About

My name is Nóra Cronin. For twenty-three years, my brother Donal and I ran Cois Sléibhe, a small guesthouse at the foot of Beenoskee mountain in Stradbally, County Kerry. We had four rooms, a cracked teapot we never replaced, and more guests who became friends than I can count. In 2023, after Donal's hip finally had enough of those stairs, we decided it was time to close.

I am still here, in the same house, looking at the same mountain. What changed is that I now have mornings to myself. I walk more than I used to. I cook at my own pace. I take the slow train to Cork sometimes just for the journey. And I write – which I always meant to do and mostly didn't.

This blog is not a travel guide, though I write about places. It is not a lifestyle site, though I write about daily life. It is closer to the letters I used to send my sister in Galway when I had something to say and a half hour to say it. Personal, wandering, occasionally opinionated, never in a hurry.

I write about slow travel through Ireland – the kind where you stop somewhere for two nights and actually notice it. About the rhythms of life in a small Kerry house: the garden in October, the first fire of November, the particular pleasure of fixing something badly but fixing it yourself. And about the walks – the trails I have known for thirty years and the ones I am still finding, out here in a county that has more mountain and bog and coast than most people realise.

Nóra Cronin