Ireland’s National Maritime Museum ishoused, aptly enough, in the old Mariners Church of Dún Laoghaire, Dublin Bay. Built in 1837, the churchhasremained in place despite a town that has changed rapidly around it. The church now has pride of place…

What do you get when you put together the Welsh reputation for musicality and the Irish tradition of a céilí band? The natural desire to compete. At least that’s what it stirred for me, a young musician performing in Wales as part of an annual…

Legend goes that St Patrick, a Christian missionary to Ireland in the fifth century, used the leaves of the shamrock to explain the concept of the holy trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Ireland's tourism identity has long used the symbol of…

The tragic torpedo attack of RMS Leinster on the 10th October, 1918, is recorded as the biggest loss of life in the Irish Sea. Out of 813 souls, 569 souls lost their lives. Many of the crew were made up of residents from Holyhead, including Captain…

The cluster of rocks known as The Smalls, 20 miles off the coast of south west Wales, was a major shipping hazard, notorious for ferocious rip tides, until 1777 when an unorthodox timber lighthouse structure was erected consisting of nine stout oak…

Virginia Woolf travelled widely in Britain and Europe throughout her life, but visited Ireland only once. On 27 April 1934, she sailed out from Fishguard to Cork for a motoring tour with her husband Leonard, visiting the novelist Elizabeth Bowen at…

In August 1909 the liner the Mauretania called for the first time at Fishguard, having established a new record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic from New York. A public holiday was proclaimed, and trains of day trippers from Swansea,…

The inhabitants of Abercastle, Pembrokeshire were much surprised on Saturday [10th August 1876] by the arrival on their coast of a seaman named Alfred Johnson in an open boat in which he left Gloucester Massachusetts on the 15th June. The boat is…

Looking across the Irish Sea to Snowdonia in Wales on a bright snowclad morning is a disconcerting experience. From Wicklow, Wexford and even parts of Dublin it seems as though you could walk across to the Welsh coastline, and there are some…

Although Dewi Sant, or Saint David, has been recognised as the Welsh patron saint at least since the twelfth century, public celebrations of his feast day are a fairly recent tradition. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the habit of patriotic…