A walk-in retirement dream

YOU forget how gorgeous Ballingeary is – the Derrynasaggarts rear up behind it and in the foreground there are swaying rushes and glimpses of black water between bright green drumlins.

This is Cork’s Lake District and a couple of minutes north-east from the village is Bawnaneel, where a small holding in the fastness of this Gaeltacht area has been colonised by the English.

Well, two anyway, a couple of downsizers who have toiled long and hard to make a paradise of this neglected farm on the side of a hill.