About John ….

It all started when I was about 6 years old in Yorkshire. I found an ancient passage tomb cairn in a woodland valley that became my den where I would hide and imagine. About this time my father took me on a trip to Devon and we passed Stonehenge. I had never heard of it and my jaw dropped. The sun had just set and I begged my father to detour. This was during the day before visitor’s centres, gift shops and “keep out”ropes. From that young age I was hooked on megolithomania and grew with a constant wonder about nature and our place in it.

My career life started in community theatre with music on the side. Through this work we explored ancient folk drama performed through sacred plays, mummers plays and circle ceremony performances. Visualization also fascinated me, as personal theatre that we can use to guide ourselves. My childhood den days in the passage cairn were very much an apprenticeship of this.

With music, my fascination was to investigate the oldest of music or music inspired by the oldest mythology. This included a fascination the oldest of instruments, especially harps, lyres and pipes, though I never learned to play any of these. I’ve always been happier as a music fan than a musician.

By almost accident I moved into dry stone walling, which started as an income supplement to my low wage from the theatre company. I quickly moved onto stone and slate cutting, then stone carving and finally into full stone masonry. This led to work on Iona where I assisted the restoration of the Reilig Oran chapel, re-built the alter at the nunnery and did some considerable work to damp-proof the Abbey.

During these stone working years I also provided syndicated articles and columns on various Celtic subjects such as legends, mythology, shaman wisdom, traditions and even ancient recipes. These were published by a variety of British newspapers and magazines for a few years. Sometimes this led to talks, being invited to workshops and new age fairs and holding retreats on Iona or the Isle Of Mull.

I left stone masonry work because, like with music, I thought I performed better as a fan of stone stone sculptures than as a creator or restorer of them. I also wanted to focus on running a publishing company, a dream that had been with me since school. Publishing led to presenting workshops on various astro-archaeology, ancient astrology and Celtic mythology topics and I found I enjoyed this work much more than publishing.

After a bout of illness, that was largely relieved through diet changes, I ventured into learning herbalism and then with the goal of converting this interest into a “real job”, I studied and earned a degree in food science to deeper understand the workings of plants and nutrition.

Though my intention was to venture into herb tincture and concentrates production, based on ancient healing texts from Britain, India and China I ended up becoming a catering contractor in Florida, USA that gave employment to blind and mentally disabled people. This was far removed from anything I had done or ever dreamed of doing but recently I have understood the benefits of this extreme diversion.

Within my catering work I desired to keep a connection to my Celtic interests so as a hobby I set up my Celtic Ways web site during 1995 to share my knowledge and interest in Celtic music, theatre, mythology and traditions. At that point I was only doing this as a hobby to archive my knowledge so it was not forgotten.

Then Riverdance captured USA interest. Celtic culture was almost invented by the USA, as I do not remember anyone in Scotland or Ireland talking to me about Celtic unless it was about the famous Scottish soccer team started by an Irishman from Co. Sligo. I quickly discovered success through selling Celtic music through Florida's cafes.

I also captured this new Celtic music interest on my Celtic Ways web site that quickly changed from being a Celtic information site to being a Celtic music site. MP3 music was starting off and I helped several good Celtic musicians, who could not get onto record labels, to sell their music on the internet through making MP3 audio files available. I gave up food service and catering and entered into promoting Celtic music full time. This is how I met Claire :-)

Celtic music buyers started to enquire about the Celtic countries, their traditions, legends, cultures, ancient history and Celtic Christianity. I found myself being called to re-enter the work I had been doing through the 70s and 80s. Realizing I was really in the wrong country I returned to Scotland, but was very quickly "called" to Ireland.

I found a home in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, and worked as a manager at the hotel there, I bought a small low cost car and spent three years travelling all around Ireland searching for and exploring many hidden sacred sites and talking to local people about their legends and traditions. My Celtic Ways web site then reduced its music content and gradually returned to how it started in 1995, but now I was including photos and logs of my travels and discoveries around Ireland.

Then, people wrote to me to ask if they could join my travels.

I found myself frequently returning to Co. Sligo and the other counties of the Breifne region, these being the counties of Leitrim, Cavan, Fermanagh and some of Roscommon, as this area seemed to be more abundant in ancient sites and traditions than the rest of Ireland combined.

Betty Bunn, wife of renowned Ireland photographer Mike Bunn and friend of Claire, heard of my interest in Co. Sligo and the Breifne, found a cottage for me below the Keash Caves, a site of some of the most profound legends of Ireland so I moved in.

Though my plan was to work a “normal” well paid job as manager of Markree Castle and spend my free time continuing to explore the endless sacred sites of Breifne two things happened very quickly.

Being a manager of a popular hotel for weddings, like Markree Castle, leaves very little spare time. Also, I was forever chatting to guests about the local ancient sites and legends. They wanted to visit them and no local minibus services were doing this. Therefore, most of my spare time was taking guests to our local sacred sites like Carrowkeel, Keash Caves, Labby Rock and St. Lazier’s Well.

A choice had to be made!

I resigned from Markree Castle and with exceptional, encouragement, support, and help from partner Claire Roche, Celtic Ways became a travel company to explore our local sacred sites.

Celtic Ways has since added more attention to accommodation, dining, entertainment and group itineraries in addition to touring. We now operate a full vacation service.

Suddenly, many of my journeys in life, .....

my childhood fascinations for megalithic sites
research into ancient folk drama, music and traditions
dry stone wall building
stone masonry on Celtic Christianity sites
writing, publishing, hosting workshops
herbalism and food science
living in the USA and meeting wonderful people there
marketing Celtic music and meeting Claire
learning how to create web sites and bringing people to them
hotel management and hospitality services
exploring beautiful hidden unknown sites of Ireland

... have all come together to serve you with our Celtic Ways tours and vacations today.

Claire and I are also in partnership for our next step. The “Veil Between Two Worlds” tour is becoming a shared project of performances, book, documentary and hopefully film that merges the stories of Ireland’s tradition with the harp being its Veil.

Claire an I look forward to you joining us on tour, on vacation or at one of our joint and individual performances.