A Drogheda electrician retrained as a mountain guide in Connemara and now works six months a year — ʼI earn less and I sleepʼ

He used to end his days staring at a fuse board, not a horizon. Now his calendar is split by weather rather than weeks, and his alarm is the first gulls over Roundstone. Somewhere between a wet November on the Boyne and a bright June on the Twelve Bens, a Drogheda electrician changed his wiring—inside and out.

From circuits to cairns

The decision didn’t arrive with a bang but with a fray. “I’d finish a job at nine, check emails till midnight, then lie awake with a hum in my head,” he says. “One day I realised the noise wasn’t the site—it was me.”

He booked a weekend in Connemara, wandered a bog road near Recess, and followed a faint line of sheep to a summit cairn. “Up there I felt the static drop. I thought: if I can read wiring diagrams, I can learn to read contours.”

Learning the high ground

Retraining wasn’t a romantic stroll. He took mountain leadership courses, learned to gauge wind on ridges, and to spot the sly glimmer of black ice under cloud. Nights were spent poring over maps like blueprints, tracing lines through the Maumturks the way he once traced a circuit across a board.

“My hands used to smell of solder,” he laughs. “Now they smell of bog myrtle and wet rope. It’s a better kind of stubborn.”

Seasonal work, deliberate life

Today he works six months on, six months off. April to September he guides small groups through quartzite scree, lough-side paths, and ridge lines that stitch sea to sky. The winters he keeps for rest, family, and the slow maintenance of a life that doesn’t rush.

“I earn less and I sleep,” he says, smiling at his own maths. “That’s the whole equation.”

What the mountains teach

Guiding, he says, is mostly about listening—to the weather, to the pace of a group, to the story a bootprint tells on wet peat. The hill offers blunt feedback. Push too fast and someone will fade. Ignore a front and you’ll learn humility in fifteen minutes of cold rain.

“The land is an instructor,” he says. “The summits don’t care about our plans. They make better ones.”

Connemara, up close

He speaks of places as if naming friends. A slant of light over Derryclare, the bite of a north wind above Mám Éan, the blue knife of Killary at low tide. He keeps his routes like a playlist—familiar, but tailored to the day’s mood.

For first-timers he picks a modest peak with big views, a route that rewards curiosity. For repeat walkers, he threads uneven corries or quiet saddle crossings where ravens draft on thermals and the sea sits like a folded letter at the edge.

Why he changed

• Burnout from on-call jobs and endless invoices
• A pull toward wild places that felt like coming home
• The wish to set a human pace against an inhuman clock
• A quieter mind, and actual sleep at night

The money question

There’s no diagram that makes the figures glow. “I turned down predictable pay for unpredictable weather,” he admits. Summer’s a harvest; winter’s a ledger of savings, odd jobs, and a little map work. But the swap feels clean.

“What I lost in wage, I gained in hours,” he says. “Not just free time—living time, the kind that doesn’t buzz.”

Risk and responsibility

He carries a muted authority. In his pack: spare gloves, a group shelter, a coil of cord, too many bars. On his phone: grids and bearings, a quiet set of contingencies. He drills simple habits—sip before thirsty, add a layer before cold, ask questions before silence sets in.

“The job is keeping people a half-step from trouble,” he says. “They think they’ve hired a guide; really they’ve hired a margin.”

Clients and small miracles

He lights up telling small stories. A retired nurse who cried at her first view of Inishbofin. A teenager who started the day scowling at his phone and ended naming peaks like they were new planets. A father who carried his fear of heights to a windless col, then set it down like a bag he was tired of holding.

“I love the moment someone notices their breath,” he says. “Not the panting—just the quiet rhythm, like the sea in your chest.”

Home, remapped

He still visits Drogheda, still pockets a few winter call-outs for old clients, fixing a tripped breaker or a grumpy immersion. But home now is a narrow road under a wide sky, a porch with salt on the rail, and boots drying beside a hissing stove.

On certain evenings the hills go purple, and he stands outside with a mug too hot to hold. The valley settles, sheep stitch neat lines, and the last light pulls a soft thread across the Bens. “It’s not a perfect life,” he says. “It’s a chosen one.”