As a keen social historian, I love genealogy and researching family trees, although I have to confess that I have never found Ancestry easy to negiotiate!

But loving finding out about family, my husband, Angus and myself booked for a holiday to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, recently. My reason primarily was to find out as much as I could about my father, who died when I was just a teenager. What teenager is interested in family trees?

We headed to near Omagh, as this was where my father was born in 1907, before the division of Ireland.

But then we followed the history further back to where my grandmother was born in Cootehill in the Republic.

and not only that, where her father (my great grandfather) worked as a policeman and the very house where the children were all born (including my grandmother and her twin, Bobby) – the police house. Even his office was still there but due to be demolished soon. All this was explained to us by a very helpful local Garda.

Then, even more exciting, we travelled on to Killeshandra, Co Cavan, where it seems my grandparents probably met when my grandfather was manager of the local creamery, owned by my grandmother’s cousin’s family. My cousin showed us the very house where my father and uncle would have stayed between the ages of 7 and about 14 with my great Aunty Lily, when my grandparents were in India – my grandfather manager of another creamery there.

The rocking horse they played on as boys maybe broken into pieces now but I still have the picture to remember how it would have been. My father is seated on it, my uncle, Eric, holds the reins. Precious memories.