Couple walk the walk as venture hits the heights

John and Kasha Connolly have created the perfect recipe for success in their farmhouse a few miles south of Kinvara in the beautiful Burren landscape. John offers walking tours of the hilly family farm which leave visitors feeling virtuous, pink cheeked and very well informed about this unique karst landscape – and once that exertion is out of the way, people can retreat to the pink-shuttered Connolly homestead for some of Kasha’s home-made cakes or chocolates.

It’s a long way from the South of Poland to the West coast of Ireland, but Kasha felt at home in the Burren the minute she set foot there.

She initially moved to Ireland in 2007, working as account manager with a corporate company in Dublin. Her intention was to stay for a while, then travel around the world. Her sister lives in London and Kasha planned to visit her and then go to Australia.

But before doing that, she decided to explore Ireland – and plans changed! She was on a trip to the Cliffs of Moher three years ago when the group detoured and took in one of John’s walks. In the early 2000s, he had returned to Ireland after several years abroad. Rather than wait for someone else to employ him, he did a degree in heritage studies at GMIT and established Burren Wild Walks, offering tours of the 150-acre farm which is run by his parents, as well as the broader Burren area.

Kasha was smitten.

“I fell in love with the landscape and the Burren – everything was magical,” she recalls. 

She didn’t fall for her tour guide instantly, but she liked him.

“I thought he was lovely,” she says with a laugh. “I sent him photos from the walk and then we got talking.”

It took just a few months for them to realise their relationship was serious enough for her to move to Kinvara, where the couple now live, commuting to the family farm at Oughtmama, Bellharbour, every day.

“This is his grandparents’, Micho and Aggie’s home, and John and his brother were always here when they were young,” Kasha says, sitting beside the stove in the old farmhouse. “Then he started using it for tours. People never get into someone’s home as part of a tour, so it this is different. People are more participants than spectators.”

 The walls of the house are covered in photos, including one of his mother’s cousin, the film star Gregory Peck. John and his siblings also feature, as do his grandparents and parents, and there are lovely scenic photos as well as some from Kasha’s new cookbook, Wild Burren Baker.

This book was partly her response to moving West, she says.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.