Abandoned over 150 years ago, famine village on a remote western Island

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:34]Um we're off. We're off. We're escaping uh for a couple of days. is we're heading over to um Akil Island um to Keel Beach. Um it's somewhere we've wanted to go for a long long time. So we're very excited to escape. We've packed up the van. Um I packed actually packed up the van yesterday and uh and then we decided we weren't going to go last night cuz Jess had a bit of work to do. So I then spent the evening getting things out of the van as I needed them.

[00:01:00]It was very frustrating, but uh I've now now put them all back in again. Um so we've packed up the camper. There's Minty there. And we're going to go off.

[00:01:09]So, we're going to go off to explore.

[00:01:10]So, um really looking forward to it.

[00:01:12]Akal Island's on sort of like the the far sort of northwest tip of County Mayo. And it's supposed to be absolutely incredible. Um wild and rugged and uh with lots of really cool little beaches and things. So, we're camping up right up on Keel Beach. So, we're really excited about that. Um and it's Jesse's birthday. Hooray. So, Jesse's birthday um weekend. So, it's going to be a nice little treat for us both. Um, especially Jess because she gets to spend it with me.

[00:02:33]Hey everyone, we've arrived. We're in Akill. We're all parked up. We had a nice little drive over. Um lovely to uh leave the mainland and cross over the little bridge. You feel like you're uh you're in a very special place.

[00:02:47]Um, we stopped at a nice little cafe on the way. Um, fed the alpacas, not llamas apparently, alpacas.

[00:02:56]And, uh, they were very, very cute indeed.

[00:03:00]It's very nice here. Um, it's a little bit cloudy and, uh, and, uh, overcast over the back, but look. Oh, there's a big bank here.

[00:03:11]Um, so this is where we're at. It's a nice little view over there.

[00:03:17]and a beautiful field, lots of skyllocks, but you can see the low cloud. It's really clinging. Um, but hopefully in the next day or two, we'll uh we'll have that gone.

[00:03:38]We're on Keel Beach.

[00:03:41]Where's Jess? Where's Jess?

[00:03:44]Oh.

[00:03:47]K beach. Uh there's a lovely sunny drive coming in, but it's pretty wild out here now.

[00:03:54]>> What do you think, Jess?

[00:03:55]>> It's uh lovely. It's a lovely day.

[00:03:58]>> Lovely. Nice day for a barbecue.

[00:04:00]>> Perfect. Perfect.

[00:04:02]>> Let's get another swim.

[00:05:04]think for that view, Jess? It's pretty good. It's nice. Now the sun's out.

[00:05:10]>> Amazing seeing the clouds break through, isn't it? those cliffs. That's down there is Keel Beach where we've just been camped last night.

[00:05:18]Um we've just come up the uh the hill now just outside to where are we now Jess?

[00:05:23]>> This is uh Schllemore Schllemore village.

[00:05:26]>> So this is the farming village.

[00:05:36]This then is what a human habitation looks like when it has been left in peace after death.

[00:05:45]So in amongst all of the uh these ruined houses, you can see the old stone walls marking out their little plots of land.

[00:05:52]And you can really clearly see the potato drills, these furrows running down the hill.

[00:06:00]They're marked out well because the uh the rushes are growing in the low parts, but they'd have been using the same drills, you know, the same shapes there for centuries. Just keep piling them back up.

[00:06:55]How small these houses are. They all look to be about the same size.

[00:07:01]About 3 m wide maybe at best. Got a whole family in here. Is that a window, Jess? That's a That is a window or something, isn't it? Yeah.

[00:07:12]>> Hi.

[00:07:13]>> A window.

[00:07:14]>> That's stood. Well, isn't it? It's amazing. These stones are stood so long. That's the doorway in which I'm now going to exit.

[00:07:33]Um, so a field here. You can see all the potato drills here. Very wide, very far apart, all quite boggy in the middle, but it's like really steep here. Imagine like having to farm this like through kind of winters and rough weather cuz we're so exposed here. Um, all they grew was potatoes cuz all the other veggies and things were all exported.

[00:08:00]That's why potatoes were such a massive crop, weren't they? Potatoes, a bit of buttermilk out of a skillet.

[00:08:09]A skiib. A ski.

[00:08:17]Yes. So, like Sophie said, uh they only grew potatoes cuz it was the only crop that would grow on the land they were allowed to grow on. All of the good land was taken over by uh by the English.

[00:08:30]Catholics were banned from owning land which allowed all of the uh English aristocrats to seize control of it and they would grow the uh the cash crops and ship them out around the empire.

[00:08:45]So whe stone chat, not a stone chat. No, it sounds like a stone chat, but then it does that little whistle.

[00:08:52]>> Ah, okay.

[00:08:52]>> And it's black and white as well. Oh, it's got a black and white flash when it flies.

[00:08:57]Very smart little bird. Looks a little bit like a nut hatch.

[00:09:00]>> Yeah, very colorful.

[00:11:03]Heat.

[00:11:11]Heat.

[00:11:25]Hi.

[00:11:25]>> Hi everyone. On Keem Beach now.

[00:11:29]>> Very keen on uh Keem Keem Beach and we're having a great time. It's beautiful day. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:11:36]Uh >> yeah, the sun's >> beautiful. Blue, blue, blue. Yeah, we found the sun and it was at Keem Beach.

[00:11:42]There's the beautiful sea there. Look at that.

[00:11:45]The water is still cold.

[00:11:47]>> Could be in Barbados.

[00:11:49]Absolutely amazing.

[00:11:51]>> You can't beat the old British Isles for their amazing beaches.

[00:11:55]>> Well, not even like to call it the British Isles.

[00:11:58]>> Well, well, no, this is true, actually.

[00:12:00]Yes. Yes. Great. It is.

[00:12:02]>> Yes. I thought Ireland is is is not part of the British. Oh, hang on. Let's We better edit out. Let's edit that bit out. I don't get into trouble.

[00:12:09]>> Um, you can't beat it, can you? The old the old island beaches. Fantastic. Could be in Barbados. Anyway, it's Jesse's birthday. She had a lovely birthday lunch. I made her a sandwich out the van and she had a lovely bit of bit of ham and uh ham and spring onion, didn't you?

[00:12:27]Fantastic. Which is great because we didn't bring any uh toothpaste with us today. So, we've been able to brush our teeth properly. So, uh we both smell the spring onions, which is you can imagine that. Just imagine that.

[00:12:39]>> So, this this beach, they filmed the bounties of Iniran here.

[00:12:44]Um we filmed with uh >> with um um Farrell.

[00:12:48]>> Call him Farrell.

[00:12:49]>> Call him Farrell and the other fella.

[00:12:51]>> And uh Gage, what's his name?

[00:12:53]>> He says uh he says, "I'm not I don't want to be your friend anymore." He says, doesn't he? He says, "I don't like you anymore." He says he says he liked me yesterday.

[00:13:01]>> He liked me yesterday.

[00:13:02]>> He liked me yesterday. Um so his house is just up on this beach. So we're going to have a look.

[00:13:09]There's a house. So apparently it's privately owned house. I don't know what they're doing to it.

[00:13:15]>> It's a great film, Banshees Vin. And if you haven't seen it, high recommend from us.

[00:13:20]>> Chisumati chising off the barge boards, which is uh what we'll have to do on ours.

[00:13:26]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:13:29]>> Big runs of concrete on the edge of the uh >> gables.

[00:13:35]>> Yeah. You get shuttered and concreted on.

[00:13:38]>> That's not Desi though, is it up there?

[00:13:40]No, that might be Desi. Oh, he's too far out in case he comes out next.

[00:13:46]>> Very elusive that that fell. Very elusive.

[00:13:50]Get that in there.

[00:13:53]There they are, lads.

[00:13:55]Oh, it's Brendan Gleon, wasn't it? Yeah.

[00:13:57]Yeah. Power Brendan Gleon.

[00:14:13]Hi everyone. It's 28° here now. It's midday. It's absolutely boiling. It's beautiful. It's still We've had the digger going all morning. Um lots and lots of uh trucks coming in to take away a lot of the top soil. Um there's been a lot of that to get rid of. Um, and also the skip is here still. The skip which is being picked up tomorrow.

[00:14:40]So, I'm just going through the cottage picking up any bits of rubbish that I want to get rid of. Um, because like I say, it's very hot. So, I'm just taking it nice and steady. Little jobs indoors.

[00:14:50]Just show you what Jerry's been doing.

[00:14:52]So, uh, kind of hard to tell on camera, but that pile was much much bigger before. Um, and that is all going out around the village.

[00:15:02]two different people that need the top soil.

[00:15:06]A big pile there. This whole area here from the van the van across. When Jerry's finished, it will all be clear. Um and then we're going to just we're just going to scrape over the surface, I think. So, we can um get deliveries on there. We can get um storage containers on there. We can get um a bit of parking on there possibly as well. There's the skip. Nice and full.

[00:15:33]Um it's an 8 ton skip. We weren't sure how big a skip we needed, but actually it looks like we've um just filled it quite nicely there. Um lots of rope and things. Don't know how anybody else finds their their plots and things, but found lots and lots of rope. Obviously, lots of plastic, lots of plastic bags.

[00:15:51]Um and lots of uh lots of um riddled uh wood, woodworm riddled wood. Um, and quite a bit of Lego as well, bizarrely, which I think is from the old neighbors.

[00:16:03]Um, big collection of rusted through buckets.

[00:16:07]There's like a big uh the big corner of the garden where all I found was rusted through buckets.

[00:16:13]So, the end of the garden where we had all of the the big holes which we dug for the testing for the septic tank. Um, we had big holes and big mounds of soil.

[00:16:24]So Jerry's been up here and he's filled a lot of those in now. Um I think he's just going to finish up and level off a bit better than this. But um that's gives us a bit more space now. So we've got a much bigger area now. Sort of reclaimed a lot of our uh garden now, which is great. Um we will have to um dig all this out again because we are going to have to put in the septic tank u probably at the end of the year.

[00:16:52]They've advised us to fit the the the foundations in first before we fit the septic tank. Um just we can we know when all the runoffs are going and things like that. They say it' be easier to install the septic tank afterwards. So we're going to get the foundations in first is the plan and then down the line we'll get in the uh the septic tank. So probably uh end of the year. Um so uh we're luckily we're going to rely on lovely portaloo until then. So, so that's uh that's how we're living.

[00:17:25]That's how we're living in the field.

[00:17:27]Our own little campsite. I mean, it's pretty cute. It's pretty cute. I'd pay €20 a night to stay here, to be honest.

[00:17:34]We did have a good uh meeting this morning um with our uh with our engineer who is very much on board with what we're doing. Um he's uh he's uh he's he's good with the rags and things um obviously and he uh he appreciates kind of the old building as well. So trying to work with him to sort of obviously save as much of the of the old structure as possible um while sort of making a very sort of new modern house.

[00:18:02]So um yeah, there's lots of different things to consider about how we proceed with that, but um I think he's on board on board with it. Um, and he's uh very sort of open to a bit back and forth with us as well, which is really, really good. Um, because we want it to go as smoothly as possible and we want to do things properly, but we want to make sure it's safe as well. So, we do have to listen to a lot of what he's saying.

[00:18:24]Um, but we can obviously push back on things as well, which is really, really good. So, I think we'll uh we'll get on great. Um, yeah. So, uh, that's uh another thing that we're waiting on.

[00:18:33]We're waiting on um uh some details back from him and then we can um get our grant applications in. Um and then that's like another another cog the wheel sort of uh rolling forward.

[00:19:31]So, where Jerry's scraped back the back of the garden here and filled in the holes, it means we've got a bit of usable space. So, um, because there's going to be lots of activity in this area, um, I don't want to take over too much of the garden, um, with anything too permanent. So, I'm hoping I can get a few beds in here, which will last me through the summer and get a few veggies in. Um, and on this back run here where it's nice and clear, I'm going to plant in some wildflower seeds. Um, this is a mix of native flowers. Um, so I'm going to just run this down the back here. Um about half a box, quarter of a box there. Um and uh I've put a a little line down so that I know where they are and I don't tread on them cuz once they're down, you just want to leave them leave them be really. But uh yeah, let's uh I'll just put these down and we'll see uh in a few weeks whether we get any GROWTH Squash them down so they get contact with the soil.

[00:20:57]Really do use my crocs for this.

[00:21:07]I just give them a little uh bit of water.

[00:21:24]There we go. Luckily, my 100 m hose pipe was just long enough.