For ever and for ever when I move

I was first welcomed into Bridgid McLoughlin’s charming Wexford country house, an old backpacker’s bed and breakfast—of which one wall is rumoured to be four hundred years old—following the tails of my children’s Halloween costumes. We had prearranged for a neighbourly trick or treat, and I happily followed my little ghost and lion into the sitting room to say a warm hello. I was immediately impressed by the carefully curated collection of artwork on the walls.

As we moved back into the conservatory, my heart swelled at greeting the expansive painting hanging on the wall. It is not just the size of the painting that is impressive, but the depth and beauty of the thick oil strokes that truly captured my heart. I was drawn into the scene and felt the room around me fade away, enchanted by the painted sky over the harbour at dawn. It is evident that Bridgid is no stranger to the sea, as she so skilfully captures the essence of the waves.

Inspired by her love for her family and the rich wildness of the landscape of her native Ireland, Bridgid’s paintings explore the rugged relationship between rock and water, life and death. Her studio and home are filled with breathtaking oil-painted scenes and it was truly an honour to meet with her in her beautiful home to see her expansive collection of decades of work, even while many of her paintings have been sold throughout the years in exhibits and galleries.

“Any colour I see, I can mix it,” Bridgid tells me proudly, a truth that resonates in her collection. “There is no need to buy a whole box of colours when you’re able to blend them.” Hers is an inherited skill, learned from growing up in a family of skilled craftsmen and wood carvers, and beside a brother with a reputation for mixing coveted colours. Her subject matter varies from the bright, cheerful hues of flowers— honest meditations of her own gorgeous garden— to the complex and layered tones that compose the colours of the coast and the sea, to the warm, charming palette of rustic country scenes depicting chickens and turnips and the labours of the farmhands of old.

“I don’t paint for money, and I don’t paint to teach,” she tells me as she gracefully directs me to the Gorey Community School for art classes, my eagerness at her expertise overflowing despite myself. Bridgid is the depiction of a true artist: humbling, inspiring, and one whose work speaks for itself.

Stored on a table in her studio are a pile of her daughter Clodagh’s sketches, which were left behind, no longer needed; page after page of beautiful bouquets of bright flowers whose confident brush strokes and dazzling colours show that the artistic apple certainly doesn’t fall far from the tree.

We close the door to the studio and resume our conversation in the kitchen, where Bridgid turns her skilful hands back to chopping blanched almonds. A bowl of whiskey-soaked currants wait on the table. One Christmas pudding sits complete and wrapped in foil, another fresh from the oven, resting on the table in its beautiful brown paper wrap, awaiting delivery to her children.

I made my way out of the house and past the roses, still in bloom, that line the gravel path back to the road. The morning’s bright sun has given way to wind and rain, as it so often does these days, and I pull my jacket collar up, comforted by the knowledge that just down the road the waves crash against the shore, and crash against the shore, and crash ever more.

I met Hannah Sutton at a hostel on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, in early March. I was charmed by her sweet personality and her depth of traveling experiences, and managed to snag her for a quick interview the morning before she flew out of London. At twenty-one, this Australian chica has been on the road since October, 2011, starting in Indonesia, and has no prospects of stopping anytime soon: read on to hear her perspectives on hitchhiking, solo travel, and general travel anecdotes.

A: “Where have you been so far on your travels?”

H: “The rough path is this: Indonesia- India- Nepal- Thailand- Cambodia- Thailand- Myanmar- Malaysia- Japan- South Korea-Hong Kong- China- Mongolia- China- Krygyzstan- Kazakhstan- Russia- Georgia- Turkey- Bulgaria- Serbia- Hungary- Austria- Czech Republic-Germany- Netherlands- Germany- England- Wales- France- Switzerland- Italy- Austria- Czech Republic- Poland- Germany- Netherlands- England- Scotland- England- South Africa. After Hong Kong and before South Africa, everything was traveling overland.”

A: “That’s quite a list! Tell me a little about Myanmar/Burma.”

H: “It was my first taste in solo travel; I met so many people. It was a difficult country to travel at times, but really rewarding. The people are the best part. They’re so genuine and nice. I left my wallet on the table on day–the thing about Myanmar is that they don’t have any ATMS, so all the money you want you have to carry it all with you. The currency exchange rate is just insane and inflation is huge–so I had a huge stack of money in my wallet, probably enough to feed a family for a few good months. I left it on the table in the cafe and I walked out and the man ran after me and gave it back to me with all the money still in it. It was so gorgeous. The people there are so nice.

Another time I was just walking around a lake and this lady, she stopped me and was like, oh, I invite you to dinner at my place. And I was traveling with these three other travelers at the time and the next day we went over to her place and she cooked this huge feast for us and we sat down and started eating it, it was enough food to feed a family for a week.

So they’re very humble and very well educated as well. They have a very good understanding of English, as they used to be a colony, and they’re just really really wonderful people.

But, on my first day in Burma, I was riding the local train around Yangon, which is the main city, and the train suddenly stopped. I walked out to see what had happened, and a guy had jumped in front of the train and committed suicide. It was three days into me traveling solo and I was like WHAT. It was so scary. All the kids were going up and poking the body, and after awhile they just rolled the body off the tracks and kept the train going. It was really amazing to see how they see death all the time, and so it’s not a big thing for them, whereas we’re sort of sheltered from it. It’s a good way to see the difference between our cultures.”

A: “Definitely. In Korea, they have a lot of similarities in that way. The way they talk about death is… commonplace. A lot of my students would say, well, I chose not to commit suicide. There were two paths, one is to commit suicide and one is to not. Whereas in the states, you don’t say anything about it.”

H: “And even if someone has committed suicide, you don’t say that, as well. You try to cover it up as something else. It was the same in India as well, very out there, seeing dead bodies, like the burning ghats in Varanasi.”

A: “And it’s normal, a natural part of life. So, from Burma, where did you go?”

H: “Well, I was talking to my family more, and I hadn’t seen them in a few months time. My parents happened to be in Japan, and I had nothing to do and I had a lot of money saved up so they told me to come over and visit them. So I crashed their romantic get-away, and was third-wheeling and getting free accommodation and free food and stuff, which is really nice. So that was really cool to see them. After everything I’d done, going through India and Nepal and the breakup with my boyfriend, it was really nice to have family around.” Continue reading