The Irish Midlands flow to the relentless rhythm of the River Shannon and along its banks the Irish Stew podcasters found themselves again, Day Five of their “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands” wanderings, gazing across its broad expanse from the docks of the County Offaly town of Banagher.

There, cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty met local historian James Scully and caught up with an old friend of John’s, Mark Boylan, who covers horseracing for The Irish Field, to explore the history, legend, music, and all that gives life and character to this small Shannon-side community with a population aspiring to hit the 2,000 mark.

James met us at the cozy, convivial Flynn's Pub on Main Street, but the craic there proved too mighty for recording purposes, so the trio beat a retreat to the hilltop Church of St Paul's for what proved to be Irish Stew’s first recording in a church (but not their last as you’ll hear in the final Hidden Heartlands episode).

A lifelong educator and noted local historian, James set about unraveling the history of the old Irish saying, “That Beats Banagher!,” in a book of the same name which he co-wrote with Kieran Keenaghan. In this richly illustrated volume they explore the murky provenance of “That Beats Banagher!” and how it entered Irish political and cultural lore. A beguiling spinner of the town’s stories, James shares tales of the earliest days of the town, the arrival of the international man of mystery from the 1600s Matthew de Renzy, the town’s unexpected literary links to Anthony Trollope and Charlotte Brontë, Banagher’s vibrant community life, and its status as a popular port of call for the river cruising crowd.

They started the day in a pub, absolved their sins in a church, and then retreated to a pub, J.J. Hough’s Singing Pub, a renowned destination for trad music fans and tourists alike run by Ger Hough, who IrishCentral called the most creative publican in Ireland.

There they met David and Mark Boylan who John got to know when the Breeders’ Cup flew the whole Boylan family to Kentucky so the then 14-year-old Mark could sing his Breeders’ Cup song before about 80 thousand fans at Churchill Downs for the 2011 World Championship race meet. Mark may be all grown up but he hasn’t outgrown his love of horses and of his hometown of Banagher which shines through in the closing segment.

And in such a small, tight-knit community it was no surprise to learn that James was Mark’s teacher at St Rynagh’s School.

Well, that beats Banagher!

Next week Irish Stew hits pause on their Off the Beaten Craic series to embrace the season of giving with the story of a New York City charity rooted in the plight of the impoverished Irish immigrants in the notorious Five Points district in our conversation with Sean Granahan, president of The Floating Hospital.

Links
James Scully

• Book: That Beats Banagher!

Mark Boylan

• The Irish Field
• X
• Instagram
• Facebook

Hidden Heartlands Travel Resources

• Ireland.com
• Discover Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 36; Total Episode Count: 139

Ireland has no shortage of stately manors, but as Irish Stew hosts Martin Nutty and John Lee learned, no other historic property has a legacy like Co. Offaly’s Birr Castle Demesne, which for generations has been an incubator of breakthroughs in engineering and science.

With local historian and educator Brian Kennedy as their guide, the podcasters share the story of the Victorian-era, steampunk-style construction of timber, iron, and stonework that was the world’s largest telescope from 1845 to 1917. Built by William Parsons, the 3rd Earl of Rosse, “The Leviathan of Parsonstown” as it became known is a 20-foot-tall engineering marvel that enabled the Earl to map light-years distant nebulae with stunning accuracy that rivals modern Hubble telescope images.

Brian points out that the Parsons family's 400-year legacy includes what’s thought to be one of the world's earliest surviving suspension bridges on the grounds, Charles Parsons' invention of the steam turbine, and the work of photography pioneer Mary Wilmer Field, the 3rd Countess of Rosse.

Her 1850s glass plate photographs are preserved in Ireland’s Historic Science Centre at Birr, which not only tells the Birr science story in historical artifacts and interactive displays, but that of Ireland as well.

And Birr is still writing that science story today as it hosts the Irish station of the Europe-wide LOFAR radio telescope network, which in 2018 observed for the first time a billion-year-old red-dwarf, flare star.

Add botany and horticulture to the science mix with multi-generational botanical treasures on display across the expansive grounds including 17th-century box hedges (among the world's tallest), specimens from China and South America, and Victorian glasshouses under restoration.

“There's something in bloom every day of the year, throughout the whole year of plants from right throughout the world.” Brian says.

The conversation wraps with a discussion of the town's transformation from "Parsonstown" back to its original Irish name, its connection to St. Brendan's monastery, the charming town’s rich Georgian heritage, and things to see and do “off the beaten craic” in Birr’s environs.

But for Brian, it all starts with the Birr Castle Demesne, “Come early in the morning because one day is just not enough to take in all that the castle has to offer,” he advises.

Next week Irish Stew makes one more stop in Co. Offaly at the River Shannon town of Banagher where John and Martin record their first (but not their last) episode in a church!

Links

Birr Castle Demesne

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• YouTube
• TikTok

Hidden Heartlands Travel Resources

• Ireland.com
• Discover Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Episode Page: Brian Kennedy
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• Facebook

Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 35; Total Episode Count: 138

The poet Seamus Heaney once said, "I think of the bog as a feminine goddess-ridden ground, rather like the territory of Ireland itself."

And that territory is 14- to- 21 percent bog.

So, on their fourth day “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands,” Irish Stew cohosts John Lee and Martin Nutty head to Shinrone in Offaly near the Tipperary border to the farm of Donie Regan, a demonstration site for Peatlands for Prosperity, the brainchild of Douglas McMillan and his Green Restoration Ireland Cooperative team.

Doug explains how centuries of peat extraction left expanses of degraded bogland, often dismissed as wastelands. But they’re fields of dreams for Doug who outlines how rewetting bogs halts carbon loss, restores biodiversity, and opens the opportunity to the wet farming techniques known as paludiculture.

Using Donie’s farm as a showroom for how paludiculture can restore economic value to bog land, Peatlands for Prosperity is testing potential hydrophilic cash crops such as bog berries, cranberries, even lettuce and celery, as well as common wetland plants like bullrushes and common reeds which can be renewable sources of building and packaging materials. Both believe wetland agriculture can offer farmers meaningful new income streams from both these kinds of crops and from earning carbon credits for maintaining carbon-sequestering bogs.

The conversation probes the challenges of farmer hesitancy, policy confusion, cultural ties to turf cutting, and how the demonstration site helps other farmers see the program’s potential.

Donie speaks passionately about witnessing wildlife return to his land, and the team discusses educational outreach, including bringing schoolchildren onto the bog to inspire the next generation of environmental stewards, the ecotourism possibilities of restored boglands, and how transforming Ireland’s peatlands could be a win-win for climate, biodiversity, farmers, and rural communities alike.
But let’s give Seamus Heaney the last word from his poem Bogland:

Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun

Next week Irish Stew reports from Birr Castle with a focus on the groundbreaking science done there, exemplified by the world’s largest telescope for 72 years, the mighty Leviathan of Parsonstown.

Links
Green Restoration Ireland

• Website
• Peatlands for Prosperity
• Facebook
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Bluesky
• X
  
  

Douglas McMillan

• LinkedIn

Hidden Heartlands Travel Resources

• Ireland.com
• Discover Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Episode Page: Peatlands for Prosperity
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• Facebook

How did Ireland become a food destination? Thanks go to chefs like John Coffey of Athlone’s Thyme Restaurant and Belfast’s Niall McKenna of the Waterman House, both past Irish Stew guests.

But ask those chefs that question and they’ll thank their lucky stars for the local producers who supply the fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, seafood, and dairy that make their cooking soar.

So Irish Stew went Off the Beaten Craic to Daingean, Co. Offaly, to talk with two farmers on the vanguard of Ireland’s organic agriculture boom in an historic Georgian farmhouse at the heart of Mount Briscoe Organic Farm.

Margaret Edgill set aside her marketing and event planning career in Dublin to take over Mount Briscoe, which her family has farmed for seven generations. Joining her for the conversation was her Geashill, Co. Offaly neighbor Pippa Hackett, also an organic farmer and Ireland’s former Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

Margaret describes the privilege of stewarding Mount Briscoe and the many ways she’s infusing renewed life and new ideas into the land with a mix of organic beef production, upscale B&B accommodations, a shade more rustic “glamping” experiences, artisan food production, memorable farm-to-fork experiences, and public programs designed to celebrate the traditions and vitality of rural life.

Pippa draws on her background in science and public service to champion greener, more sustainable farming practices, sharing insights shaped by her years on the farm and in government. “If you have a healthy environment and a healthy farm, you’re going to have healthy animals and produce healthy foods,” she says, adding that with organic farming, “There's a great sort of magic in it--you actually have to do less work to get more."

The pair delve into Ireland’s “Origin Green” brand, the ongoing debate between organic and conventional farming methods, the lopsided economics that farmers juggle, the benefits of Irish people consuming Irish produce, and how hands-on rural experiences can counteract the growing urban disconnect with what’s on their plates.

Margaret offers her “wellies-on-the-ground” perspectives as both a farmer and owner of an agritourism business adding to the Hidden Heartlands tourism mix, talking up Ireland's potential as a green island destination, sharing how North Americans come to Mount Briscoe seeking heritage, tranquility, and authentic farm experiences, how guests look to disconnect with a digital detox, and how as climate change is making traditionally hot destinations less appealing, she’s seeing first-hand the growing appeal “cool-cationing” in Ireland…even with its rainy days.

And it was a rainy day indeed when Irish Stew visited Mount Briscoe Farm, but to cohosts John and Martin, the lush fields looked all the greener for it.

Next week Irish Stew visits another Offlay farm and slogs through a bog to explore the innovative Peatlands for Prosperity initiative.

Links

Margaret Edgill

• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Facebook

Mount Briscoe Farm

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook

Pippa Hackett

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

Despite the “Off the Beaten Craic” theme to the current Irish Stew podcast series, on this episode hosts Martin Nutty and John Lee follow the well-worn track of history that flows through Athlone like the broad River Shannon.

Their guide is the affable Vincent Harney of Athlone Guided Tours, a well-researched, perceptive storyteller who peels back the layers of the Athlone story from atop Athlone Castle, while crossing the Shannon, and as they trod the ancient streets back into the very heart of Irish history.

Along with local history, Vincent shares his story of growing up in a big farm family in nearby Cornafulla, the post office his parents operated, his own time as postmaster, and lessons learned working the family farm.

“In the post office, I loved hearing the old people’s stories and hearing about their history. And we would know the history of the fields around us, like the one field given away for a loaf of bread during the famine,” Vincent recalls.

Inspired by those stories, Vincent started a new career leading historical walking tours to share how Athlone’s origins as a river ford placed it at the crossroads of Irish history, how Norman and Cromwellian armies both marched over its first timber bridge, about the accommodation built into the stone bridge for the gentry's sail boats, and why the railway bridge was considered an engineering marvel of its day.

Vincent reveals Athlone's surprising connections to the Titanic disaster with the sad tale of the ill-fated passenger Margaret Rice, whose body could only be identified by the shoes she wore, purchased from the venerable Parsons of Athlone in the red brick building that still stands today at the corner of Custume Place and Northgate Street.

Vincent spins a happier tale about Athlone native John McCormack, tracing the singer’s unlikely rise from a working-class family to global fame as one of the greatest tenors of all time.

The episode wraps with Vincent making a compelling case for visiting Ireland and coming to Athlone when you do, reminding us, “the history of Ireland is here in Athlone.”

Next week, Irish Stew talks organic farming and agritourism in Offaly with Margaret Edgill of Mt. Briscoe Farm and Pippa Hackett, former Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

Links

Athlone Guided Tours

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Tripadvisor

Hidden Heartlands Travel Resources

• Ireland.com
• Discover Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Episode Page: Vincent Harney
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• Facebook
• TikTok

Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 32; Total Episode Count: 135

The oldest pub in Ireland, Europe…the world?

Lend an ear as we explore the legend and lore of Sean’s Bar with the pub’s official storyteller Timmy Donovan. A central character in the Sean’s Bar story for the past 37 years, Timmy flips the calendar back to AD 900 when Luain Mac Luighdeach set up an inn on the banks of the Shannon which would evolve over the centuries into the Sean’s Bar of today.

He points out the ancient wicker-and-wattle construction unearthed in the venerable pub’s plaster walls and the slanting floor that carried medieval floodwaters through the bar down to the nearby river as just two signs of the pub’s antiquity.

Of the eye-catching memorabilia layering the pub’s walls, Timmy may be the proudest of the Guinness World Record certificate proclaiming Sean’s to be the oldest pub in the world.

That and the monster trout on display that Timmy himself landed in the nearby Lough, evidence of the prime fishing that has long drawn anglers to the region.
Timmy tells the saga of the Vikings sailing up the Shannon deep into the Hidden Heartlands, how for local monks distilling whiskey was doing God’s work, why hundreds of police uniform patches festoon the pub walls, and how American football fans are beating a path to Sean’s door.

Sean’s Bar not only dispenses a full range of pints and pours, the legendary pub also serves its own Sean's Whiskey, now an integral part of the pub's identity, for which Timmy is a most compelling spokesperson.

The monks would be proud, Timmy.

Sláinte!

LINKS

Sean’s Bar

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram

Hidden Heartlands Travel Resources

• Ireland.com
• Discover Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands

Irish Stew Links

• Website
• Episode Page: Timmy Donovan
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• Facebook
• TikTok

Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 31; Total Episode Count: 134

Taste Ireland…more specifically, taste the Hidden Heartlands of the Irish Midlands through a completely original cuisine designed around the fresh local produce from surrounding farms, on offer at Athlone’s Michelin Bib Gourmand culinary destination, Thyme Restaurant.

Chef John Coffey conjures up his ever-evolving menu around the vegetables local organic farmer Shannon is pulling or plucking from her nearby farm that day.
Local flavors, regional aromas, beautifully presented courses all plated by the Chef/Owner himself, the lively chatter of diners sitting down to what they know will be a memorable meal, the warm welcome and flawless service from the staff and the understated, unstuffy, intimate surroundings combined to provide a multisensory sendoff to Irish Stew’s “Off the Beaten Craic" series, the audio chronicle of podcast hosts John Lee and Martin Nutty’s eight-day ramble through Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, starting in Athlone, the geographic heart of Ireland astride the River Shannon’s “brightly glancing stream.”

Chef Coffey relates how he opened Thyme in November 2007, just months before the financial crisis devastated Ireland's economy, surviving days with no customers, weeks of no salary, and months of operating with a skeleton crew. Maybe it was his unwavering commitment to hyperlocal sourcing that pulled him through. The menu changes constantly depending on seasonal availability of local produce—plums for three weeks, game in autumn, heritage potatoes in varieties like Purple Rain that supermarkets abandoned decades ago. Coffey's outlook is based on community interdependence, where farmers, butchers, and their families create a self-sustaining economic ecosystem.

Don’t look for Reality TV chaos in the kitchen, as Coffey creates an aura of focused calm in his domain, even when diners fill all of Thyme’s 56 seats.

On the podcast, Chef Coffey explains why he’s rejected expansion opportunities, so you’ll have to get to Athlone to sample his ballotine of quail with yuko leaf and heritage potatoes or anything else he creates.

So, lend an ear to Irish Stew as it begins its Midlands meanderings with a celebration of Ireland's culinary transformation and the growing appreciation for slower-paced, ingredient-focused Irish dining experiences that await in the Hidden Heartlands.

Go raibh an bia blasta!

LINKS

Thyme Restaurant

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook

Shannon's Eco Farm

• Instagram

Hidden Heartlands Travel Resources

• Ireland.com
• Discover Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands

Irish Stew Social Media

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• Facebook
• TikTok

Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 30; Total Episode Count: 133

Your cohosts are back from an eight-day road trip through Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, where instead of profiling a person, they went “Off the Beaten Craic” to explore a place - the Irish Midlands.

Some tourists might view it as "drive-through country,” as they motor west from Dublin to the Wild Atlantic Way, but John and Martin found just a fraction of what they’re missing in Offaly, Westmeath, Longford, and Leitrim. And by traveling at a leisurely “slow tourism” pace during the quieter fall “shoulder season,” they found little traffic, uncrowded restaurants, more of a local vibe to the pubs, and had legendary historic sites almost to themselves.

The peripatetic podcasters conversed with almost two dozen Midlands guests, capturing stories about local history, organic farming, biodiversity, greenways, Shannon river cruising, farm-to-table dining, slow adventure travel, hospitality, archaeology, astronomy, entrepreneurship, and civic pride, while at times going knee-deep into the distinctive bogs that shape the Midlands landscape.

Your hosts also brandished their selfie sticks to add sights to their sounds on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok.

The “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands” series was made possible through the support of Tourism Ireland, which markets the island of Ireland overseas as a compelling holiday destination, and the guidance of Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority, with a tip of the hat to the Leitrim County Council for their warmest of welcomes.

Join us “Off the Beaten Craic in the Hidden Heartlands!”

Links:

Hidden Heartlands Travel Resources

• Ireland.com
• Discover Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands

Irish Stew Social Media

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• X
• Facebook
• TikTok

Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 29; Total Episode Count: 132