Maureen and Joe Ryan at Hollyford are wonderful hosts living in a spectacular home; they treated me and other guests with warmth and affection, trying in every way to display legendary Irish hospitality. Their accent differs from Dublin, so I had to pay close attention to tales they spun.
Perched on a soft hillside of Tipperary, a thousand feet above sea level, hills rise and fall in all directions, like a ship drifting in a misty sea. Thick goose-down comforters smother plush beds, while a modern shower delivers instant hot water. Every room has wifi. Joe lit a peat fire in the second living room, whose double glazed windows keep heat in.
Ryans have owned the farm for 300 years. Behind a screen of pines up the hill nestle an abandoned 3-room cottage and several outbuildings. Further up the hill, Joe found traces of six more cottages of Protestant families who left long ago for America and Australia. A nearby farmer leases the fields and pens yearlings in a barn beside the old cottage. When clouds lift, windmills mark the summit of hills.
I stayed for a week, got to know some of the locals and her son’s family, met lively visitors from Australia and Lithuania. Maureen and Joe welcome guests like their own family, turn the occasion into a celebration. One night we stayed up till 4 am, solving the world’s problems, enjoying his home-made wine, which is Napa Valley quality. A sawmill down the road now converts logs into sawn boards from local timber, rather than importing logs from Sweden. On a sunny day, I climbed the Rock of Casheel, a lively town now that the N4 allows trucks to bypass the town center. Another night Joe took me to a neighborhood pub, where locals gather to sing and play. The six pubs that once serviced the community are down to two, typical of rural Ireland. A half-hour north I visited Kilmore Monastery Cemetery at Silvermine, which has many Ryan gravestones – the oldest Ryan date I could read was 1840. Saint Patrick supposedly built a small wood church on the site around 450 AD; it was rebuilt several times in wood and stone, and now lies abandoned.