Catalog
Sally Rooney's Normal People is set in County Sligo and at Trinity College Dublin, but the television series was shot in a school in Clonsilla, the pubs of Tubbercurry, Trinity itself, a villa in Lazio and a frozen coast at Luleå. The route follows Marianne and Connell from their last school days to university and abroad. Several stops are stand-ins for places the story names, and each says so.
Fionn mac Cumhaill is the hero of Irish legend who gained all knowledge by burning his thumb on a salmon, saved Tara from a fire-breather and, in folk tales, built the Giant's Causeway to reach a Scottish rival. His stories are tied to real hills, rivers and rocks, many of them still named for him. The route follows his legend from the Boyne of his boyhood through Tara, the Hill of Allen, Slieve Gullion and Benbulben, then to the tall tales of Lough Neagh, the Causeway and Fingal's Cave. Nothing here is history: pins mark where tradition places each tale.
In the summer of 1588 a Spanish fleet appeared off Cornwall with a plan to join Parma's army. Beacons carried the news to London, the English fleet came out of Plymouth, and within weeks fireships, a day of heavy gunnery and autumn storms had ended the plan. The route follows the campaign through seven places, from the first sighting to a beach in County Sligo where three ships broke up. Most of the fighting was at sea, so the pins mark the nearest coast landmark, and the story of Drake and his game of bowls at Plymouth is labelled as legend.