Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara

It was the wildest of Autumn days when we set off for the depths of Connemara where the landscape is so rugged and the lakes are so mesmerizingly blue it makes your eyes water. I had never been to this part of an Gaeltacht before, known locally as Ceantar na nOileán or the island district. The three main islands Leitir Móir, Garmna and Leitir Mealláin are connected to the mainland by bridges.

Our destination was the latter, or Lettermullen in English, known in recent years as the ancestral home of the playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh. The locals hit the headlines for erecting three billboards as Gaeilge congratulating him on his 2017 Oscar-winning film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri staring Frances McDormand.

We head here to experience what first made this hamlet of paradise famous – seaweed.

The Seaweed Centre was built by a community cooperative as a way of creating local employment and encouraging people to visit and spend money in the local economy. With 80 per cent funding by Bord Iascaigh Mhara, the remaining cost was put up by the islanders to create a local hub.

The first part of the project was the opening of a museum to seaweed, which was exported far and wide as early as early as the 16th century for the healing properties of iodine, recalls tourism officer for Údaras na Gaeltachta Padraic Mac Diarmada.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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