The 2028 O’Dubhda Homecoming

A Gathering of the Clan

The 2028 O'Dubhda Homecoming

3 — 8 October 2028 · Enniscrone, Co. Sligo

A week of walking, talking, remembering, and welcome — capping the close of one Taoiseach's term and the inauguration of the next.

The Base Camp

The Diamond Coast Hotel

Enniscrone, on the edge of Killala Bay

For 2028 we move the Homecoming to the Diamond Coast Hotel — a single, comfortable base for the whole week, set on the dunes above Enniscrone strand and a short walk from the Atlantic surf.

From the front door it is five minutes by car to O'Dubhda Castle (Inniscrone), ten minutes to Carn Amhalghaidh, and a leisurely afternoon drive to nearly every castle, abbey, and sacred site on the tour list below.

Banquet hall under one roof. Sea air at the back door. The clan, in one place, for one week.

Help Shape the Week

Vote for the Tours You Want

Below are ten ideas on the table for the 2028 Homecoming. We won't run all of them — that would be a fortnight, not a week. The committee will run the ones the clan most wants, and the rest will rotate into 2031 and beyond.

Read them, then write to us. The tours with the strongest interest by the end of summer 2027 are the ones we'll lock in.

Tour 1 · Headline Idea

The Secret Castles Tour

Castles you can't visit on your own. We can.

A half-day on private land, walking the towers and bawns held in trust by today's farmers and landowners — places no guidebook will get you into. The Taoiseach's office handles the permissions. You bring the curiosity.

Tour 2

Sacred Sites Pilgrimage

A slow walk on the inauguration ground.

The five-stop ancient route, walked together: Rath O'Dubhda, Carn Amhalghaidh, Carn Inghine Briain, Scurmore, and the Enniscrone Mound. A blessing at the inauguration cairn. The slowest, quietest day of the week.

Tour 3

Killala Bay by Boat

Down the Moy and out into the bay.

A half-day on the water — down the Moy estuary and out into Killala Bay, with the castles seen from the sea-line that made them necessary. Past the spot where the French landed in 1798. A different angle on country you thought you knew.

Tour 4

Abbeys & Bones

Where the O'Dubhdas worshipped, and where they were laid.

A loop of the four great Franciscan ruins — Ardnaree, Moyne, Rathfran, Rosserk — with time at the family burial slabs and the stories of the friars the clan endowed for four centuries.

Tour 5

Genealogy & DNA Day

Bring your tree. Leave with answers.

A sit-down day at the Diamond Coast with the genealogy team and the Clan DNA Project. Bring your family papers, your photographs, your unanswered questions. Swab on the spot if you want to add your line to the database.

Tour 6

Folklore & Maeve's Tomb

A climb to the queen, with stories on the way.

A climb to the cairn of Queen Medb on Knocknarea, then on to the Carrowmore and Carrowkeel megalithic cemeteries — tombs older than the pyramids, scattered across the Sligo skyline. Read the folklore at the sites where it lives: O'Reilly's stories, the Banshee of Scurmore, the rowan of Dubhros, the queen who stands upright facing her enemies in Ulster.

Tour 7

Estates of the Conquerors

The houses that replaced clan rule.

Markree, Belleek, Enniscoe, Mount Falcon, Templehouse — the great Anglo-Irish demesnes that rose on top of the dispossessed clan estates. Honest history, walked with eyes open. The country didn't only belong to us.

Tour 8

Coast & Cliffs

Downpatrick Head and the Atlantic edge.

Downpatrick Head's sea-stack and blowhole, the Easkey surf coast, the Céide Fields. The dramatic edge of O'Dubhda country, walked at clan pace — the seascape that shaped a thousand years of seafaring, raiding, and trading from this stretch of shore.

Tour 9 · Evening

Bardic Night & Chieftain's Dinner

An evening, not a tour.

Sean-nós singing. The clan blessing recited in Irish and English. Trad musicians. The clan poetry read aloud. The night people will still be talking about in 2031 — the closing banquet of an inauguration week, done properly.

Tour 10

Children's Heritage Day

For the youngest O'Dubhdas.

Archery on the strand, Gaelic games, a treasure hunt around the dunes — built so families can bring children and have them love the week as much as the adults do. Because a clan that doesn't pass it on stops being a clan.

Cast Your Vote

Tell the Committee Which Tours You Want

Pick your top three from the list above and write to the planning committee. Add your own ideas — speakers, sites, workshops, or traditions you'd love to see brought back.

The clan's interest decides the programme.

Reach the Committee

A Note from the Clan

The Homecoming has gone by many names — clan rally, gathering, reunion. In 2028 we are calling it what it is: a homecoming. People returning, by every road and from every continent, to the country their name first came from.

Two and a half years out, we have time to plan it well. Help us.