How my journey began

My name is Nathalie Moyano González.

I was born and raised near Marseille in Southern France, my parents are from Andalucía in Spain and I carry both their surnames, as we do in Spain. I moved to Ireland in 2002 and it quickly became my home away from home. People here sometimes assume Moyano is my first name... it could nearly be Irish, couldn’t it? But Moyano is my dad’s name, all the way from Nerja.

I like to say I moved to Ireland because of the weather but it was work that brought me here in the first place. 

I spent my first 10 years in Dublin, dreaming of moving West when I retired, taking friends and family on short trips to the West coast. Maybe because my first introduction to Ireland was through Galway in my late teens, I have this attachment and fondness for the area. For the couple of months I spent in Galway, I worked in a café during the week so I could spend my weekends hiking. Very little changed when I moved to Dublin, except I swapped the café for a cybersecurity company after graduating in translation and interpreting.

After years of bustling city life, and as work became more flexible, I moved to Howth to be closer to the sea. Bustling is probably an understatement. I was juggling work, travelling around the world, running an international flamenco festival for 5 years, and teaching flamenco dance to beginners. I forget I was also in an opera at Wexford Festival Opera, an unforgettable experience. 

Needless to say, I had to slow down. I lived in Howth for 6 years, getting my internal body clock back to waking up to the dawn chorus and syncing my breathing with the waves. In 2017, I decided to make work even more flexible and I quit my corporate job. I moved to Wicklow and lived in a castle for a couple of years, as you do, and made the final cross country journey on the first day of lockdown of all days.