Day two was the day it all got real. On Day 1 I arrived in Athlone by train, in the rain, and discovered within about four minutes that my rain gear had decided it was no longer in the rain business. Rain-adjacent gear, at best.
Enter Ankit.
Ankit came to Athlone from Pakistan about 25 years ago and has been part of the place ever since. He gave me a lift from the station to my Airbnb. It should only have been a few minutes, but the after-school traffic had other ideas, and that gave us time to chat.
It turned out he’d taken several family historians out on what he called “local farmer hunting trips”: driving visitors round the back roads looking for the farms and families their ancestors came from. A man who already knows what a genealogist means by “it’s just up this road, I think”? I booked him on the spot.
Farmer hunting in Clonfanlough
He picked me up the next morning, and it was a stunning day. Blue sky, sun on the fields, the kind of weather Ireland produces just often enough to keep you coming back.
We headed out to Clonfanlough, to the farm my Coughlan family came from. Ankit poked at his phone while I wandered up and down the road taking photo after photo of fields, walls, brambles and the remains of the old farmhouse. He has clearly done this before. He knew exactly how much patience a family historian needs, and he had it.
“People usually only spend fifteen minutes there”
Clonmacnoise was only a little way down the road, so of course we went.
“I’ll wait,” said Ankit. “It won’t be much. People usually only spend fifteen, twenty minutes there.”
Ha. He didn’t know me.
An hour and a half later I came back, having done what I can only describe as a reconnaissance mission. I’d walked the site, got my bearings, found out the visitor centre was about to shut for the season, and decided that what I really needed was a whole day there. So I made a plan to come back the very next day and do it properly.
I could barely contain myself. A whole day at Clonmacnoise, all to myself, and I knew exactly where I was going first: the chapel, and the stones inside it. Many of them belong to Coughlans. My Coughlans, quite possibly, and I wanted the time to read every one properly, photograph them and start working out who was who.
If you’ve never been, this video gives you a feel for the place:
Which is exactly what I did, on the local bus, with a driver who had a lot to say about fish. That’s Day 3: All the Lies About the Area.
Thank you, Ankit, for the lift, the patience and the farmer hunting. If you’re a family historian heading to the Athlone area, find yourself an Ankit.