‘We try to put applicants off': couple chosen as live-in caretakers on uninhabited Irish island
A young couple in search of a new chapter in their lives are swapping creature comforts for life on an otherwise uninhabited island off the coast of Ireland with no hot water, stable electricity or cars.
Camille Rosenfeld, from Minnesota in the US, and James Hayes, from Tralee in County Kerry, have been chosen to be this year's live-in caretakers of Great Blasket, the largest island of the most westerly archipelago in Europe.
They will live in a stone house next to some ruined cottages abandoned in the 1950s and situated on a windswept hill overlooking the ocean, with gulls, seals and sharks for company.
'I think we will enjoy watching the sunsets, looking at the stars with no light pollution and winding down with a book in the candlelight,' said Rosenfeld, 26, who has never been on the island that will be her home from 1 April to 31 September. 'We are just really comfortable being uncomfortable,' she added.
Life will be simple. Water on Great Blasket comes from a spring and must be boiled, while electricity for phones and head torches comes via batteries charged from a small wind turbine.
The couple, who got married last summer, were selected from hundreds of applicants to run five holiday cottages and a coffee hatch for day-trippers.
'I genuinely think we will fall in with the rhythm of our new life and sense of freedom,' said Hayes, who himself has only been on the island once. 'We won't have the responsibilities of our jobs or day-to-day life, so it's a chance to live a simpler life.'
Viewed from the mainland's Coumeenoole Beach, the setting for stormy scenes in the movie Ryan's Daughter, the islands are renowned for their rugged beauty and marine life, including basking sharks and dolphins.
But the weather can be unforgiving, with howling winds, driving rain and powerful waves that can turn Trá Bán (white beach) into a rapidly shifting landscape.
'I just love coming out here and fixing things up. You just get a sense of satisfaction. You know you can just watch the seals and the beach and the wildlife and enjoy the solitude and how untouched it all is,' said Billy O'Connor, whose grandfather, local solicitor Peter Callery, and Peter's brother Jim bought part of the island in the 1980s.
It was O'Connor and his partner, Alice Hayes, who picked the new caretakers.
'I just love being here. It is almost like stepping back in time. There are not many places in the world you can go and have totally pristine lands and water and totally switch off.' April, he said, is one of the most magical times to visit, with the great white beach blackened with thousands of seals.
Last year's caretakers spoke of 2,000 seals and the seabirds that 'screeched eerily at night' and rested on the hill behind the house during the day.
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The sense of isolation is what attracted Ireland's former prime minister Charles Haughey to buy neighbouring Inishvickillane island, but also the reason it drove families away, including Peig Sayers, whose 1936 biography used to be a compulsory part of the Irish language curriculum.
When O'Connor and Hayes first advertised the live-in seasonal job in January 2020 they were inundated with 80,000 applications. They have now capped the number they consider at 300.
'First we try to put them off because if anything it is quite romanticised; the island, the sunsets and the beautiful places. But during the season it can be quite intense for the caretakers,' said Alice Hayes, who is no relation to James Hayes.
'Most people when they finish work go home to their safe haven and relax. But I often say to people going out there that they won't have that,' she said. 'You close the half door where you were serving coffee and you are home.'
'But I think the attractive thing is that pure sense of switching off. You are surrounded by nature and beautiful scenery. Even when it is miserable out there, it is still so stunning and there is just something about it that brings people to it.'
James, who trained and worked as an architect in London, met his wife on the Burren in County Clare, another area of outstanding beauty and wilderness, where Camille was finishing her studies in arts and business.
Further cementing their love of nature, they got engaged on another storied island, Inis Mór of the Aran Islands, off the coast of Galway, and ever since they have dreamed of doing the Blaskets job.
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