A young couple has taken on a job they—and thousands of others—have longed for, winter caretakers of an uninhabited island just off one of the westernmost points in Ireland. In addition to having no other winter residents, Great Blasket Island also turns off the electricity and hot water when the season is over.
The new caretakers, who have applied for the job each of the past several years before they got it are a former Canadian pro hockey player and his Dutch partner. Hiring is in the hands of a couple who own four cottages and a cafe on the island.
Great Blasket was a small fishing village—its peak population was 160 in 1911—that was evacuated in 1954 because the government decided it could no longer guarantee safety and services on the isolated spot. The residents had actually been asking since 1947 to be resettled after a series of tragedies and occasionally being cut off for weeks.
In 2014, a company bought numbers of the old cottages and created the summer complex, which hopes to re-open in April.
Image: Great Blasket Island village (Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Wikimedia)
Comments (0)