Oak Road resident Robert Swade travelled with wife Cynthia to Donegal in southern Ireland carrying a set of photographs from his mother Ruth’s one and only visit there in 1936.

The pair not only attempted to visit the locations in the pictures, their ultimate aim was to replicate the images captured 77 years ago.

Using Google Earth as a guide, as well as their own orienteering skills, the couple spent a week putting a modern, pictorial focus on the past. Robert explained how they settled on their mission.

“My mother died three years ago and I was going through some family photos when I came across the set from Donegal.

“I spent a lot of time abroad as an engineer when I was younger, but now my wife and I are both in our 60s, I thought ‘why not go to Ireland based on that reel of holiday photos’?

Local knowledge also played a part in the hunt for the scenes of more than seven decades ago.

Robert and Cynthia, who owns Swade Music in Roman Square, were indebted to a number of Donegal residents for pointing them in the right direction.

As word of their quest spread, the county’s newspaper even got involved.

Robert said: “We went to their offices and told them what we were doing and the editor walked us to the window and pointed out another location in my mother’s photograph.”

Describing the adventure as “gob-smacking”, Robert added: “Although we took the same pictures my mother took, they don’t look exactly the same because of the focal length of the different cameras.

“What gave away some of the locations was the telegraph poles hadn’t moved in 77 years.”

The couple managed to snap 10 of the 12 black and white images they set out to recapture.

Robert said seeing for himself the same places his mother visited as a 23-year-old was an “extremely peculiar” experience.

He said: “It made me question what sort of person my mother was at that time, and I came to the conclusion she was clearly a young woman who was enjoying her life.”