Install Findmino as an app for the best experience!
"What if you spent 48 hours speaking nothing but Irish?"
There is something genuinely disorienting about arriving in Gleann Cholm Cille and realising the only option is to actually use Irish — no falling back on English when your brain stalls. That mild panic fades fast, replaced by a quiet pride every time a full sentence lands correctly. You start dreaming in fragments of it by night two. You discover parts of your personality that simply do not exist in English. The landscape, the craic and the language start to feel like one thing. It changes how you hear the country you grew up in.
Niall (26), Castlebar — works in a credit union, does a bit of hillwalking when the weather allows
I nearly turned the car around somewhere outside Ballina, convinced my Irish wasn't good enough and that I'd spend the whole weekend nodding blankly at people.
Become a member to read the full storyPremium members can read a short experience on every card.
Enter your city or postal code — we show useful places from OpenStreetMap.
Other studies, careers, ideas and blogs you might not know yet.
We use functional cookies and — with your consent — cookies for preferences, statistics and marketing.