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Ep 88---

Carlo sits down with Mairead Cogan, the youngest of six children raised on a farm in the Curlew Mountains, who went on to play GAA, break her leg and ankle in 2019, discover a passion for coaching, and found her own fitness business, Supple Fitness.

But this episode is about more than fitness. Mairead also talks about two volunteer trips to Africa with Plant the Planet Games in partnership with Self Help Africa and Warriors for Humanity. A warm, honest and genuinely moving conversation about hard work, community, perspective, and what really matters in life.

Check out the full blog post - https://www.voicesofboyle.com/maireadcogan

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Thanks to Brendan O' Dowd for creating and recording the musical piece for the podcast.

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Ep 87---

In towns like Boyle, a post office was never just a place to buy stamps or send parcels. It was where news arrived before phones ever rang, where pensions were collected with a handshake and a chat, and where generations crossed the same threshold week after week. The red brick building on Shop Street stood quietly at the centre of it all, watching the town change while somehow staying the same.

For decades, people stepped inside carrying letters, savings books, worries, and good news. Behind the counter for the past few decades stood a familiar face who saw Boyle through its busiest days and its quietest moments, through the shift from handwritten envelopes to digital screens, from queues at the counter to a changing world outside the door.

Today both Florence and I are sitting down with the last postmaster of the old Post Office, Paul Forde. This is a conversation about community, memory, and a place that meant far more than its walls ever suggested. Because when a post office leaves a building like that, it’s not just a relocation. It marks the end of an era in the life of the town.

You’re very welcome to the Voices of Boyle. This is episode 87 with Paul Forde.

If you'd like to see some photos of the final day of business with Paul and customers, then please click here

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Ep 86---

Maria Liddy's story begins in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, where her parents ran a restaurant in Dalkey while the family lived up in the mountains. When Maria was 8, they made the leap to Boyle, taking on the Lakeshore Restaurant at Lough Key Forest Park. It was only two and a half hours away, but it felt like a different world.

Growing up with 800 acres as your back garden turns out to be as magical as it sounds. Maria describes watching deer graze on the front lawn by lamplight on winter evenings, the mist over the water on September mornings, and the chaos of the ballooning championships when the whole park came alive. Her mother insisted she and her brother learn to swim at Doonshore so they could wander freely without anyone worrying. The whole family washed dishes, worked the shop, and waited tables as soon as they were old enough.

School life in Boyle left a deep mark. Maria arrived at Scoil Chriost Rí with a plaited Heidi hairstyle and the unusual surname Le Hiff, and was briefly assumed to be German. She threw herself into school musicals under Frank O'Mahony, who she later nominated for a Gay Byrne Person of the Year award, landing her first-ever radio interview in the process. She credits both Frank and Boyle itself for giving her a rounded foundation she drew on for years afterwards.

Her twenties were full of movement: social studies in Sligo IT, three months in New Zealand with her grandmother, two years working with adults with special needs in outer London, and then a return home prompted by her grandfather's death. Back in Ireland, she worked with young offenders through the Youth Action Project in Sligo, completed her degree, and eventually pursued a master's in criminology at Maynooth, with a thesis on the youth justice system and the experience of families within it.

The pivot came in 2012. On an empty stomach in a Dublin dental hospital waiting room, a penicillin reaction sent Maria into anaphylactic shock. She describes what happened in the minutes that followed as a near-death experience, a slide toward something warm and beautiful, before the adrenaline brought her back. It took a year for the message to land fully, but on the anniversary of that day she left her relationship, packed one suitcase, and walked out. Six weeks later she met her now-husband Arlo, a man she had briefly hidden from in a kitchen at sixteen because he was simply too much for her.

She and Arlo have one son, Ruan, who Maria says announced himself before he was conceived. She has also had two miscarriages, in 2020 and 2022, and speaks about them with the honesty and gentleness of someone who has done the work of acknowledging them fully. Those losses, combined with her training as a death doula and family constellations facilitator, led her to create the Lily and Max miscarriage care packages: locally sourced, biodegradable boxes designed to give families something tangible to hold during one of the hardest experiences a person can go through.

The episode ends with Maria talking about the hot air balloons returning to Boyle last September, chasing one all the way to Highwood, and feeling, as she put it, really, really lucky to have been brought to Boyle and to still be living here.

Check out the full blog post to acco

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Ep 85---

David Cryan grew up on a farm in Cloonloo, in a household where after-school hours meant feeding cattle, mucking out sheds and drinking raw milk straight from the cow. He went to St. Mary's secondary school in Boyle, mitched exactly once and got caught, and remembers the morning assemblies with Father Lavender or Father Early before everyone headed off to class.

From there, the conversation moves through the Boyle of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a town David describes as a place that was genuinely buzzing. He talks about working behind the bar in Parkers nightclub as a 17-year-old, the nights when you could not get through the door of the Moylurg before half nine, the factions and the fighting that were somehow just part of the culture, and the busloads of people coming over from Carrick-on-Shannon because Boyle was simply the better night out.

Then, in 1992, everything changed. David was involved in an accident and left paralysed. He was 20 years old. In the years that followed, he faced the reality of his situation largely without professional support, which simply did not exist in the way it does today. Alcohol became a way of coping, and he is honest about how that played out over a long stretch of years, until the death of a close friend became the moment that changed his direction. He gave up drink, started counselling, and began to deal with things properly.

David also touches on his brief but enjoyable time in local politics, filling a vacant seat on behalf of a cousin who passed away. He talks about his electric drive-assist wheelchair, the freedom it has given him to get around, and the gaps that still exist in accessibility across the town. He ends with a clear message to younger listeners: you have one life, and you are better off living it as yourself.

Check out the blog post for this episode - https://www.voicesofboyle.com/davidcryan

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Thanks to Brendan O' Dowd for creating and recording the musical piece for the podcast.

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Ep 84---

Florence sits down with Georgette, a Somerset-born creative who has been living just outside Boyle for the past ten years. Georgette grew up in the English countryside, left home at 17, worked in Egypt as a teenager, and spent years moving between cities before eventually landing in rural Wales and then Roscommon.

Now she works part time at Leitrim Design House and has recently launched Crack and Crackle, a small handmade business producing quality sauna hats from her home. The conversation covers her love of craft, why sewing is a life skill the next generation is being denied, the explosion of sauna culture in Ireland, and why she believes handmade will always beat mass produced.

A warm, honest and genuinely entertaining episode about creativity, community and following an idea all the way through.

Visit the full blog post for this episode on our website - https://www.voicesofboyle.com/georgettemarshall/

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Ep 83---

A lovely double episode this week as Carlo and Florence sit down with Colin, a Boyle native from Termon Road, and his partner Aethel, who grew up on a farm in Galway, spent ten years living across four American states, and eventually found her way to Boyle almost by accident.

Together they cover childhood memories of Boyle in the 1990s, from the Round Balls and Hares and Hounds to Ballinagare disco and the floodgates, Aethel's journey through Las Vegas, Utah, Alaska and California, Colin's bodybuilding competition in 2012 and what it actually takes to get on that stage, Lulu their Thai rescue dog, the return of the hot air balloons to Lough Key, and what both of them would put in a time capsule for Boyle. A warm, funny and wide-ranging conversation between two people who clearly love the town they call home.

Check out the blog post to accompany this episode for photos:
https://www.voicesofboyle.com/colinaethelbeirne/

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If you’d like to be on the show or if you know someone who would like to chat with us, then drop us an email at ( info@voicesofboyle.com )

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Ep 82---

Carlo sits down with Martha Higgins, a writer from Keash, Co. Sligo, who has just published her debut novel Hiding from the Heart. Martha grew up on a small farm in the 1960s, went to secondary school in Boyle, and has lived a wide and varied life since, including two years in South Africa during the transition from apartheid.

In this conversation she talks about farm life in Sligo, her vivid memories of Boyle as a market town, her writing journey and the discipline it demands, the story of her debut novel, and her next project: a historical fiction based on the life of Jimmy Gralton, the only Irish man ever deported by his own government. She also talks about walking the length of Ireland, five days in the Sierra Nevada, and her deep belief in the importance of spending time in nature. A thoughtful, wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation.

Check out the full blog post to go along with this episode: Click Here

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If you’d like to be on the show or if you know someone who would like to chat with us, then drop us an email at ( info@voicesofboyle.com )

Thanks to Brendan O' Dowd for creating and recording the musical piece for the podcast.

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Ep 81---

Florence sits down with Dorothy Shannon, the woman behind King House Tea Rooms in Boyle, just as the cafe approaches its tenth anniversary.

Dorothy grew up on a farm in Ardcarne near Cootehall, went to secondary school in Carrick-on-Shannon, and spent years working in catering and hospitality across England, Ireland and beyond before a friend mentioned there was a restaurant going for lease in Boyle. She talks about taking on King House in 2016, the purple and green chairs she walked into, the challenge of going out on her own for the first time, the decision to do a degree in environmental science just in case, and how nine years later she cannot imagine doing anything else. A warm conversation about community, homemade food, loyal customers, and what a cafe can mean to a town.

Check out the full blog post for this episode here - https://www.voicesofboyle.com/dorothyshannon

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If you’d like to be on the show or if you know someone who would like to chat with us, then drop us an email at ( info@voicesofboyle.com )

Thanks to Brendan O' Dowd for creating and recording the musical piece for the podcast.