Episode 1 Ireland with Simon Reeve

I'm on a journey around an exotic and beautiful land at the edge of Europe.

I'm in Ireland.

It's a place that's so near and yet can seem so far away

and I've never really explored it.

I'm going to travel all the way around Ireland by land...

by sea...

and by air.

This is incredible!

I want to find out more about this island

divided between two countries

with an often troubled history.

I'll be meeting the enterprising...

Yes, here's success.

Success, excellent.

..and the mildly eccentric.

I just keep getting offered more monkeys, you know.

-You would take more if you could?

-Yeah, absolutely.

'This is a land steeped in religious faith.'

What are you doing?!

-Why barefoot?

-Well, they say it's the proper way to do it.

'And in ancient myths and legends...'

I meet people regularly who have met the fairies

and you don't interfere with them.

-Don't mess with the fairies.

-Exactly.

But in the 21st century, many here are embracing extraordinary changes.

Who would've thought that homosexuality would unify Ireland?

I mean, that's pretty amazing.

On this first leg of my journey,

I'm travelling all the way from the south

up the west coast to Ireland's most northerly point.

I'm heading to Ireland at a really exciting time.

There have been dramatic changes there in recent years.

They just voted for gay marriage, for goodness' sake.

Whatever you think of that,

you've got to see the values of profound cultural change

for an Ireland that is generally considered to be

overwhelmingly Catholic and conservative.

Ireland's so close to Britain but it can seem so far away.

It's just over 60 miles from Fishguard in Wales

to Rosslare in the Republic of Ireland.

Despite its dramatic and painful history,

everybody says Ireland is one of the most welcoming parts of the planet.

If I can't have a good time there, I should probably hand in my passport.

Just a couple of hours across the Irish Sea and we're here.

I better get my bags.

Look at this.

The tourist board has even turned the sunshine on for us

which is very considerate.

Welcome to Ireland!

There's lots of words that spring to mind when you think of Ireland

but faith and identity, I think, are very high up the list.

And I wonder if that's still true today.

Be really interesting to find out on this journey.

I'm starting in the south in the Republic of Ireland,

home to roughly 4.5 million people,

not much more than half the population of London.

Just a short drive along the coast from the ferry port in Rosslare,

I'd arranged to meet a man with a unique perspective

on Ireland's history and culture.

So I've come here to meet an explorer called Mike O Shea...

who explores the landscape of Ireland using paramotors.

And I'm going to join him.

-Bloke in green hat. Mike.

-Yes, sir, how you doing?

-Hello, mate.

-Simon Reeve.

-How you doing? Welcome.

-Lovely to meet you.

-Thank you for having us along.

-Well, this is it. This is your paramotor.

It's a motorised engine that we put on our back

-so we wear it similar to a rucksack.

-You strap it to your back...

You strap it to your back,

you attach the wing, which is a paramotoring wing here.

It's the same as a paragliding wing

but it's designed specifically with more speed for motoring.

Forgive me for saying, but is one essential part of this the...?

Do you need to have a screw loose?

MIKE LAUGHS

No, we usually check that before we start!

-I mean, obviously I can see the attraction...

-Yeah.

..I can see why it might be a lot of fun.

What do you get from paramotoring

that you can't get from tramping by foot across the landscape?

Well, I think if you walk,

you get, obviously, a very low level point of view,

whereas when you get up into the air and you start seeing,

you start seeing where churches are based, where castles are based,

you can actually see that it actually makes a lot of sense.

Some of the castles, some of the round towers and stuff,

they're on hills and stuff like that. They'll actually offer,

you know, really good defensive viewing for them to look out

and see what's coming. So it's a whole other perspective.

Now, look, somebody's had the crazy idea

that I'm going to come up with you

and see you in action on one of these

and you've got your mate Kester over here.

-This is Kester. So, Kester...

-Hello, Kester!

'As a complete novice, I was flying in tandem with Kester Haynes,

'an experienced instructor.'

-OK, if you hold up the bar at the front for me...

-Yeah.

Bloody mad!

OK, push, push, push, keep pushing.

Whoa! Oh, my God!

Trying to remain calm but this is incredible!

I was a swift convert to the joy of paramotoring.

Mike was right,

it really does give you a new perspective on the lay of the land.

In 1169, what many people think of

as the first English invasion of Ireland

took place here at Bannow Bay.

It was actually the Anglo-Normans who arrived.

We're coming in now and I can see Bannow Bay

and you can see exactly why the Anglo-Normans wanted to come in here.

It's wide, it's sheltered, there's a white, sandy beach,

plenty of space to get their ships onto it.

Our altitude revealed an Anglo-Norman church built high on the headland,

a clear statement of power and that they were planning to stay.

Wow! We're coming in.

Whoa!

Seems I've lost engine power!

Stay steady on your feet and turn to your left.

Kester, that was incredible. That was the smoothest landing I...

Well, I'm blown away, mate.

I'm blown away by the whole experience, I really am.

Mike!

I'm in love, Mike! I'm selling the car, Mike. I'm selling the house.

Congratulations on your first flight,

-well done.

-I have to get one.

-You enjoy that?

-Yeah, you could say that.

-Yeah.

-I feel quite...

I feel quite euphoric.

I think I need a hug.

Many historians say the landing here

led to centuries of English occupation,

but that wasn't how it began.

So strange to be here,

to think that 850 years ago,

this is where the English first arrived, where they invaded.

I say invaded,

they were basically invited in.

And they weren't just the English, they were Anglo-Normans,

a lot of them were French.

The invading foreign mercenaries were invited in by an Irish chieftain

who wanted help to defeat his enemies.

It BECAME an English occupation but it started out as something else.

A century after the Battle of Hastings

and the Norman conquest of England,

it was Ireland's turn.

This was one of the first Norman churches in Ireland.

This is a church of course, but it's also a memorial.

It marks the spot where Irish history was changed forever.

The invasion led to what many Irish would see

as centuries of colonisation and subjugation by the English.

There's really nowhere closer to England

that the English treated quite so badly as Ireland and the Irish.

Part of what lured the Anglo-Normans here initially

were the huge tracks of fertile farmland on the island.

I wanted to see what they'd been after.

I headed to one of the best areas of farmland in Europe.

To get from County Wexford to County Waterford,

I could've travelled 25 miles by road around this bay

but it's a lot more fun to hop on the ferry.

Thanks to healthy quantities of sunshine

and occasionally just a little bit of rain,

Ireland's been famous for its dairy products for more than 1,000 years.

Those cliches about the Emerald Isle really are true.

Ireland is very green.

Ireland has been exporting butter right back to the time of St Patrick.

I'm now heading into an area called the Golden Vale

and I am off to meet a farmer.

The Golden Vale is an area of fertile pastures

spanning the counties of Limerick, Tipperary and Cork.

It's home to some of Ireland's leading dairy farmers.

This is lovely.

-Hello. Pat?

-Hello, welcome.

Simon Reeves. Hello.

'Pat Mulrooney has been farming here for more than 40 years.'

-You're hoovering the kitchen!

-I escaped,

I don't have to do it.

Oh, come on, let's escape.

'He's done a few unconventional things that have earned him

'a reputation as a bit of a maverick.'

I believe you've also got an absolutely crucial farm worker

-here called Gretchen.

-Oh, yes. Actually...

-Can we meet Gretchen?

You're headed in the right direction.

-So Gretchen is through here.

-Gretchen's through here.

The office is there and all the computerised stuff.

-I've heard stories about Gretchen.

-Yes.

This is Gretchen.

SIMON LAUGHS

You've got a robot called Gretchen milking your cows.

Well, I should maybe explain the Gretchen bit.

-You see, she rings me on a regular basis.

-Right.

Sometimes in the middle of the night when I'm having my dreams

and I don't like it.

So I had to give it a name that I didn't particularly like...

So this robot, if it's got a problem,

it calls you up on your mobile phone and tells you, "I've got a problem."

-Yes.

-Right. Oh, my goodness.

So there's some brushing of teat going on, I think.

-Brushing and washing.

-Right.

-And now look, the brushes are moving out of the way.

-Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. Can't be positioning... Oh, no.

Oh, God, look at that.

Suckers are moving into position.

I can see red lasers flashing all around her udders.

It looks sort of ridiculous, to be honest,

but at the same time it's... It's genius.

-Look!

-There we go.

-It's filling up in here.

-Yep.

This looks like a huge investment of money and time.

What are the main advantages to you

and to the cows of having a robot in here?

To me, it eliminates a lot of the labour.

For the cow, they've become terribly independent.

What, do you mean they wander in when they want to be milked?

They come when they want to be milked.

So you're not forcing a daily cycle on them?

No, they dictate their own movements.

Pat says Gretchen reduces injuries cows can sustain

on many dairy farms when they're herded together for milking.

The robot fits with his ethos,

Pat was one of the first organic farmers in Ireland.

Organic doesn't just mean no pesticides, it's about respect

and even love for the land and animals.

It's an ethical belief.

Well, this is a lovely sight.

Why did you want to become an organic farmer?

This is a lovely asset, lovely farm and my ambition is

to actually hand it on in better condition than I got it.

I don't want to destroy it.

The sense I get from you, though,

is that the reason you decided to farm organically

wasn't just environmental, but it was ethical as well.

-It was moral.

-Yes, moral, ethical, very much so.

I think...

people are going too far in just looking at it

as a commercial operation.

That's not for me.

I want to see the quality food,

I want to see the environment looked after

and I want to see the animal actually having a nice lifestyle.

-We're in rural Ireland...

-Yes.

..this is Ireland that I've always thought of as being very religious,

very Catholic.

But at... I get this slight feeling for you that,

I'm not suggesting that one has replaced the other,

but that your organic faith is a belief

that's comparable to conventional religion.

Well, first of all I suppose Ireland is a very different place

than it was 20, 30 years ago. Very different place.

It's not controlled by churches any more.

People, I'm glad to say, have started to think for themselves.

I always thought for myself and I always said I'm...

I'm socially a Catholic.

-It ends there.

-It ends there, that's it?

-It ends there, yes.

I've always thought of the Republic of Ireland

as being profoundly Catholic but Pat's view is now widely held here.

The power of the Church has hugely declined in recent years,

driven in large part by a series of scandals about child sex abuse

and the treatment of unmarried mothers.

Many of the roles previously performed by the Church,

such as looking after the urban poor, have had to be taken up by others.

I'm heading towards the city of Cork.

Cork's had a tough time during Ireland's recent economical problems

and I'm now heading to a place that's been dealing

with some of the fallout.

This soup kitchen was established more than 100 years ago,

probably by Christians, but today it's run as a charity

by a team of magnificent, altruistic volunteers.

-Catriona, hello.

-Hello.

-Simon Reeve, sorry.

Sorry to interrupt.

SIMON'S LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH

-Hi, Simon. Welcome.

-You're a little bit busy.

-Yup.

-Welcome to Penny Dinners.

-Are you always a little bit busy?

Always busy. It's never any other way.

-No standing around here, is there?

-No, no. You don't have time...

Everybody's a volunteer so when everybody comes,

they come to work, like, so everybody's under that.

And the trick is the more you do, the younger you look. I'm about 96.

-Are you? 96 years old, you're doing all right.

-96 years old, yeah.

Catriona Twomey has volunteered at Cork Penny Dinners

since her dad started bringing her here when she was a child.

She's now grafting here seven days a week.

Going back about five, six years ago before the recession, it was...

It was just maybe, I'd say less than 100 people a week, you know,

sometimes maybe 40, 50, 60 people.

But now we're feeding 1,500 plus because with the recession...

-My goodness.

-..it's growing in numbers the whole time.

Penny Dinners welcomes anyone and everyone.

Morning.

We'll just get things ready.

This is bread that we collect in the evenings from the bakeries...

'Most of the food is donated by private companies

'and collected by the volunteers.

'Some of whom even work here during their school holidays.'

How have you managed to get these youngsters to be doing this?

-They've asked to come...

-No, I'm going to make you stand there.

-I'm going to ask them.

-OK.

-Have you all volunteered or are you being forced to do this?

-Volunteered.

-Volunteered.

-Come on now! Is that the truth?

-Yeah.

You've volunteered to be here at ten o'clock on a Wednesday morning

-peeling potatoes.

-Half eight.

-Half eight?!

-8:30, yeah.

Half eight you got here.

I mean, it's a lovely thing to do

but it's not everybody's idea of a jolly morning, is it?

I just thought, like, I'd come down for, like, experience

and see how it was.

And then I asked my friends if they wanted to do it

and they agreed. Like, we came down

and we actually enjoyed it.

And I actually love coming down here now.

She's here because I dragged her down... No, I didn't.

She's my daughter.

You've been held here since you were seven years old, working,

-peeling potatoes. Oh, this is a...

-And carrots.

..hark back to the 1800s, isn't it? Goodness me.

Ireland's been on an economic rollercoaster.

Following the global financial crisis that began in 2007

and a series of banking scandals, the economy crashed.

It's started to bounce back but many people have been left behind.

If you had to say what were the main reasons

that bring people in the door here, what would be the main issues?

We're talking about people down on their luck

and for whatever reason they're down on their luck,

be it unemployment,

be it not being able to keep a roof over your head -

pay your mortgage, pay your rent -

be it not being able to pay your bills

so they have to come down here to fill that little gap in the wheel.

Do you feel able to tell us what brings you here?

Erm, loads of different issues, really. Er...

Family problems, family break ups...

Have you got work at the moment?

I was working, I'm not working at the moment. I'm looking for work.

And how easy or hard is that?

It is difficult when you get older,

it really gets that more difficult to get it.

I'm just wondering whether volunteering here,

has it strengthened your own personal religious faith?

It strengthened my belief in the goodness of people.

Because you have no idea how good people are to us.

-This isn't run by the Church, is it?

-It's not run by them, no.

And my impression would've been in what I still perceive

as Catholic Ireland that this would've been the Church behind...

Maybe Catholic Ireland was a caring Ireland, maybe that might be

another good name for being Catholic. I'm a Catholic, right?

And I care, you know, and...

But I have friends, you know, of all different denominations

and they care as well so maybe we should have a caring religion.

I don't know, but what I'm saying is...

-Move on from the religious aspect.

-Yeah, and just, you know...

And just care.

It's a good point.

Of course you don't need to have a strong faith to give a damn.

Until recently, Ireland was fervently Catholic.

Many think that's a result of people seeking solace

in religion during centuries of suffering.

The key catastrophe in this country's history

was the great famine of the 1840s.

During the early 1800s, the Irish poor were labouring,

often for English landlords,

and they'd become heavily dependent on potatoes for food.

When the potato crop was devastated by blight,

farmers evicted tenants.

Famine then claimed an estimated million lives.

It was one of the greatest humanitarian tragedies of its time.

-Hello, Pat.

-Simon.

-Thank you so much.

-Simon, you're very welcome.

I'm glad you've brought a beautiful, fine day with you.

-It looks beautiful on a day like today.

-It really does.

Local historian Pat O'Donovan has studied what happened

in one particular famine village on this hillside.

There would've been over 1,200 people living round here

at the time of the famine.

-1,200 people living up here?

-1,200 people living here, yeah.

And there was 123 houses recorded in 1851.

What is a famine village?

People had been evicted and they all just came to...

and built a shelter for themselves, really.

There was enough animals,

there was enough corn to feed the population

but it suited large landowners at that time to make their money

and get these people off their holdings.

So when the famine started, they were evicted from their homes...

-That's right.

-..and they came...

What, I presume they came up here because it was common land?

It was common land, they couldn't be evicted out of this land.

There was food here but many of the large landowners

kept on selling and exporting it.

So, people starved and they died up here in sight of food down there?

Looking down at corn.

Looking down to there you can see fine cattle and corn fields

all the time but they couldn't touch it, they were arrested or whatever.

The work houses here in Limerick, there was over 200 dying a month

in this particular area during the famine.

-So, incredible levels of poverty and suffering.

-Incredible.

This is a small but still surviving house, Pat. Has this been...?

-This is one of the larger ones.

-Is it?

-Has this been rebuilt?

-No.

-Mind your head.

-OK.

Do we know how many people were living here?

There was an average in this area round here of a family of seven.

For stone seats, there's one here and then, of course,

you have the famous hob-seats, by the fire.

Children or younger people would have sat on those

and the fire in the middle.

Ireland was part of the United Kingdom

but when famine struck,

the government in London did little to help.

Some actually said the famine was a punishment from God.

Pat, who should we blame for the famine?

I suppose the English really at the end of the day

and nobody else but the English and the landlords

which they had planted in previous generations into this country

to take over the land from the original Irish settlers.

A million died, another million and a half migrated.

Ireland's population today is still lower than it was before the 1840s.

But in spite of the horrors visited on them by the famine,

the potato remains an object of affection, even reverence.

I drove to Dingle in County Kerry on the west coast

towards an event I just couldn't miss.

I'm heading now into the rather stunning Dingle Peninsula

and I'm on my way to a potato festival.

The potato originally came from the high Andes.

It grew well in Ireland because it tolerated a wet climate.

Before the famine, many Irish ate potatoes for breakfast,

lunch and dinner.

An adult male might eat up to 70 potatoes a day.

'They still love them.

'This rather jolly Irish spud off is a local competition

'between potato growers.'

I'm being press-ganged into...

'Inevitably, I was roped in.'

OK. Thank you. Thank you.

Put your name on top of the lid.

You're going to be tasting nine spuds.

'On the panel was Miss Kerry 2015,

'as well as slightly more experienced judges.'

-It's water only, no pints.

-What?!

No butter, no salt, no pepper because, after all,

we're tasting spuds.

We're ready to roll. Potato number one.

We have blind tasting

and the judges don't know whose spuds are being tasted.

Quite dry but lots of flavour.

We are now tasting the second potato.

Oh, that looks fluffy, I would say.

'It wasn't just eating them, there was also a potato peeling competition

'and in my heat, I was matched with Miss Kerry.'

Are you a champion spud peeler?

I peel at home all the time but with a peeler, not a knife.

Ha-ha! So we have a fairly level playing field.

-What is your technique going to be?

-Are the contestants ready?

-No, no.

Ready, steady, go!

Come on!

Oh, no!

-20 seconds.

-No pressure.

-Come on, Simon!

-15 seconds.

-10 seconds.

-We need more...

-If there's peel left, you'll be disqualified.

-What?!

Four, three, two, one!

-Stop!

-CHEERING

Simon adopted a new technique that seemed to work very, very well.

So, the results.

In first place...

First, the winner of the blind taste test was announced.

Sean Phapa O Muircheartaigh.

CHEERING

Give somebody the pint and come on up.

'But of course all I really cared about was the potato peeling.'

-The second place at the peeling, we have Simon Reeve.

-No!

CHEERING

And, Simon, your prize is a bag of spuds,

from the champion grower.

CHEERING

Ireland's changed.

It's not stuck in the past as many outsiders seem to think.

But in rural Ireland, faith,

belief and ancient legends are still vital to many.

From the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry,

I drove north towards Limerick.

I was heading to meet someone who specialises in Irish folklore.

And I think this, according to the sat nav, is where he lives.

KNOCKING

Oh, my goodness. Oi, oi. Stay, are you supposed to stay?

-Catch him, get him!

-Monsters.

-They're feckers.

-Hello.

-Morning.

-Eddie? Simon Reeve, lovely to meet you.

-And my family.

-These are your family?

-Quite new additions by the look of them.

-Yes, indeed...

'Eddie Lenihan has spent a lifetime collecting stories that have

'been handed down by word of mouth.'

-You've got to stay.

-Come in, please.

Thank you very much.

Now, Eddie,

I hear that you're one of Ireland's foremost storytellers.

-Is that true?

-Well, I didn't say that.

Would you like that description?

The only stories I tell are the stories I've heard from old people

over the last 40 years

because the only stories I do tell are Irish traditional stories,

what you call legends.

-Right.

-And legends now in the true folklore sense,

things that are supposed to have happened and some of them I believe.

Fairy stories.

Now, remember,

Irish fairy stories aren't like what you normally hear of.

I meet people regularly, old people who have met the fairies.

-Who have met them.

-Goodness me,

and these are some of the stories you've collected?

Yes, and for example, the fairies, these old people would say,

are just like us.

They have their pastimes, they buy, they sell,

they have their roadways, they have their habitations,

their places where they live and you don't interfere with them.

If you do, you're on a loser in a big time.

It could cost you your life.

-Don't mess with the fairies.

-Exactly. Don't mess with them or else.

A surprising number of rural Irish do still believe in the little people

as they're known, although generally they don't admit it on camera.

In 1999, in a bid to protect a specific bush

he said was important for fairies,

Eddie campaigned to divert a new motorway.

He warned there could be deaths if the fairies were displaced.

After a long battle, he got his way.

-Now, here is the bush.

-OK.

The fairy bush. Right there in front of us.

Which one are you pointing at? The one over there next to the sign?

-Next to the signpost.

-It's a good sized bush, isn't it?

-It is, it is.

Have a look there now and you can see yourself.

Look at the variation there.

Look at how they went around the bush and you can see yourself

that there's a little bit of a bottleneck there.

So they moved the motorway to accommodate the bush,

to avoid messing with the fairies

and creating some sort of disaster as a result?

And I think they did the sensible thing.

In modern Ireland, with church attendance falling

-and big technology companies setting up here...

-Yes.

..is there still space for these stories?

More space than ever.

We need a different kind of faith - what people think.

And where people think about things like this,

think back about who we are and where our traditions come from.

By preserving Irish folklore,

Eddie's helping to preserve a sense of Irish national identity

and stories of leprechauns and giants are good business for Irish tourism.

I think Eddie's more than a storyteller who dabbles in folklore.

I think he's a sort of patriotic activist.

We need to have a few strange tales in our culture, in my view.

Be so boring without.

You don't have to believe in the fairies

to rather love the fairytales.

My journey was taking me up the stunning west coast of Ireland.

Recently rebranded by the tourist board,

with some justification, as the Wild Atlantic Way.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse

but it was still spectacular.

It's a dramatic coastline.

Look at the waves pounding the rocks down there.

It's thanks to the turbulent weather system and currents here

and these waves that Ireland's now home to a sport

you wouldn't normally associate with this part of the world.

Surfing!

Numerous boutique little surf schools have sprung up

in the seaside town of Lahinch in recent years.

Here we are. It's the surf school.

-Simon.

-Hey, John.

-Welcome to Lahinch, man.

-You're very welcome.

-Thank you very much indeed.

Thanks for having us along.

-For a surf lesson.

-I'm excited to bring you out.

You're going to love it. It's warm out there, Simon.

In the wild Atlantic, are you sure?

-Come on, let's do it!

-All right, all right!

-Come on.

You see I really feel the cold...

..so I might get another one.

I might need something even... A bit more than this though.

Yeah, we... Peter, we can keep giving Simon more layers.

Peter, can you, mate?

Like, most customers wear one wet suit

but if Simon needs three or four wet suits, let's do it, you know? OK.

We're off.

You can put the boards down here.

Oh, we're a bit close to the water already.

-Great, OK. Now, Simon.

-Yes.

-I've heard that you've surfed quite a number of times before.

-No, no.

So I've heard that you've picked up this information

from some of the best surfers

so you're going to show me what you've learnt.

-Basically I remember...

-Come on, on the board.

-Something about...

-Show me what you did.

-Something about that you paddle out...

like this. Then you see the wave, then you paddle a bit

-and then you sort of go...

-Wow, OK. That's good. That's good.

-Did you hear that?

-Yeah, that's good.

John McCarthy's a former Irish surfing champion

who travelled the world for years in search of the perfect wave.

But in 2002, he returned to Ireland and, as is so often the case,

realised that what he'd been searching for

was in his own back yard.

He found perfect waves, met the woman of his dreams,

got married and had children.

My attempts in the surf were pretty pathetic but it was fun

and you know what, I was toasty warm as well.

-It's beautiful here.

-Yeah.

-But it's not exactly Hawaii, is it?

Why have you...?

How would you compare surfing here on the west coast

to other great surf spots around the world?

Yeah, you know, if you wait around long enough

here on the west coast of Ireland, you will get the perfect wave.

On the best day here,

it's as good as anywhere in the world, maybe better.

A lot of surfers do talk about it as being an almost...

a mystical, glorious experience.

Would you go along with that?

That is the mystery of surfing is that, like, it can appear

very spiritual but, like, if you go out to a crowded beach in Australia,

surfers are, like, they're boxing each other.

-It's like, "That's my wave."

-Oh...

So it's actually super unspiritual but, like, on a good day to go out

with one friend and to see creation,

yeah, that's... It is a spiritual thing, yeah.

I'm a Christian, so, you know, the creation...

It points to the creator.

So surfing for me,

it is just like there's an opportunity

to see the awe of creation.

I don't share John's religious conviction

but I can completely understand

why being out in this stunning landscape

helps him to feel closer to his maker.

Ireland's gorgeous,

much more beautiful than I'd thought before coming here.

I headed on up the west coast and through the wild,

glorious region of Connemara, towards Ireland's most sacred mountain.

In the 5th century, Christianity was spread here by St Patrick

who's thought to have been a Welsh slave captured by Irish pirates.

He escaped his captors, studied as a priest

and then sailed back to Ireland, or so the stories say.

I was arriving at the holy mountain on the last Sunday in July,

when St Patrick's central role in Irish culture

is celebrated with a climb and a pilgrimage.

So, look, you can get a stick for climbing.

Three euros to buy, 1.50 to rent.

-Morning to you.

-How are you doing?

-All right, thank you.

'Thousands of hikers climb Croagh Patrick

'in honour of Ireland's patron saint.'

So this is the mountain where St Patrick,

the 5th century preacher,

who tramped and wandered around Ireland converting people

is said to have fasted for 40 days

while he was busy wrestling with demons

and banishing snakes from Ireland.

'But the first pilgrim I met was not from Ireland

'but the Philippines.'

-Are you offering a stick?

-Yes. I'm finished...

-Oh...

-So I'm handing it over to you now.

-That's very kind of you.

-Will I need it?

-You'll probably do when coming down.

-You think?

Why did you go up? Was it for exercise or for...?

No, it's my 13th year now.

I'm a missionary with the Columbans -

St Columban, an Irish saint.

-You came to Ireland as a missionary.

-Yes.

-To spread...

Well, they went to my country so it's now my turn to do the same.

Do you think the Irish have lost some of their faith, then?

I don't think so.

Look at these people here still coming here.

And perhaps maybe the connection with the church,

maybe that's the one that might not be strong at the moment

but certainly the faith is there. The faith is here.

That did seem to be the case on the evidence of all the people here

who are ignoring the worst weather in living memory

and the advice of the emergency services not to climb the mountain.

Sir...

-What are you doing?! Barefoot.

-Barefoot.

Why, why barefoot?

Well, they say it's the proper way to do it.

-It's good, you feel good after.

-Very impressive.

-And you have a warm bath when you get down.

-I will.

Croagh Patrick rises at its peak to more than 2,500 feet above sea level.

You can see the mountain has just rolled out from behind the clouds

and the rain.

That is Croagh Patrick.

Croagh Patrick was the sacred mountain for pagan Ireland

but Christians took it as their own sacred site.

It was something that early Christians did very well, actually.

If they turned up somewhere

and found that the heathens had views they wouldn't let go of,

they would co-opt or assimilate those pagan views into early Christianity.

That's one of the principle reasons Christianity spread so quickly

and took such a firm hold in Ireland following St Patrick's mission.

This is the steep and tricky bit.

It took me more than two hours to reach the peak of the mountain.

The top!

Look at the view!

It's not for the view

and it's not for faith in my case,

though it is for a lot of people here.

But it's for the fun, the excitement.

The feeling of accomplishment you get from climbing a mountain

is unbelievable.

This used to be the most Catholic country in the world.

In the early 1980s, almost 90% of Irish Catholics went to weekly mass.

25 years later, it was less than 20%.

Our Father who art in Heaven...

But many people's individual religious faith

clearly remains strong.

An estimated 10,000 people made the difficult climb

in spite of the awful weather.

I left Croagh Patrick in County Mayo and headed north,

leaving the Republic behind

and crossing the border into Northern Ireland.

Although you'd be hard pushed to notice.

Bloody hell.

There's a road sign in miles per hour, that means we must've...

We must've just crossed the border.

That's bizarre.

There's absolutely nothing saying, "Welcome to the UK.

"Welcome to Northern Ireland."

How strange.

By the early 17th century, Protestant England held sway

over most of Catholic Ireland.

But the north, the province of Ulster,

proved difficult to control.

During the reign of King James I,

a process began, partly to pacify the Irish,

known as the Plantation of Ulster.

Vast tracks of land were given to Protestant settlers from England

and mainly Scotland.

It was one of the most ambitious colonisation schemes

in modern Europe.

So I'm going to learn a bit about the history here

because we're coming to Crom Castle.

The castle is massive!

Crom Castle sits on a vast estate gifted by the crown 400 years ago

to a family who still live here.

-Lord Erne?

-Yes.

-Hello, Lord Erne. Simon Reeve.

-You're very welcome.

-Come along in.

-Thank you.

-Come on.

My goodness. Now, that's an entrance.

These steps are fairly steep

but so far nobody's ever actually fallen down them.

SIMON LAUGHS

It's a miracle.

SIMON GASPS

It's breathtaking.

Our family first arrived from Scotland.

And the first Creighton, our family name being Creighton,

arrived, married Bishop Spotiswood's daughter

and that's a picture up there of Bishop Spotiswood.

And the first Creighton was granted rather huge lands

out to Mayo and up to Donegal.

What are huge lands, do you know the size?

Erm, I do but I couldn't tell you exactly. But they were...

They boasted they could go from here to Dublin

-without going off their own land, via Mayo.

-My goodness.

So, it was huge.

And the west wing belongs to my son John

and so we live in a semidetached castle.

SIMON LAUGHS

-But anyway, let's go on to the library.

-Sure, that'll be lovely.

Oh, this is gorgeous.

And for such a large room it does feel very comfortable actually.

-Cosy.

-It is cosy and I think books are rather wonderful.

My mother's father,

his sister married Ned Lutyens,

the architect who built Delhi and all that.

And when he stayed here, he used to get upset

because the line of the chimney piece

didn't go down the centre of the alcove.

But I'm not sure it bothers me two hoots.

-He would get upset by that, would he?

-He did.

'The present day castle is Victorian

'but the ruins of the original plantation castle

'date back to the early 1600s.'

It feels very well fortified.

It feels like a castle built for conflict. Is that fair?

Well, I think it was definitely a fortified castle

but how much of it is original and how much of it is Victorianised?

The settlers built plantation castles to defend themselves

against rebellion by the Catholic population.

Not surprisingly, the locals objected to the colonisation of their land.

Crom Castle survived two Catholic sieges.

How respectful do you as a family need to be of history?

You still presumably have a sense of responsibility

-towards not upsetting people from any side?

-Yes.

Because I think there's a great feeling today

of reconciliation, whatever troubles they've had.

-And I honestly don't particularly want to stir it all up.

-No.

It's simple as that.

Lord Erne didn't want to dwell on the controversial history

that the estate is a part of.

But the seeds of division sowed by the Plantation of Ulster

eventually led to

the violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland

that became known as the Troubles.

It is incredible, the story of this place and the estate goes

right back to one of the most difficult periods of Irish history.

A time of plantation and occupation and division and suffering.

And where I'm heading to next

feels the consequences of those events to this very day.

70 miles north of Crom is Derry, or Londonderry,

a city of less than 100,000.

Originally a plantation city, the famous walls were built

to protect the English and Scottish Protestant settlers.

But eventually the Catholic population

outstripped the Protestants

and Derry become synonymous

with some of the worst of the Troubles.

It's astonishing to think there was virtual civil war

on the streets here within living memory.

Now, nearly 20 years on from the Good Friday peace agreement,

the city's been transformed.

A new Peace Bridge has been built across the River Foyle

and in 2013, Derry was made UK City of Culture.

A quiet Sunday morning and the only people who are out are cyclists

and joggers, the occasional car.

-Looks sleepy and perfectly normal, of course. Morning.

-Morning.

But you think what's happened here in the last couple of decades.

It is unbe-bloody-lievable what they've achieved.

To go from full-on armed conflict to relative normality and peace.

It's a magnificent thing,

it's a shining example to the rest of the world.

And this is the People's Gallery.

The People's Gallery is a series of huge murals

painted in a Catholic area of Derry known as the Bogside.

This was the epicentre of the Troubles here.

This is where the Bloody Sunday massacre happened, scores died here.

Today, the murals have become a tourist attraction

and they're still regularly restored by the original artists.

I met up with one of them, Tom Kelly.

It's such a powerful image.

This is for the anniversary of the Battle of the Bogside

which was a three day battle

that pretty much brought us to the brink of civil war here,

you know?

It's actually a 12-year-old kid wearing a Second World War gas mask.

And he has a petrol bomb or a Molotov cocktail,

whatever you want to call it.

But the police force at this time were well-trained,

supported by the British government.

The people were on the streets looking for very basic human rights

and civil rights. It was civil rights marches that we had

right at the beginning of this conflict.

Your right to a home for your family,

a right to a job.

The murals commemorate Catholic victims of the Troubles

but of course Protestants and many others also lost their lives here

in a conflict characterised by violence and suffering on all sides.

Coming here as an outsider for me,

I've never been anywhere in the world where...

intense situations like this

-are so vividly portrayed on an individual level.

-Yeah.

I mean, it feels to me like the community here,

you really do remember every single name,

every single soul that was lost and suffered.

And that in and of itself is a pretty extraordinary thing.

When you're experiencing discrimination and injustice

and brutality on a day to day basis,

then you don't forget.

I mean, they can talk all they want about reconciliation

and peace bridges and how things are wonderful but, you know,

the real root is still there.

What we tried to do as the Bogside artists is to paint it

so that we can look at it

and not sweep it under the carpet

as the tourist board and the authorities would like to do.

And that's all that the Bogside artists have created -

we've created a human document that tells a story.

It's one side of the story.

But it's not surprising that Tom and many other locals

don't want to forget what happened here.

A huge number of people in Northern Ireland

are now working to heal the wounds of history.

In Derry or Londonderry, campaigners believe

the arts can bring Catholics and Protestants together

and help the whole community to move on from the past.

In the early 1990s, Derry had no public theatre.

But with a grant of just £300,

one woman took it upon herself to start one

in order to try and build bridges between different communities.

-Pauline.

-Hiya.

-Sorry to interrupt.

Pauline Ross is the inspiring founder of the Derry Playhouse.

-Sorry, what's going on here?

-This is a youth theatre

from our only integrated secondary college in the whole north-west.

Steve is the theatre director and their teacher

and these are all young students, crazy about theatre.

-And we have one integrated primary school.

-Meaning, in simple terms?

-95%...

-Catholic and Protestant.

95% of our education system is segregated

and I think it is something...

96% of our social housing is segregated.

-Segregated.

-What does that make for?

-Well, it means ghettoised, basically, doesn't it?

-Yes.

-Goodness.

-Would you like to make some of them?

-Well, I would, really, yes.

Can I ask, when you hear, you know, older folk of my age and up,

talking about the past and the Troubles,

does it sound to you like it's from your...

from your world or does it sound as though they're talking about,

like almost from another planet, but certainly another country?

We have, like, the odd bomb scare or someone gets shot

or someone had a bomb left under their car.

Like, just this week or last week,

somebody had a... A police officer had a bomb under their car.

That's not so far from here.

So, you have lots of that.

But I think our generation,

we hear about it but we just want to move forward.

We just want to live in the present and look towards the future.

I collaborate with a school that is an all girl's school.

We would be walking the walls and then she would tell me,

"Oh, I can't go there, I can't go there with my uniform on."

Because that would be a predominantly Protestant area

and her uniform signifies her as a Catholic.

First question you always get asked is, "Where do you live?"

-And that defines you?

-Yes, it's automatically assumed.

"Oh, you live there and you're in this religion." It's just not right.

It doesn't sound like it happens in north-west Europe

in the 21st-century, but it's very much still the reality, isn't it?

But we sustained here a 35 year conflict and from 1998...

It's not going to finish overnight, is it?

No, I think you eloquently put it that there's a residue,

there's a legacy.

We don't want to get stuck in the past,

we don't want to dwell on it,

but we need to learn the lessons from it.

Because these bright, young, talented people

need a better future. A shared future.

The ongoing segregation of schools in Northern Ireland

was the single biggest shock to me.

To an outsider, it is disappointing and depressing.

Pauline took me to see another project on the outskirts of the city.

Oh, goodness, look!

-What is going on? Hello.

-Pleased to meet you.

-Simon Reeve.

-Hi, Simon, pleased to meet you.

-Elaine, lovely to meet you.

Elaine Ford coordinates the Street Talk Project

close to the Protestant Tullyalley housing estate.

One of its aims

is to bring youngsters from different communities together.

So, these kids, the majority of them here, are from Tullyalley,

which is a Protestant community.

There's only one or two from the Catholic community.

There's meant to be more.

But they have only started building a bridge together

in the last few months.

This time last year,

the Catholic young people and the Protestant young people

-wouldn't have engaged with each other.

-So, really...

Those young people would've been involved in rioting

and fighting on what we call the interface here.

Does it feel weird to you that so little is mixed

or is it just life? Is that just normal?

-It doesn't feel any different.

-It's the way we're brought up.

It doesn't feel that different,

because there's been a gap for so long.

You haven't met people from the other community outside the project?

No, not really, no.

Billions of pounds have been paid to support the peace process.

People agreed to stop fighting, but there are still real divisions.

History runs deep here.

Real reconciliation will take generations.

Goodness me.

I mean, it is astonishing just how much segregation there still is,

in the North.

Pretty shocking for an outsider.

Perhaps inevitable for a lot of the people who live here,

but it has to change

and this sort of project has got to be the way forward.

I'm getting close to the end

of this first leg of my journey around Ireland.

But I'm now just driving up into the Inishowen peninsula

which, by all accounts, is completely spectacular.

It's only about 30 miles from the city of Derry to Malin Head,

the island of Ireland's most northerly point.

I crossed the border back into the Republic to get there.

Malin Head.

I've heard that name mentioned

so many times on The Shipping Forecast

and I've always thought it must be ludicrously remote and bleak.

And you come here,

and you find it is stunning.

It is so beautiful here.

I'm just standing here smiling to myself.

Look at it.

I've come from the far south of this island,

all the way here to the very far north.

I've loved every moment and every mile of the journey so far

and it's taught me so much about an Ireland that I really didn't know.

I've learnt a lot about the history and the culture.

Also the faith and the belief of people here, as well.

I'm really looking forward to the next leg of the journey,

which is going to take me down the stunning east coast of Ireland.

I arrive in Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital city,

on one of the most controversial weekends of the year.

My God. Bottles are being chucked. Hoods are coming up.

We need to move back out the way.

And as I travel south through the Republic of Ireland,

I hear a surprising theory that turns history on its head.

You are saying that Cromwell was framed?

I'm exactly saying that and I know who framed him.

With the Open University,

you can further explore Ireland's rich history and culture.

To find out more, go to our website

and follow the links to the Open University.