A slice of wooded wonderland

It’s a very special place, says Tommy Barker, near so many coastal and river attractions, an hour or less from Cork and Waterford

US-born architect and planner Nancy Hill plans ahead, generally about 10 years in advance. And it’s thanks to forward planning, and a goodly bit of vision, that she now has 3,000 maturing trees on her West Waterford homestead.

A qualified architect, she moved to England decades ago, and worked as a planner in London where, one hot August day in 1993, she took another uprooting decision: she decided she’d had enough of city life, and thought to move to Ireland as a nice place to have her grandchildren to come visit — a sort of kids’ club in the great outdoors.