YouTuber’s emotional visit to mother’s roots

Castletown Geoghegan made it before an international audience recently when a prominent blogging couple stopped off there and filmed their efforts to track down the home in which their ancestors lived.

Janine and Liam Day, whose YouTube channel ‘Those Happy Days’ has 163,000 subscribers, live and travel in a converted van, documenting their experiences on film.

Their recent videos feature their trip to Ireland, following The Wild Atlantic Way – but they diverted from that journey to visit Castletown and Mullingar.

“It’s been a hell of a journey so far and we have seen things and places more beautiful than anything we could ever have imagined,” Janine says early on in their Ireland voyage – and that was before reaching Westmeath, where she was thrilled to find the house in which her mother, Dympna Daly, spent her childhood.

“My mum was unsure if we’d be able to find where she grew up,” Janine tells the camera as the two arrive in Mullingar, taking up an invitation to visit Belly café on Mount Street, which had contacted the couple via Instagram to let them know that it offers a selection of vegan dishes.

“What a cool café!” was Janine’s reaction when they arrived at Belly. There was initially disappointment when it turned out that the café owners, Cheryl Forbes and Marion Broder, were not in that day – but delight when Cheryl and Marion came in on learning from staff that Janine and Liam were there.

From Cheryl and Marion, Janine received advice on how to get to Castletown, and what to do about finding her mother’s house when she got there.

Admitting that she felt both nervous and excited, Janine and her husband left town after first picking up a Mullingar Pewter gift for Dympna – and the excitement level escalated when they reached Castletown and spotted Claffey’s pub, the name of which Janine recognised from her mother’s reminiscences; and the local church, which had also featured in her mother’s stories.

“Regardless of the fact that it’s anything to do with my mum, it’s actually so nice to be in the heart of Ireland in some remote, tiny little pretty village in the middle of nowhere and it’s really authentically Irish and it’s an actually really nice place,” Janine says on arrival.

To begin their quest to find the Daly house, Janine and Liam entered Claffey’s Shop, little imagining that they would strike gold straight away: as it turned out, the woman at the counter knew of the house, and phoned a friend to come in who would be able to help further – local man, Sean McCormack.

“Do you remember Daly’s in Ballinacastle?” the woman asks Sean, whose immediate answer is “Yes”, and he undertakes to lead the couple to where the cottage stands. Delightedly, Liam remarks that the experience is turning into quite the “treasure hunt”.

“On my God, we would never have found this!” declares Janine as they pull up behind Sean at the boreen that leads to their destination, and when they walk down to the house, she is stunned to find that it is still standing, although uninhabited.

“I can imagine it was nice, a lovely little house,” says Janine, as she steps gingerly through the rooms, admitting, however, that she finds it a bit spooky.

“As we left my mum’s home and village, the place where she spent the first part of her life, I couldn’t help but feel that once again, something had been lifted from my shoulders: I could have gone my whole life saying ‘I’m half-Irish’ to people when they asked, but now I truly know where 50 per cent of my being comes from, and that’s really important to me,” she says.