanessa and Jeff moved into their 17th century caretakers’ waterfront cottage in 2016. Jeff manages the island for the family who own it as a retreat – fixing fences, felling trees and anything else that needs doing. Neighbouring isle Eilean Shona is owned by Vanessa Branson – sister of Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson.
Back-up boat leaks but it’s OK if you row quickly! VANESSA ROCHESTER ON HER MEGA COMMUTE
EVE Hewson has admitted that she got “the desire for attention” from her famous father Bono.
The star didn’t inherit his singing voice, but she is forging her own path into stardom in the world of acting after landing a string of amazing roles.
Eve, 29, joked: “I definitely didn’t get the singing, I got the desire for attention from my dad.”
She said she wasn’t able put her finger on what exact qualities her mother Ali Hewson passed onto her but she has always been there to support her.
Speaking to host Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show, she said: “My mum is a sort of mysterious woman and I wouldn’t be able to reveal her traits.”
The Netflix star added: “She is pretty smart and I have called her a few times crying when I haven’t got the job that I wanted.
“She has always told me to get on with it, you are in love with this thing and to keep going because the right thing will come up.”
Eve said her father loved to embarrass her and siblings, Jordan, Eli and John, while dropping them to school in Dublin.
She said: “When he was home, he would love to drive us to school because that was the time he got to spend with us and talk to us.
“He would drive in his dressing gown
and his shades. In the traffic on the Blackrock Road, he liked to put on Backstreet Boys really loud and start dancing in the traffic.
“We were so humiliated but that is the kind of dad he is. He knows how to embarrass us, that is for sure.”
Eve previously lived in New York with her sister Jordan but their mum insisted that the return home to Ireland once the pandemic hit last March.
She said: “I usually live in New York and so does my sister and when it all happened my mum called us and said we had to come home.
“She loves having all four of her kids in the house at the same time, so she was in heaven!
“We moved home and I have basically been living in Dublin for all of 2020 and now I am over in London by myself.”
Things slowed down in the world of acting as a result of the pandemic but after moving to London Eve has already confirmed a project for this year.
She said: “I have been at auditions by Zoom, which I hate. But things are happening and productions are running, it is actually quite safe and they have been testing people every two or three days while you are working.
“I have got something I am doing this year and I am waiting on when we can shoot. I am dying to get back to work.”
I have been at auditions by Zoom,which I date. But things are happening EVE HEWSON ON GETTING WORK AS AN ACTRESS