Ireland, Day Twelve: Donegal to Derry

We ate breakfast in a little tea room in Donegal Town that reminded me somehow of Harry Potter.

  
And then we set out for Glenveagh National Park, about an hour away. This was private land until the 1960s, when the owner of the McIlhenny Hot Sauce fortune (?) gave it to the Irish government.

It rained on us four or five separate times in the hours we were here. As elsewhere, we could always see it coming from a distance, which can be both a positive and a negative.

We stood and watched as a rainbow appeared from nothing and crossed the mountain.

There is a castle, built by someone rich who used to live here, and you can take a bus to it from the visitors center if you like. We walked, though. It took about an hour. Everywhere we went, the landscape was different than the day before. Glenveagh seemed more barren and wild than elsewhere.

Benjamin was losing enthusiasm about being rained on all the time.

We walked around the gardens & grounds of the castle but did not go inside.

I wanted to see what was in this thing but that man stood there smoking for too long and eventually I gave up.

We took an additional trail behind the castle up to the viewpoint. Looking at the map, you could go around the long way or take the "shorter steep route." Short and steep wins the race!

There were these creepy stairs to nowhere across the valley.

It started to rain again on the way down. Ben was demonstrating here how we could crouch down under that ledge like in the Lord of the Rings when they hid from the Black Riders. Mostly, though, we huddled together under the trees for ten minutes, which turns out to be a very effective to stay relatively dry. The great thing about Ireland is that 90% of the time, the rain seems to stop within ten minutes.

Following lunch in the visitors center, we drove on to Derry, another hour or so.

Derry is in Northern Ireland, which belongs to the UK. There is no noticeable border; the only indication that you're in a different country is that the speed limit signs are suddenly in miles per hour, as opposed to kilometers. However, Derry felt quite different from anyplace we had been so far. It was a center of The Troubles in the 80s and 90s, and you can definitely still feel it today. They are still arguing over whether to call the city Londonderry or Derry - we saw highway signs with the "London" part blacked out.

We stayed within the city walls at the Bishops Gate Hotel, which was extremely nice. When we got there we put on our Aran Islands sweaters for a picture.

Then we went out to see the town. You can walk all around on top of Derry's standing city walls, dating from medieval times.

There were very few people around - mostly teenagers in school uniforms - and although it was around 5:00pm on a Wednesday, all the shops were starting to close. This was particularly strange after having spent time for the past two weeks in places with pubs open late and people wandering around at all hours.

  

This church was built in the 1500s but looks brand new compared with a lot of things we'd seen recently.

Some of the old guard towers on the walls still survive. These were built relatively recently, because the guards complained about having to stand out in the rain all the time. I feel you, dudes.

In general the city felt very quiet, but not necessarily in an ominous way. Right here in this neighborhood, people were killing each other less than thirty years ago.

We went into a hippie sort of store that sold used books, records, jewelry, all sorts of stuff. It's hard not to buy foreign versions of books when I see them! I want it. But books are not a super practical thing to buy when you have to fly with them back across the ocean.

By 6:00, the city was virtually deserted. So strange.

We walked to the river and saw yet another amazing rainbow.

The Peace Bridge connects the Irish Catholic old city with the British Protestant neighborhoods on the opposing bank.

There aren't many restaurants inside the walls, either. We found one a few minutes' walk away that was pretty good. Then, naturally, it was raining when we left. We sat on a bench under the awning and waited the few minutes for it to stop.

Then we went back to our lovely hotel room and watched season 9 of Peep Show on Netflix, which is not available in the US.

Ireland, Day Eleven: Mayo to Donegal

Creevagh Heights B&B is only a few kilometers from a place called Downpatrick Head, where parts of the cliffs have eroded into the sea, so we went over there to look at it in the morning.

While we were walking up the hill to the edge of the cliffs, there was a sheep lying all alone in the middle of the field with its legs sticking straight up. We assumed this to be a dead sheep. None of the other ones were paying attention to it at all. Then a crazy German woman went over there and KICKED IT and it got up and ran away. What is happening.

Anyway, Downpatrick Head turned out to be indeed beautiful.

There used to be a natural bridge connecting this to the land but it collapsed hundreds of years ago, stranding some people who happened to be out there at the time. Our B&B owner said it took weeks to figure out how to get them back to land. It's hard to tell how much of this story is apocryphal and what is really true; the guidebook said the bridge collapsed in the 1300s but the B&B lady said it was "a couple hundred years ago."

During World War II, someone lived in this little stone room to watch for bombers.

He had a pretty good view.

EIRE is written in huge stone letters at Downpatrick Head - this was done all up and down the Irish coast during the war, because Ireland was neutral and they didn't want anyone on either side to assume they were over enemy territory. We'd had no idea Ireland was neutral in World War II until this was casually mentioned to us.

Ye olde Seat Mii at the Downpatrick Head car park.

After this we drove a few kilometers back to the Lacken area to hike around before it started raining. The road to reach the trailhead was completely ridiculous. At one point we met someone head on and had to literally back up for probably a quarter mile to allow them to pass. The woman at the B&B had told us to "drive for a bit until you reach the big stone wall, and the car park is just beyond there at the church." We drove for what seemed like much too long, passing many big stone walls, and were just about to give up on the whole thing when suddenly there was a big stone wall followed by a church with a car park and posted hiking maps.

This turned out to be an utterly deserted 8km loop.

This was the first real beach we'd seen in all our days along the coast.

County Mayo's football team was in the upcoming All-Ireland championship against Dublin, to be held the day after we left. We learned that following Mayo's last victory in the all-Ireland championship, they failed to stop the victory parade for a funeral procession, and are now considered to be cursed - they haven't won again in around 50 years. The curse says they won't win until all the members of that disrespectful team are dead, and there's only one poor guy left. Nonetheless, everyone was really excited for the upcoming match.

The curse held, however - Dublin won.

Anyway, the walk was paved and wound around through fields with nice views of the beach and the hills.

At one point there is a megalithic passage tomb you can look at. Just sitting here with no supervision.

This is a real road! There were houses on it!

The Lacken Gazebo is visible through the last quarter of the hike, high on a hill. It was built in the 1800s but nobody knows why. There are stories that it might be related to the Masons, or possibly someone built it in honor of his dead wife.

As we came down the last hill, it started to rain.

Then it rained constantly for the rest of the day. This was our only day of truly bad weather, where you couldn't really be outside. Fortunately we drove through a couple hours of it, arriving in Donegal mid-afternoon.

Our hotel in Donegal kind of sucked. The reviews are glowing, but half the hotel turned out to be motel-style rooms with doors to the outside and we got one of those. After our stellar experiences the previous two nights, it was a bit of a bummer. But we were only there one night so it was fine.

It was still pouring in Donegal, so we bundled up and went to see Donegal Castle, a short walk away.



The newer part is in ruins.

But the older parts still exist, or have been restored.

The castle was occupied by the O'Donnell clan for hundreds of years. They built the staircase with intentionally uneven steps, to deter potential attackers.

After this we decided to find a pub and hang out for a while, as there are not many indoor activities in small villages in Ireland. We looked into a movie but the nearest theatre was 13 kilometers away. Instead we went to The Olde Castle Bar, which turned out to be fantastic. They seated us in a cozy little booth in the back, but when we ordered the seafood platter for two the server recommended we move to a bigger table as "the seafood platter is quite large."



It WAS large! A great way to finish the day.