Our experience with our good friends Dan & Dee Poquette at Glenculoo Cottage back in late September was one that will be etched in our memories for many years to come.  This simple, comfortable cottage nestled in the Hills of Tipperary returned to it’s authenticity through a recent renovation which obviously took every little painstaking detail into account to duplicate the old while providing the modern comforts of new.  The cottage itself took our minds and souls back to a much simpler time and enabled us to breathe the timelessness of the nature and beauty shared by these special Celtic people throughout the centuries.  When you take a left onto the bridge that crosses the crystal clear babbling brook and spot this stucco (gem) accented by a split rail fence, red door, slate roof and spend a week in GCC you may never want to return to civilization as we know it.

John O’Carroll, my cousin, who grew up in Ballylongford, County Kerry visited us one night with his lovely wife Ula.  He most certainly captured the essence of Glenculloo with a poem he impulsively recited to us as we sat around the kitchen table by the peet burning stove after dinner while sipping on wine and chatting. 

            The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings:

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings. 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore:

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

 -W.B. Yeats

Silence filled the room for a lengthy moment nothing more to say.

Thank you Glenculoo! – Yan & Brian Hart