DECLAN CONNOLLY:I START WORK in a food manufacturing plant at 5.30am and finish up at 2.30pm. It means I have to get up at 5am, but that's fine because it leaves me the rest of the day to run my self-catering business.
It began when an aunt, Alice, gave me a field next to her to build on when I got married. She died a year later, at 93. People said she was waiting for the next generation to be on the land before passing on.
First we turned her cottage into a holiday home, then an adjacent stables and loft, and then, a few years later, built three new self-catering houses.
Once I get home from the day job, I put my tourism hat on. Most of my business comes from people with Monaghan connections. I get a lot of bookings from people who emigrated to the UK and want to visit relatives, but not stay with mam and dad.
The first thing I do when I get home is check bookings on e-mail and give people directions. Then I’ll head over to the houses to make sure the cleaning is done properly. I leave a welcome pack of tea, milk, butter, brown bread and jam, and turn on the heating.
I like to be there for the meet and greet, to show people where everything is, then leave them to it.
In the evening I’ll head to the computer and begin marketing. I did a course on search-engine optimisation three years ago, and before that I had a zero rating on the Google rankings.
Now, if you key in fishing or golfing in Monaghan, I’m up the top of the first page. The result is we’ve been busier and busier. So each day I spend an hour optimising each web page and generating e-mail marketing campaigns.
The other thing I work on is the Irish Bog Snorkelling Championships. I was looking out at the rain one day while on the phone to a friend, and told him that even the bog was flooded. He said I should look up “bog snorkelling”, so I did.
I found that there were championships in Northern Ireland and in Wales, but none here.
In January I got into the bog in my tracksuit – I didn’t even have a wetsuit at the time – with flippers and snorkel. My son posted it on YouTube and the response was amazing. Before we knew it we had 48 competitors, including a hen party from the UK. It was the most amazing weekend’s crack and it really put us on the map.
I’ll finish up on the computer and head to bed by about midnight. It means I only get five hours’ sleep, but sure I catch up at the weekends.
Declan Connolly is the owner of Alice’s Loft and Cottages near Castleblayney, Co Monaghan, alicesloft.com
In conversation with
SANDRA O'CONNELL