Camille Rosenfeld and James Hayes’s days are ruled by the whims of the Atlantic Ocean.
The couple are this summer’s Great Blasket Island caretakers. Rosenfeld, originally from Minneapolis in the US, and Hayes, from Tralee in Co Kerry, have spent the past six months running the island’s rental cottages, cafe and guest facilities.
Great Blasket Island lies five kilometres off Dunquin Pier (Cé Dhún Chaoin) on the Dingle Peninsula in Co Kerry and has no electricity or running water. It once had a small population of inhabitants but was abandoned in 1953 as emergency services were unable to reach it during storms.
In 2014 local couple Alice Hayes and Billy O’Connor took over two cottages on the island from the Office of Public Works, and began renovating several others to rent to guests. The couple established The Great Blasket Island Experience company, which gives tours of the island and operates the rental cottages.
RM Block
In 2019 they advertised for caretakers to run the island’s accommodation and cafe for the summer season. Every year they receive thousands of applications.
Rosenfeld (26) and Hayes (37) met at the Burren College of Art in 2021 when he was fulfilling a residency as a visual artist and she was on a semester abroad from the Rochester Institute of Technology. The pair married in Boston on June 7th last year and were living in Tralee before they were selected to become this year’s caretakers.
Hayes, an artist, saw it as a chance to produce works about island life, while Rosenfeld, who had just finished a two-year graduate scheme in the energy sector, appreciated the opportunity for a career break. They arrived on April 1st.
When asked about their day-to-day routine on the island, they laugh nervously. “There is no typical day here as the sea often has other ideas,” says Hayes. “Everything depends on when, and if, the boats get here.”
The first thing the couple do when they wake, at about 8am, is fill the kettles and put them on their propane gas stove to boil. The kettles are on all day long, as water from the island’s spring must be boiled before drinking.
Before the day guests arrive on the boat from Dunquin, the couple make sure that the public bathrooms are clean and well stocked.
Sometimes the island receives unexpected guests; two men who were kayaking around Ireland dropped in one morning and had breakfast with the couple before continuing on their way.
Check-out time is 10am for the guests staying in the cottages. Rosenfeld and Hayes take the luggage down to the slipway in a motorised cart. At 10.30am the boat arrives with the first load of day visitors, before taking last night’s guests back to the mainland. A number of local tour operators offer day trips to the island.
The couple then clean out any cottages expecting new visitors that day. The island has three rental cottages each with two bedrooms; on average, eight to 10 guests stay each night. Visitors can also wild camp.
The cafe, which typically only serves drinks and the occasional Dingle scone, is open from 12.30pm-4pm, operating out of a hatch in one of the cottage’s front rooms.
The island has no rubbish bins and has a “leave no trace” policy; everything brought to the island must be taken back. When the cafe closes the couple collect any bottles or cups from drinks they have sold, and organise that day’s rubbish to send back with the last boat.
Guests are provided with a propane stove and expected to bring their own food and drink. The only electricity is from a small wind turbine behind the couple’s cottage, which provides just enough electricity to charge a mobile phone.
With no fridge, they have to plan meals carefully. Every few days they give their employers a shopping list and have ice delivered to top up their cool box.
“You can always tell when it is time for a food delivery as all we are eating is chorizo.”
Evenings are usually spent cooking and sitting around the fire. The couple are adventurous cooks, whipping up home-made pizzas and baking cookies on their gas stove.
A few months into their stay, Máiréad Ní Chearnaigh Uí Shé died in Springfield, Massachusetts. At 102 years old, she was the oldest person to have lived on the island, having emigrated to the US when she was 27 in 1949.
In keeping with the island tradition of lighting a fire in the home of an islander who has died, the couple gathered the guests, prepared some tea, lit a fire in Tigh Ó Cearnaigh and sat around talking into the late evening. They wrote her name, life dates and an Irish blessing on a piece of slate. Her family were so touched by the gesture that they arranged for the slate to be brought to Springfield and displayed at her funeral.
With only weeks left on the island, Rosenfeld and Hayes are looking towards the future. They would love to stay local, but Rosenfeld’s career in the energy industry could take them anywhere in Ireland. Hayes plans to exhibit some of his island landscapes at The Great Blasket Centre in Dunquin next year.
