Celebrate Your Irish Heritage

Hi, we're Mike and Carina. We travel Ireland and the Irish ancestral trails of the world, connect with people of Irish descent and share the resulting stories, photos, videos and podcasts with you.

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Recent Articles

Mizen Head Bridge

Skibbereen to Mizen Head on the Wild Atlantic Way

We pick up on our next leg of the Wild Atlantic Way – travelling from Skibbereen to Mizen Head in County Cork – after leaving Cape Clear behind us. This leg feels like “home territory” for me as I know the area well – my own family of Collins’ came from outside the village of Ballydehob.

questions jpg - Do You Have an Irish Surname Question?

Do You Have an Irish Surname Question?

This is the part of the letter from Ireland where I (Mike) will attempt to answer all your Irish surname questions – or at least steer you in the right direction. All you need to do is to write out your question in the comments section at the end of this page – and I’ll…

slider3 jpg - County Tipperary Surnames and Places

County Tipperary Surnames and Places

When someone signs up for our weekly Letter from Ireland, we ask them for the Irish surnames in their family and the counties in Ireland their ancestor came from originally. As a result, we now have about 25,000 entries on our list. The following names are ones we received from readers whose ancestors came from…

slider jpg - Kinsale to Clonakilty on the Wild Atlantic Way

Kinsale to Clonakilty on the Wild Atlantic Way

We start our journey along the Wild Atlantic Way in the lovely town of Kinsale. We are very fortunate to have this on our doorstep as we live about twenty minutes away. Every school child in Ireland knows this place for the Battle of Kinsale which took place in 1601 and made real the English…

slider image jpg - Cape Clear on the Wild Atlantic Way

Cape Clear on the Wild Atlantic Way

We left the pier in Baltimore (sharing a name and a link with Baltimore city in the USA) at 10.30am and headed off to Cape Clear across a gentle swell. Cape Clear has about 130 people living there permanently – all speaking Irish to varying degrees. That had dropped from a pre-famine population of over…