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"What if you worked on a roof made of reed and rope?"
There is something quietly mad about standing on a roof in a Galway field, pushing a legget into a thick bed of water reed while the wind comes in off the Atlantic. Thatching slows you right down — every twist of the scallop, every row of sways demands your full attention. You stop thinking about your phone, your inbox, your Leaving Cert results. By Sunday evening your arms ache, your hands smell of reed, and you have genuinely made something that could last thirty years. Not many weekends hand you that.
Donal (29), Castlebar — works for the council planning department, fixes old motorbikes in the shed on weekends
My mate Ciarán put me onto it after he did a woodturning thing in Roscommon and said the weekend had sorted his head out, which I took with a grain of salt but still ended up googling thatching workshops at half eleven on a Tuesday.
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