Remember the New Age Travellers who wound their way around the countryside about 10 years ago? Well, some of them stopped travelling when they hit Leitrim. Now they have settled down and become parents, homeowners and, in some cases, business people.
About 20 families have settled in the remote area of Killavoggy, near Dromahair, in Leitrim. This area is so sparsely populated that the former Travellers almost outnumber the locals.
"People just seemed to stop travelling when they got here," says Ms Natascha Telford. She moved to Leitrim with her husband Stephen and baby Heather eight years ago. Natascha was brought up in the Lake District and Stephen came from Scotland. "We were Thatcher's children," Natascha says. "There was huge unemployment at that time and the screws were tightening."
The couple took to the roads in search of a different life but the constant harassment drove them from England. "Ireland seemed more easygoing at the time," says Natascha. After a while they started to look at property, and what they could never afford in England or Scotland was plentiful in Leitrim. With people telling them that they were crazy to spend so much money, they bought their cottage and 10 acres of land for £10,000.
The family are fairly self-sufficient, with their own milk, eggs, vegetables and meat. Stephen, a blacksmith, runs his own business - Dromahair Iron Craft - which has also helped their integration with the locals.
Similar reasons drove Vicky Skelton and Jas Tindale from England six years ago. "There was such a lack of options," says Jas, originally from Middlesborough. He had been an apprentice plumber at a chemical refinery but there was no possibility of a job afterwards. "There was only college, the army or a YTS (Youth Training Scheme)." He loved the idea of being able to head off and live anywhere.
The couple became New Age Travellers, although they never used that term. "It's just a label. The people we met came from all different walks of life. We were just people who wanted a different way of life," Jas says. At that time, police had started to clamp down on New Age Travellers, and the couple's life became a continuous battle with the authorities. When 50,000 Travellers congregated at a festival in the midlands, the police started to escort New Age Travellers from one town to the next.
The new residents have all noticed the quickening pace of life since they moved to Leitrim. "I like it when it's quiet," says Natascha, "but you can't be selfish and say that everyone should live on the poverty line just because you would like it to remain quaint."
The boom in Ireland reminds Jas and Vicky of England at the beginning of the 1980s. "I would never have envisaged that it would change so quickly here," says Jas.
Nevertheless, they see a much greater sense of community in Ireland. "There is something holding people together here. People look out for each other," says Vicky.
Most of the settled Travellers intend to stay in Ireland. "There were two groups - those who wanted to party and those who had children and wanted to make a home somewhere," says Jas. "The others have moved on now." But they don't regret their time on the roads. "I really enjoyed it," says Jas. "There was security in knowing that even if it was only an old bus, it was your home."