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Enjoying The Countryside At Historic Ashford Castle, Ireland

In Praise Of Irish Country Living

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Nov 25, 2018
in Ireland, Lifestyle, Travel
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ashford castle ireland
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Before traveling to Baltimore for the Thanksgiving holiday, Lief and I spent a week in Ireland.

We made the trip to reconnect with old friends in Waterford but then ventured beyond and made delightful new discoveries… including Ashford Castle.

The appeal of Ireland for me has always been Irish country living. We invested in a modest version of this in County Waterford years ago when our children were young. We had chickens in a coop my father helped us to build, ponies in tumble-down stone stables, and an Irish sheep dog chasing cows among the hedgerows in our fields.

In Ireland last week, we indulged in a grander and more impressive Irish country life experience when we checked in for a long weekend as guests at Ashford Castle.

We’d reserved a room in the 13th-century tower house that stands today as Ashford Castle’s cornerstone. The elaborate castle structure extending from it is the result of a series of expansion projects over the centuries that included the addition of a 16th-century fortress and, in 1715, a French château section.

Architecturally, Ashford Castle is eclectic in the extreme. Historically, it’s the triumphs and the tragedies of the Auld Sod embodied on the shores of Lough Corrib.

The medieval tower where we stayed was built by invading Anglo-Normans who came to the west of Ireland to conquer the native O’Connors of Connaught.

In the 1850s the estate was purchased by the closest thing the Irish have to royalty—the Guinness family. Benjamin Lee Guinness took advantage of post-famine crisis opportunities to expand the property to 26,000 acres and then used the enormous estate as a brand marketing and networking tool, inviting all the right people from across the U.K. to come spend a week or two hunting, shooting, fishing, and otherwise occupying themselves in the ways landed folks did in those days.

In 1939, the property was purchased from the Guinness family and renovated into a luxury hotel that was put on the map a dozen years later when John Ford, John Wayne, and Maureen O’Hara came to the west of Ireland to make “The Quiet Man.” Much of the cast stayed at Ashford Castle during filming, and the estate’s gardens and grounds were backdrop for the movie.

Today the property is part of the Red Carnation Hotel Collection. Red Carnation hotels are known for their luxury standards and white-glove service, but Ashford offers something else, as well—as authentic a 19th-century Irish country weekend venue as I think you’ll find anywhere in Ireland today.

What do you do with yourself at Ashford? The same kinds of things Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness and his VIP friends did back in the day…

You ride (on the grounds is one of the largest equestrian centers on the Emerald Isle)… you fish for salmon in the River Cong… you take a carriage tour around the grounds and long walks through the acres of formal gardens…

And, if you’d like, you go for a Hawk Walk.

Lief and I have had long interests in falconry but never a chance to try it. Ashford Castle is home to Ireland’s oldest School of Falconry, which seemed like just the place for us to learn more.

Turns out, to my relief, no skill whatsoever is required. Our well-trained hawks soared and circled and returned on cue, again and again, rewarded each time with a bit of raw hare meat hidden in the palms of our heavy leather gloves.

Here we are after our long walk through the castle’s forest…kathleen and lief with eagles

Kathleen Peddicord

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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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