“It all started to fall apart,” says TV chef Aisling Larkin, when she found herself commuting to and from Dublin city from north Kildare on weekdays, while raising three small children with her husband outside Maynooth in Co Kildare.
“The house was too small. The commute was too hard. I had a childminder that my eldest was going to, and then the two smallies, and it just wasn’t working. It was all just too much.”
Leading up to this, she and her husband had welcomed their two youngest children in quick succession. First came their second daughter, whose due date coincided with the start date of a competitive food education course Larkin was scheduled to begin at the University of Helsinki.
Although it was at a time before the Covid pandemic made remote learning more prevalent, the university allowed Larkin to study from home for the first six months with her new baby. She then went on to spend one week of every four in Finland for 10 months.
RM Block
“Even the commute to Helsinki once a month was still okay,” she says. “I would meal prep, I would batch-cook, get everything ready, and my mom would come up and help for a couple of days while I was gone. They would drop me to the airport on a Sunday afternoon, and would pick me back up on a Friday evening.”
Then the couple’s youngest child, their son, came along not long after Larkin’s course ended in Helsinki and it was when she went back to work after maternity leave that things started to unravel, she says.
“It was at that stage that we were spending our weekends at my parents’ house in Waterford,” she says. Her parents live in the foothills of the Comeragh Mountains near Dungarvan and Larkin lovingly refers to her childhood home as “under the mountain”.
“We would pack a bag on a Thursday night, we would finish work at one o’clock on a Friday, we would drive home to Waterford, and we’d land at my mum and dad’s house with the three kids.
“We had a little weekend routine here that we loved: it was going to the beach, it was going in to the bakery in Dungarvan and going for a walk up the mountain in the forest, all that lovely stuff. And then we would have a lovely Sunday dinner with my family, connect with my sisters, and then we would put the kids in their jammies, get them bathed and head off at about eight o’clock on a Sunday night.”
For Larkin and her family, Waterford was an escape. “It was the escape to nature. I would so often say my head was so full after a week of work and a week of motherhood and I just wanted to push all the buildings out of the way. I wanted space and, for me, I couldn’t get head space in a built-up environment, I just couldn’t.
“I needed to get away from the people and the noise and the houses and the dogs and the hustle and the bustle, and when you’re living where we were [in a housing estate], I just couldn’t do that.”
When the house that Larkin and her husband bought as their first home together back in 2007 began to feel cramped with their three children, their first plan was to extend it.
“I was actually the one who didn’t want to leave because I was building my career and my brand – this was all before Covid – and I was going, ‘There’s going to be brand events, there’s going to be work opportunities, all of that stuff happens in Dublin city cente. If I’m in Waterford I’m not going to be able to pop up to a launch or an opening and I’ll miss out on networking opportunities and connections.’”
Her husband was the driving force behind them planning a move to her homeplace in Waterford, says Larkin.
We gave up jobs, cars, schools, friends, we literally gave up everything. We blew up our world
“I was afraid to take the leap, and he was the one who kind of went, ‘I know this is what’s right for us.’ He was the one going, ‘Look, why are we doing this? We’re so happy when we’re down in Waterford; let’s move.’
“I think we both knew it was right, but I was maybe a little bit more afraid to make the jump.”
The couple decided to put their house on the market in 2019 and were surprised when it sold within three weeks.
With no home yet sourced in Waterford, Larkin and her family moved “under the mountain” to her parents’ house. Her mother and father were “phenomenal” during that time, she says.
Shortly after they moved to Waterford, the country went into lockdown and Larkin began filming her segments for Virgin Media’s Six O’Clock Show remotely from her parents’ kitchen. On one stressful occasion, she recalls, she had to video call into the live broadcast using her phone data when a storm knocked out their electricity.
“When you do a big move like that, I mean, we upended our lives. We gave up jobs, cars, schools, friends, we literally gave up everything. We blew up our world, and we knew it was going to be a year of transitional hardship. It wasn’t all plain sailing; it was really hard. And then in the middle of that, we had Covid dumped on us.”
After ditching the romantic idea of finding a country home to renovate for fear they would lose their children’s college funds to a money pit, Larkin and her husband bought a detached home a short drive from the coast near Dungarvan that backs on to a scenic greenway.
It was an “insane” few months of working and managing renovations on the new home before the family finally moved in, in June 2020, and they haven’t looked back, says Larkin.
“When you leave our house and drive down the coast road, within five minutes you’re at the coast, you see the expanse of the sea, and I needed that,” says Larkin.
“The nub of this move – and it’s only the more you think about it – was my nervous system needed to be regulated. I was on that heightened adrenaline, go, go, go, go, go, all the time, and it’s amazing for me to feel the calm.
“And it was only when my third child was born and I started going, ‘Okay, there’s something not right here any more, I need something.’ And I didn’t know what I needed.”
Larkin, whose food and wellness work is rooted in mindfulness, says the family have had no regrets since their move to Waterford.
She continues to drive to Dublin one day a week for her media commitments, a commute she describes as “easy”. She has also benefited from the kindness of the business community in and around Dungarvan and has become part of a friend group who go sea-swimming together every Saturday morning.
“In my work, I am acutely aware that happiness is fleeting, and contentment is your base, and if you’re content, you can cope with everything else. And I suppose, for me, everything from mindfulness ... it’s about coping with what life throws at you.
“And I know when I’m here, I’m calmer, I’m more supported, I have community, I have fresh air, I have space, I have space to think, I have space to feel, and all of that has been exponentially better for all of us.
“We’ve given ourselves permission to slow down, take that breath and enjoy every little thing that’s around us.”
