I'm lucky enough from a genealogical point of view to have quite a distinct surname which I always knew originated in Donegal. When we travelled around Ireland about 7 years ago now, I hadn't started any research but knew I had links in Cork and Donegal. Although we spent a week in Cork, Donegal was where I felt most at home and I still have fairly vivid memories of the towns we went through and even the peat reek in the air at night. My name is quite rare in Scotland and it was a very strange feeling travelling through Letterkenny and seeing our name above Newsagents, Butcher's Shops, Solicitors and even the local car garage. Sadly I now know that we passed the town where my 4x g-grandparents and their son came from by just a few miles. One day I'll go back there and visit properly.
In saying that though, I recently visited the area North of Biggar in Scotland where a branch of my mother's family is from and felt really at home there, particularly in Ellsrickle and Walston kirkyard. I found it very peaceful and incredibly beautiful which is unusual for me as normally I'm a mountains and seascapes sort of girl, not rolling countryside.
Really I have to say that I have ancestral homes across the central belt of Scotland, in the Borders and in Aberdeen; in Shropshire in England; in Cork, Donegal and other unidentified places in Ireland, and to say I have just one would be to ignore the majority of people who've got me here including the whole of my mother's family lol. Plus it won't stop me feeling a pang of belonging to Glasgow, where I was born and live now, even though in historical terms my family have only came here relatively recently.
Lora.
