John Creedon rides again but this time, it’s the Epic East. Following his successful trip on the Wild Atlantic Way last year John is back on the road with his faithful VW campervan, his Sean Van Bhocht. But now, he’s heading to the other side of the country or as John himself says, “I’m done with the West. Now I’m going to do the rest!”
Our new tourist route, Ireland’s Ancient East, takes in 17 counties and John’s route will stretch from Louth to Cork and from Cavan to Wexford.
But there’s a lot more here than ancient history, this journey is epic.
John will be travelling through thousands of years from our mythical heroes to the birth of our nation and right up to the present day.
The Epic East is the cradle of Ireland’s civilisation, from the Hill of Tara, to the Viking invasion right up to the Normans’ landing. So John has set himself a bigger task. He wants to discover what being Irish really means. His mission sparks a voyage of self discovery. He calls in the experts to research his family tree and test his DNA and asks is there such a thing as an Irish gene?
‘It’s possible to travel through 5,000 years of history in just one hour throughout the East,’ explains John. ‘So you can find something from the 5th century and 10 minutes down the road, you could arrive at a stately home dating back to the 18th century. It’s going to be fascinating to uncover the landscape’s stories.’
Counties which will feature on this RTE Cork production include Louth, Meath, Monaghan, Cavan, Longford, Westmeath, Offaly, Laois, Kildare, Wicklow, Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford and Cork.
The music for this four part series has been specially commissioned and composer John Spillane has produced a unique soundtrack that complements the drama that unfolds within every story.
Here are some of the highlights of John’s journey in the Epic East:
John travels by chariot along an ancient trackway that was once buried beneath the bog in Longford.
Westmeath man Bressie gives John a taste of what it was like to be a high king at a fire festival on the hill of Uisneach.
He fires muskets on Vinegar Hill finds hidden treasure in the Dunmore caves and samples some medieval dishes in Waterford city.
John travels to Meath to visit a burial chamber, older than Newgrange and the Pyramids and sets foot on stony grey soil in Monaghan where he meets Inniskeen man and impressionist Oliver Callan to find out what Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh was really like.
John learns how to ring the bells in St Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny and how to gold pan in a Wicklow river and goes behind the scenes of TV drama ‘The Vikings’.
In Ireland’s smallest county, Louth, John joins the Táin march where Queen Maeve and Cúchulainn and their respective armies go head to head in a fight over the Brown Bull of Cooley.
Join John on a voyage that will reveal the east coast and midlands of Ireland like you have never seen them before!