Moving to Mayo’s Clare Island: “It’s an infectious way of living.”

Have you ever let your mind wander and daydreamed about leaving traffic jams, urban sprawl and the stresses of ‘the rat race’ behind? It’s a nice sensation until the next distraction or ping on your phone dislodges the thought and you’re back to your stupidly busy life. Well that’s unless you are Lauri and Simon Donnelly, who followed through and moved their family to Clare Island earlier in 2025.

They made the leap from York in the UK to Clare Island this past summer, swapping city stress for island simplicity in a move that even they admit sounds slightly mad. They hadn’t even visited the island before committing to a ten-month stay. “I think when we told people what we were doing, and obviously that we hadn’t even been to the island before, I think people genuinely thought we were crazy,” Simon admits, standing in the island’s community hub where he works remotely as a service designer. One of the most profound adjustments for the naturally independent couple has been accepting help and embracing the island’s ‘Meitheal’ tradition. Simon recalls their first big shopping trip, arriving off the ferry and onto the pier on Clare Island.

Simon, Lauri and their three children were carrying backpacks laden with groceries, before their van had arrived from the UK. Three different drivers stopped to offer lifts. Their English reserve initially made them decline, but by the third offer, they gratefully accepted. “That’s been the biggest change. Being more open to that stuff,” Simon reflects. “You realise that it’s coming from a great place. They really do want to help.” Since then, they have really embraced community life. In thirteen years living on the same street in York, Simon had gotten to know just two or three neighbours beyond passing pleasantries. “There was lots of people on that street who you wouldn’t know their name, you wouldn’t know anything about them,” he says. “And that’s the difference.”

On Clare Island, the community centre hosts set dancing on Sundays, weaving classes on Saturdays, after-school clubs, and guitar lessons. There was a Halloween party for the children. The WhatsApp group buzzes with updates from development officer Joanne, keeping everyone connected. “Everyone has been so welcoming from the moment we came onto the island,” Lauri says. “They just do a lot for the kids here.”

Fell in love with Mayo

The seeds of their Irish adventure were planted years ago. Simon’s mother was from Kilkenny, and he’d been visiting Ireland throughout his life. “We’d actually almost bought a house a few years ago in Ireland, but that fell through, and then we were starting to have a family. So the timing wasn’t quite right,” he explains. This summer, they finally took the plunge. Starting their search in Donegal, they worked their way down the west coast. “We kind of got to Mayo and just really fell in love with it,” Simon says.

They found a derelict house near Westport―a long-term project―and put in an offer. But there was another, more urgent reason driving their move. Their youngest daughter suffers from severe allergies, particularly to grass pollen. “When we came over for the three weeks back in June, we noticed, just in that small space of time that she improved. Her skin improved,” Lauri explains. The air quality on the west coast, with its constant winds dispersing pollen, made a dramatic difference.

Homeschooling to island life

The Donnellys had been homeschooling their daughters in York, partly to give them more outdoor experiences and partly due to concerns about overcrowded classrooms. Clare Island’s tiny school with just eleven pupils in total offered something remarkable: the intimacy of homeschooling within a school structure. “Such a small school, it’s almost kind of a homeschooling dynamic, in a sense,” Simon notes. Lauri was particularly drawn to the school’s environmental ethos.

“There was information about how it is important to them to look at the environment around them and focus on biodiversity and get out of the classroom,” she says. “They’ve already been to Macalla Farm as part of one of their school days, which they loved.” For Lauri, the transition from being the primary educator to watching her daughters in a classroom setting has been an adjustment. “I really enjoyed homeschooling. I loved taking the girls out to places and exploring things,” she reflects.

“But by the same token, seeing them enjoying school is really pleasing as well.” Life on Clare Island requires a different kind of organisation. The family lives about a mile up the road in Glen, and every couple of weeks, they make the journey to Westport for supplies.

Shopping arrives in crates that get loaded onto the ferry at Roonagh Pier. “We average about every two weeks,” Simon explains. “We basically go and do a supermarket shop, fill some crates, drive back to Roonagh, drop them on the pier. The ferry crew help out by putting them on to the ferry and then taking them back off again.” There’s no popping to the shops at eight o’clock for a forgotten ingredient, and takeaways are non-existent―though Sharon’s recent pop-up takeaway at the community centre, featuring burgers, chips, and spice bags, was very enthusiastically received.

“When you don’t get to do it very often you enjoy it,” Lauri says. “It became more of a treat.” The challenges, however, pale against the benefits. “The challenges of living on the island are far outweighed by the benefits in terms of just the lifestyle and the environment that you get to be part of, the community that you get to be part of,” Simon insists.

Decompressing from city life

Simon works in digital design, previously contracting for organisations like the BBC and NHS. Post-pandemic, he’d seen an increasing push toward office attendance―two or three days a week of what you might call ‘presenteeism’. “I didn’t want to be doing three days of commuting every week, not seeing the kids as much,” he says. “That was certainly another part of the decision.” Now self-employed with a couple of start-ups, he works from the community hub when he needs focused time, paying seven euros a day for workspace with excellent broadband. His business partners are scattered - one in Yorkshire, another in Cornwall - meeting virtually weekly and occasionally in person.

But it’s the psychological shift that’s been most striking. “I think with us living in the city, it’s taken us to move somewhere like this to realise exactly how stressed we were,” Lauri says. “Sometimes you’re in denial of how stressed you are. You just learn how to manage it.” The visible symptoms of that stress have faded. “You can tell people are stressed in the city, and they’ve got places to go and they’re late, and there’s traffic,” Lauri observes. “Whereas with here, even though we have to contend with a ferry to get our kids off this island, it’s way less stressful than getting from one side of York to the other.”

The pace of life has changed too. “When you talk to people here, they’re just very chilled about things and positive about things,” Lauri says. “It’s an infectious way of living.”

The view from Glen

From their rental house in Glen, the family has a stunning vista of Clew Bay and the coast. “The view is just absolutely stunning, and so it’s so easy just to sit outside with a coffee,” Simon admits. “It just changes constantly, and it looks different every day.” The girls walk to catch the school bus each morning - a journey of less than a mile down a safe path. The freedom they’ve gained is remarkable compared to their previous urban existence. “One of the big things for us is just the level of freedom that the kids have got here,” Simon says.

The family’s arrival on Clare Island was itself something of a serendipitous event. While arranging to complete the purchase of their Westport house, Lauri was searching for rental properties to give their youngest daughter respite from her allergies. She stumbled upon an advertisement on Daft.ie - a standard house rental listing, but with one crucial difference: the property owners wanted families and were explicit about prioritising the school.

A Zoom call followed, where the landlords carefully explained the realities of island life. “They made sure we understood that you can’t just kind of take your car on and off the island all the time," Simon recalls. “They were very pragmatic about that.” There was even another family ahead of them in the queue, but when that family decided against it, the Donnellys got their chance.

They committed to the full ten-month academic year. “We wanted to experience the island living,” Lauri explains. “It wasn’t just a tiny little stop gap for a couple of months.” The move has prompted deeper revelations about modern life. Lauri has noticed that the urge to sho - that common urban stress response - has simply evaporated. “I think back in our previous house, when you have the stress and stuff, you tend to shop to make yourself feel better,” she explains. “Whereas we haven’t had that urge. It’s a lot easier to not spend money and go shopping when you’re happy.”

Simon had read about the concept of a ‘no spend year’ gaining traction online. “We tried to do that a few times in the UK, but doing it here, it’s a lot easier,” he says. “It’s just about living more simply, not having that frivolous spend that you tend to do partly out of habit.”

The family has also become more self-reliant while paradoxically becoming more open to community support. “We have always been very self-contained,” Simon admits. “I would say we’ve always been very independent. And I suppose coming somewhere like here, the thing that I’ve taken away from it is just that asking for help, having people around where you can reach out.” He continues: “We lived in a world where you kind of Googled it if you wanted to know something. Whereas here people genuinely do want to help.”

Looking forward

The house near Westport is finally completing this week after months of delays - a stark contrast to the three-month sale process in York. But the family is in no rush to leave the island. They’ve committed to staying through the academic year, and there are hints they might extend beyond that. “We might well certainly extend our stay,” Simon says. “I don’t know that the girls will be in any hurry to leave. They absolutely love it here.” The challenge, he notes, is the broader one facing Clare Island and similar communities: how to sustain the school and population when housing is scarce and much of it is needed for summer Airbnb income.

“The school is so fundamental, but if you lose the school, you lose families, and then you lose that long-term viability,” Simon observes. He believes there’s real opportunity in what they’ve experienced - almost a formalised sabbatical program for families. “I think there’s a lot of families out there, given the opportunity and given that kind of a little bit of inspiration, would come and do this,” he says. “Maybe they wouldn’t stay here forever, but if they brought a couple of kids with them, that’s another year at least that the school’s got a couple more kids in.”

For those considering a similar move, Simon’s advice is simple: “Come and experience it. Just take that time out of your life and see what sort of fit you are for it.” He acknowledges the logistics require thought - the need to be organised, the lack of instant gratification, the reality of ferry schedules. But he’s adamant about the value.

“Even if you did it as a sabbatical, I don’t think it will end your career. If you have a year out in somewhere like this, and who knows, you might just decide not to go back,” he says. “This experience is just such a magical one. The kids will bring amazing memories away from this island.” His brother has already visited twice, seeking the same decompression. “It does feel like you just kind of step out of that mainstream a bit,” Simon says.

“I think for a lot of people, it could be life changing.” As winter settles over Clare Island, the Donnellys are finding their rhythm with the tides and ferry schedules, with the spectacular, ever-changing views and the close-knit community. Their van may have broken down recently - a complication that would have been stressful in their old life - but here, they’re taking it in stride. There are people to ask, ways to manage, and a ferry to sort out.

“We’re still not bored of the view,” Lauri says simply, looking out toward Clew Bay. In the end, perhaps that’s the real measure of their successful transition: not the absence of challenges, but the presence of something more valuable - time to appreciate where they are, both literally and metaphorically.

In choosing to step off the treadmill of modern urban life, the Donnellys have discovered something that no amount of convenience or connectivity could provide: the space to breathe, to connect, and to remember what really matters. “Stripping away some of that modern clutter does allow you to kind of find yourself a little bit again,” Simon reflects. It’s a lesson that more families might benefit from learning, even if only for a season, on a windswept island off the Mayo coast.

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