I’m in Rye, close to the coast, a shell’s throw from salt water. I know because I can smell it immediately; that insta-recognizable scent of saltwater and mudflats. I peel off Brackett Road and identify the entrance to my destination. It’s a nondescript dirt road, and if you weren’t looking for it, you’d likely miss it.

I turn off and drive. Past the gate, the private property signs, and then on and on and on and on. I’m about a half mile in and just as I start asking myself how in the world this driveway gets plowed in the winter I see it, sticking up from the ground like a stubby thumb. An odd rock edifice that could not have evolved naturally.

Um...is that a partially complete castle spire? Welcome to Ardnaberry!

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Thirty years ago, Mike Thiel and Gail Richard were house hunting in New Hampshire. They were looking to move from Massachusetts and find something in the greater Portsmouth area.

Mike and Gail discovered their love for the area following a stint renting in the Portsmouth area and realized that the Seacoast was destined to be their home. As they circulated through the real estate listings, serendipity presented itself when they went to tour a property on Route 1A/Pioneer Road in Rye – and, like a slow-motion Hollywood love-at-first-sight scene set to Faithfully by Journey – they saw it across the way.

The perfect property, their dream locale: over 40 acres of land along Berry’s Brook, buttressed by mature forests, and adjoining an expansive salt marsh looking out toward Odiorne Point.

“Look at the lucky people who own that,” Mike Thiel recalls thinking.

It wasn’t for sale, alas, but Mike and Gail nourished hope and, amazingly, ten days later they spotted an auction notice for that exact property. So, he and Gail jumped in their Ford Explorer and headedover, navigating down the winding half-mile driveway, barely a trail at the time, met the owners, toured the property and promptly came to a shared realization: “We need this place.”

It’s been three decades since Mike and Gail purchased their dream property. Inspired by time he spent in Ireland, where he lived at a country home called “Ardnavalley” (“overlooking the valley”), Mike named their land “Ardnaberry” (“overlooking Berry” as in “Berry’s Brook”).

This whimsical nomenclature fits the land perfectly. Whether it’s the vestiges of an ambitious castle construction that a previous owner had begun to erect, complete with a partiallybuilt tower adjoining a stone parapet or the sheep meandering about (sheep were included with the original purchase of the property and their progeny call Ardnaberry home today), there’s something eccentric and unique about this place.

And then you have the stunning natural resource value that Ardnaberry boasts; seriously, this reads like a greatest
hits of prime-time conservation value: over 1,500 feet of shoreline along Berry’s Brook, a popular kayaking and fishing
destination, critical wildlife habitat for endangered birds, fish, and reptiles, and priceless salt marsh, which covers just over eight acres on the property and offer precious benefits for land and sea, providing coastal protection, water filtration, nitrogen absorption, and erosion control.

Mike and Gail at Ardnaberry

All of that, added up, results in a true coastal gem – and why Mike and Gail made the decision to conserve it forever.

“We want to keep it as natural as possible,” Gail says. “We just never want it to be developed.”

To that end, Mike and Gail have decided to donate a conservation easement to SELT, which is, obviously, an extraordinarily generous gesture considering the prices of real estate these days (especially New Hampshire coastal real estate!)

But that’s the power of Ardnaberry. It is intoxicating. It is special. And for Mike and Gail and the Seacoast community, it
will be everlasting.

“This is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere,” Mike says. “It’s a part of me. I pinch myself daily at how lucky we are to live here. I never take it for granted.”