From Westmeath to the world: 'Weird Ireland' is soaring to new heights
Regan Kelly
From exploring historical sites with his mum to amassing over 320,000 followers on Instagram, it's been an exciting five years for Westmeath native Brinsley McNamara.
Brinsley is the founder and face behind the now iconic social media brand, ‘Weird Ireland’, where he travels the country discovering odd activities and interesting sites that are off the beaten track.
The page took off back in November 2020, when he and his mum would take lockdown walks exploring interesting sites around Westmeath.
Brinsley said: “It's always something that I wanted to do, and I kind of came to a point where I said to myself, either you do it now or you'll fob it off in the future.
“I just kept saying to myself, start imperfect and get better, this is the way I look at things, and that's the way I went about all of this.”
Brinsley’s original TikTok page was called ‘Weird Westmeath’, but he decided to branch out to an island approach in 2023, using a stockpile of his Westmeath videos as a starting point.
In 2024, ‘Weird Ireland’ started to take off massively, gaining 200,000 followers on Instagram by the end of March, with its TikTok page growing steadily also. Brinsley admitted that “it all grew very very quickly.”
In November 2024, Brinsley released a book called “Weird Ireland: An Unofficial Guide to the Island”, which was released by leading Irish publishing house Hachette Ireland.
Speaking on why he thinks it's important to highlight these interesting topics, Brinsley commented: “When you're from Ireland and grow up here, you tend to take these things for granted. I want to try to highlight these places.
“It's common for someone to land in Dublin and get a bus or train to Galway, and you end up driving through the whole middle of the country, missing all of these sites.
“Dublin and Galway are both terrific in their way, but for me, it's about familiarising people with the country.”
The Mullingar author hit a milestone in 2025: “It's a small country, but it's so hard to see all of it at the same time, like for me, who does this constantly, this is the first year I've been to every county in Ireland.”
This year, ‘Weird Ireland’ is teaming up with Dr Pepper to promote their ‘Try More Weird’ campaign, where people are encouraged to try their Top 10 weird locations to visit around Ireland.
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