TRADITIONS OF THE SEA
GUIDED COASTAL FOOD TRADITIONS
IRELAND // WEST CORK // 22nd - 28th JUNE 2025
An immersive week-long retreat to learn the methods of traditional coastal subsistence as you catch, cook and preserve the treasures of the Irish seascape, reconnecting to heritage skills you will have for life
What is the Traditions of the Sea // Full Week Course?
This glorious week of learning has been in development since 2018.
Much like the yearly transhumance herding trip we run in May that aims to inspire through the empowering discovery of true, real food production that is an active conversion of the mountain landscape into food, the coastline can offer us a similarly profound window into what it still means to subsist on the treasures of the ocean. There is no stronger connection to the landscape than that of actively becoming it through its eating.
Back in 2018, Up There The Last founder Max Jones moved to West Cork to learn from and support the traditional practice of wild Atlantic Salmon smoking, becoming swept away in the complex currents of fisheries, artisans, fishermen and the chasm that lies between how things are presented to us on the supermarket shelf, and what you discover by actually living. Please read here for more context.
For Traditions of the Sea, an empowering programme has been put together to equip the attendee with the knowledge and wherewithal to exist naturally in a coastal context. From smoking and wind-curing fish to harvesting shrimp with your own hand-made push net, to follow these traditional methods of food preservation is to become unchained from modern conditioning and to reclaim responsibility to live congruently with the ocean and the life it offers to us.
It has been this way for thousands of years.
Who is this trip for?
Who is this trip for?
This programme has been designed to re-connect us to the freedom of responsibly harvesting sea-food from the wild and preserving it to traditional methods. It has been developed to break down what you have learned about food in the 21st century by total immersion into a coastal culture that has propagated techniques of food production rooted in tradition for multiple generations. It will teach you to safely forage, preserve and eat with confidence the abundant foods that are provided by the ocean and its surroundings, like potted shrimp with raw milk butter and barrel smoked fish. An experiential retreat to develop true skills and life stories, this week surfs the fine line of wholesome relaxation and thorough engagement.
We all love the sea and some of us feel drawn to engaging with it on a level that goes deeper than kicking our feet in the shallows. This is to know what happens with the swell of the tides, to understand which plants are delicious and edible. To read the coastline in a way that will allow you best guess where to find crabs, shrimp, scallops and prawns, to know what time of year it is safe to harvest, where to drop a lobster pot and how to find fish responsibly.
To date, we have been joined on previous expeditions internationally by farmers, cooks, fishers, fishmongers, chefs, artisans, fish smokers, writers, photographers, hobbyists and nature lovers.
There is the option to stay in the house accommodation, or to purchase an individual ticket for the day attendance, with your own accommodation.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
How to best use salt for preservation - dry salting and bringing
Fish filleting
Japanese whetstone knife sharpening
Traditional passive method cold smoking and how to build a barrel smoker
Hot smoking fish at home
Curing with natural wind
De-pasteurising cream to understand how to make real cultured butter
Fermenting milk
Sea foraging for edible greens
Bastible bread-baking on the fire
Catching shrimp and prawns with your own hand-made net
Seaweed ID and preparation
Potting for lobster
How to dive for spider crab
Raking for cockles and salting for razor clams
Cold smoking fish
Fire-cooking and preparing crab, lobster and shellfish
Multiple traditional recipes
And more…
What’s Included?
What’s included?
Six nights accommodation in a 1700’s estate right on the Atlantic in West Cork
Breakfast and lunch for the week with a community feast on the final evening
The complete set of Up There The Last’s coastal offerings consolidated into a single programme
Hyper-regional traditional coastal recipe sessions
Internationally acclaimed “Forbidden Food” tasting seminar
Cockling, shrimping, lobster-potting and hand-diving for spider crabs
Raw milk masterclass with traditional hand-made booley butter and real cheese
Visits to the inshore fleet and fish dealers
Masterclasses in smoking, curing, raw milk butter making, foraging, filleting, fire cooking and more
Breakfast and lunch, which are intentionally focused on traditional coastal cooking methods and disappearing traditional recipes
Immersive beach dinner and communal feast
How to create a hot and cold smoker for home preservation
Building your own push-net for shrimping to take home with you
Up There The Last // Traditions of the Sea LEVEL ONE certificate of completion
WHAT’S NOT INCLUDED
Flights to Cork
Transport from Cork to Castletownshend - Please contact us with help and advice
Evening dinners - there are local restaurants and pubs, and access to the Drishane Kitchen for self- cooked/communal meals
SUNDAY
ARRIVAL
CORK AIRPORT
Optional collection from Cork Airport and an hour and a half drive along the coast into wild West Cork, the most south-westerly point of Ireland. Coach arrives into Skibbereen with free private collection from the coach stop to your final destination, Castletownshend.
DRISHANE HOUSE
Drishane has been in the same family for nine generations and will your home for the duration of Traditions of the Sea. Perfectly placed between several of the most important learning locations for the programme across West Cork, Drishane overlooks the ocean with which you will become well acquainted during your stay, and will become your home away from home.
DINNER AND SOME PINTS
As guests arrive throughout the day, you will be shown to your room before joining the group for a hearty meal in the dining room after which we will walk to the local pub and get to know one-another over pints of foamy stout by yet another toasty fire. To see off the night you can drink a “burnt barley flip”- a soporific nightcap made by plunging a red hot poker into a glass of stout, rum, honey and a dash of raw milk.
BED
After dinner we head back to Drishane to sleep in preparation for the days ahead.
MONDAY
FISH, SALT & THE WIND
LEASURELY BREAKFAST
You are awoken by the welcome scent of coffee rising through the floorboards from the kitchen. Come downstairs for a leasurely breakfast, based around traditional morning foods like yoghurt, home made bread, raw milk, natural butter and seasonal preserves.
FRESH FISH
After breakfast we will drive along the coast to Union Hall (Bréantrá), a small village which is home to the nearest fishing fleet. Here we will select some of the fish will work with for the week such as monkfish, whiting, hake, haddock, gurnard, John Dory, mullet etc. Once packed and put on ice, we head back to Drishane for a session in fish skills, filleting and salt/brining regime.
CURING
After lunch we look at the effects of wind and using the coastal climate to our advantage in terms of preserving fish through desiccation. A short seminar on the role salt and wind play in the preservation of fish will culminate in its practical application as after filleting, brining and tying off the fish, we will head down to the pier in Castletownshend and string up the fish to dry in the sea wind. This will prepare us for cold smoking, and also forms the first phase of pellicle development for hot smoking.
During this session we will look at Dexter beef from Drishane and how to process meat in the same way.
DINNER AND BED
Each night ends in pints, wines, music, fire and an informal dinner at Drishane house
TUESDAY
COLD SMOKING
BUILDING A COLD SMOKER FOR THE HOME
After breakfast we look at building a cold smoker for the home.
This is an entirely passive system based on the Up There The Last Community Smoker, and you will build one from scratch. Beginning with historical sources and theory, this practical exercise will enable you to grasp the exact fundaments of the cold smoking process by making you think about the process and form your own decisions, re-awakening your intuitive ability to preserve food. This will lead to open discussions about how you might design one at home.
SMOKE THEORY AND LIGHTING THE FIRE
After lunch you will fire up the cold smoker. This is a beautiful phase that encourages you to gently respond to the natural behaviour of the wood burner and smoke, registering olfactory changes to the different burn temperatures of varying sizes of native hardwood, successfully managing the fire to give a continuous flow of smoke.
During this afternoon session you will also look at other foods to smoke and the subsequent techniques to correctly manage them in the smoker. This will include how to hang strips of dexter beef, wrap cheese and butter in muslin and consider the actual risks and realities of cross-contamination when using a single smoking chamber for multiple foods.
The smoker will remain lit through the night with one volunteer to check on it at midnight!
WEDNESDAY
BREAD & BUTTER
THE BOOLEY
After breakfast you head to the Booley, our hillside location dedicated to the making of all things dairy. As a nod to traditional dairy practice in Ireland and the transhumance tradition of booleying, this is a beautiful and simple space set up for the morning for the production of real, natural butter. You will learn how to make it the way it has tasted for thousands of years up until the recent invention of the centrifuge and pasteurisation.
NATURAL STARTER
You will learn about raw milk, natural starter cultures and how to de-pasteurise cream to create real farmhouse butter by hand churning and shaping to traditional methods, using wooden tools. This is one of the most popular courses at Up There The Last, and will change the way you eat forever. Enough butter will be made for you to take some home at the end of the week, as well as kept make potted shrimp later in the week.
BASTIBLE BREAD
The afternoon session will be spent building fire and learning how to bake bread using the resulting buttermilk, in a bastible pot. The traditional recipe for Soda Bread is intrinsic to understanding the origin and cultural standing of cultured butter and shall be demonstrated, as well as applying the knowledge of starter cultures to make your own sourdough levain- perhaps the most traditional form of all bread-making, under the guidance of local baker (our favourite) Colm Crowley.
THURSDAY
SHRIMPING AND THE CRAB DIVE
MAKING A TRADITIONAL PUSH NET
Breakfast is followed by a session in the Barn, where we will be joined by a master carpenter to assemble a traditional push net for brown shrimp.
SHRIMPING
After lunch we will travel along the coast road to a beautiful bay with a healthy population of brown shrimp. The traditional push net is operated by rolling up trousers and pushing the net through the sand to disturb the shrimp which are caught in the net as it is pushed forward.
The shrimp are cooked in seawater and shelled, ready for making potted shrimp with your natural butter and fermented wild garlic.
CRAB DIVE
Whilst at the beach you will don a wetsuit to go searching for seasonal Spider Crab. With a record here at Up There The Last of a single crab weighing 3kg, the traditional methods of catching these delicious treasures of the sea is to wade in water at low tide and pull them up by the claws. Anyone interested in participating will have the chance to learn about under-water foraging and engage with other edibles like urchins, scallops and perhaps a lobster or two from the lobster pot.
DINNER AND BED
Each night ends in pints, wines, fire and an informal dinner at Drishane house
FRIDAY
SEA-PICKING, HOT SMOKING and the IMMERSIVE FEAST
THE BEACH
After breakfast, the morning’s session will be all about the tide as we head to a traditional spot to forage for bivalves, traditionally known as “sea-picking”.
COCKLES AND MUSSELS
The sea is enchanting and so many of us feel drawn to its charm. To be able to read the landscape and successfully harvest food from the foreshore is to augment this powerful connection to the ocean. The traditional way which remains the most successful is to head out at low tide with rakes, baskets and salt, to forage for cockles, mussels, gaper and razor clams, along with a variety of seasonal seashore greens.
HOT SMOKED FISH
One of the most popular sessions at Up There The Last is this absolutely magnificent meal on the beach, a culmination of what you have learned, made, preserved and caught through the week , and finally hot-smoking our brined air cured fish to the traditional method; in a barrel dug deep in the sand. A fire is made with oak and your catch is cooked up there and then, with your toes in the same sand from which this world-class seafood is caught and where we learn the true meaning of local eating through wild food and fire.
IMMERSIVE FEAST
Tonight we feast on the beach, celebrating your new knowledge by eating and drinking amongst friends!
SATURDAY
R & R and farewell
With no commitments, today is all about late rising and your own enjoyment of beautiful West Cork, before heading away to your next adventure. Be it the local market, sitting in a chair doing absolutely nothing, walking the grounds at Drishane or heading to the airport, you are not rushed home and encouraged to relax and leave when you are ready!
Optional extra stay available.
SOME OF THE DISHES YOU WILL EAT AND LEARN DURING THE PROGRAMME
Anchovies, raw booley butter and bread
Real buttermilk, steamed potatoes
West Cork Smokeys, samphire, booley butter, fermented wild garlic and steamed potatoes
Potted shrimp
Spider crab in sherry
Smoked wild Atlantic salmon on soda bread and booley butter
Cockles and mussels on the fire with bread and dripping
Carrageen Moss Pudding
ACCOMMODATION
HOME
The house is equipped with everything you would expect from a large family home, centrally heated in parts and there are wood-burning stoves or open fires in all the public spaces.
DOUBLE - €2650
SINGLE - €2450
TWIN - €1950
The room price includes a regular ticket for the five day course.
If you would like to come as a couple and take a double room, or with a friend for the twin, the cost is the room above plus the €1650 ticket price for the extra person.
If you would like to pitch your own tent and avail of the programme without accommodation in the house, the front lawn will be accessible.
REQUIREMENTS AND KIT-LIST
The weather in West Cork is unpredictable, so it is best to plan for everything. Here is a quick guide to packing sensibly for the week.
Light travel sack to carry water, layers and snacks during day outings.
Good walking boots. The comfiest, most warn-in ones you have, ankle support is advised. Don’t risk a new pair on this trip in case you get blisters if they’re not broken in!
Wellies / gum boots
Crocs / comfies for around the house
Waterproofs
Plenty of socks
A beach towel
Bring your favourite knife to have with you and sharpen
You should have your own travel insurance cover
If you play an instrument, feel free to bring it along as we will be having a music session during the week!
If you would like to try a dive or swim on your own time, a wetsuit and booties are advised
THE CREW
This year’s programme has been set around engagement with coastal traditions and will also feature, depending on availability, some of the wonderful folk that make up this portion of the Atlantic Coastline and whose knowledge is invaluable.
Carpenter Kyle Huamali, baker Colm Crowley, fish smoker Sally Ferns Barns, forager Samuel Arnold-Keane, fisherman Ruari Jackson, musician Eoghan Higgins and lobster potter John Cronin amongst others.
Your Guide
Here we go, 2025!
Now five years in the making, I am thrilled to release this new offering as the traditional food conservation project Up There The Last evolves.
“Traditions of the Sea” is a programme that has been put together as a result of seven years of research in the food traditions here in the South-West of Ireland.
The purpose of the programme is to reconnect us with our inherent ability and basic human right to preserve the landscape into food and to de-condition us from the unhelpful information we have learned in these past years that prevent us from fully engaging with our coastal habitat. The empowering sessions are designed to equip you with the necessary skills to sustainably locate, harvest and preserve foods from the sea and foreshore, based on traditional methods. The knowledge that has kept us alive for thousands of years.
It is a consolidation of all the costal offerings at Up There The Last, with a focus on harvesting from the ocean and preserving with nothing but fat, smoke, salt and the wind, to natural methods.
I cannot wait to see you there.
Max
Max Jones - Up There The Last
