Blood and Mud

So dad absolutely hated the hostel, and got me up early to leave... Needless to say I was super psyched about that. But at least he let me stay and eat the free breakfast and meet some fellow travellers from Spain and France.

The second I had my last bite we shot out of there like a bat out of hell. Straight onto Raphoe, where my family name comes from, and where my granddad grew up. Raphoe has a Cathedral that dad and I walked around in the graveyard of until we found a Hetherington gravestone. We snapped a picture of that, I'll be uploading it shortly.

As we were leaving dad got talking to someone working at the church. As it turns out, he dated my great aunt back in the day... Raphoe is really a small town... Every time we said our name was Hetherington somebody had a story about our family. It was actually really fascinating learning about my family history in that way.

After talking to a few of the locals dad and I went off to find the place where my grandfather (Robert John McClean Hetherington) grew up. My dad had some instructions to tell us how to get there, but it's up an unmarked road that Google maps of course doesn't exactly streetview. So it was an adventure just to find the road.

Of course when while we were driving up we passed another car and my dad asked for directions for how to get to the old Hetherington house. They gave us the very helpful advise of “you'll never be able to find it yourself”. But they knew where a relative of ours lived and took us back down the road to meet David Johnson, who was in the middle of some housework by the looks of it. But when my dad asked him for better instructions to find the dang house, he got in his tractor and told us to follow him.

As we drove up the increasingly more muddy road, we figured out that David was my dad's cousin. And therefor my... Something... point is he's related. We pulled up at the end of the road (seems to be a theme for this trip) and David told us we had to walk from there, so we did.

If I had known we would be walking through the mud and grass I would have brought boots. I only had my runners, which usually worked fine right up until I stepped into a huge puddle. Which happened a few times, but I managed.

After passing through fields of heather and hoping fences. We finally got there. It was now just a big pile of rubble. You see, a few years back the farm went for sale and no one in the family bought it. But whoever did buy it bulldozed the old house into a pile and planted a huge forest of trees. It wasn't a let down though, I'm glad to have been there.

On the way back apparently word of our arrival had spread and we were greeted by David's dad Thomas Johnson at the car. (I guess that makes him my dad's uncle) They took us to see my granddad’s old school, which is still in use by the way. But the reunion doesn't end there, we drove up to Pauline Johnson's house, where aunts, uncles, grand aunts and uncles, cousins and first cousins once removed that we had never heard of were waiting to meet us. It was grand. My dad played old recordings that his dad had in archive, I was given a feast to eat... All good things.

I really found that I had a lot in common with everyone, which isn't that surprising I guess. But it sure did make the experience more fun. In fact we talked so long that it became dark before dad and I realized we didn't have a place to stay since we left the hostel. Of course my dad's cousin Winstin Johson promptly offered to let us sleep at his house.

Let me tell you this, it is particularly hard to decline Irish hospitality. So we drove to his house and hung out with his family. I met some more second cousins that were close to my age, and we did what all good Irishmen do. We drank.

Quickly 8 o'clock became 12 o'clock. Which usually is fine but if you remember my saying earlier, my sleep was cut short the night earlier. I stayed up as late as I could at my cousin's house but then I had to clock out. Meaning I didn't have the chance to write to you until just now. Nor post any pictures.

So if you're reading this and you cant see any pictures then they are currently being uploaded.

Having a grand old time with my newly found extended family.

-Matt