More Hidden Gems in Donegal - Culture, Freebies and a New Teapot

I hadn't planned another post on our recent trip to Donegal and Northern Ireland but when I went through the photos I just had to write this one, as I made a side trip to a hilltop Ring Fort called Grianan of Aileach. This is just south of the Inishowen Peninsula and affords tremendously panoramic vistas over the entire peninsula and the surrounding countryside. I was wandering around Buncrana on the first morning of our staycation (thanks Ann for the term - hadn't thought of it before!) looking at a map of the town, obviously lost and trying to get reoriented, when a woman approached me and asked if I was lost. She was so nice about it I could forgive her the Sybil/Basil the Rat moment (See Fawlty Towers) of stating the Bleeding Obvious, and when she put me on the right road she suggested I should visit the village of Burt where the Ring Fort is situated.

I wanted to get to a particular chemist shop, one of many businesses in Buncrana that offered discounts and goody bags for delegates to the AMAI conference hubby was attending. Needless to say I absconded with the vouchers booklet and made some contribution to the local economy, no doubt raising the GDP of Buncrana in the process. I got a lovely goody bag full of toiletries and a nice bottle of my fave perfume -Red Door by Elizabeth Arden. For this I had to spend €20 in the shop, not a bad deal as you can never have too much toothpaste and shampoo - both of which I'd left home without packing. I also mooched around a lovely gift and homewares shop where I set my sights on this lovely teapot, which enhances my growing collection - I now have four purely on aesthetic grounds - that they are receptacles for my fave beverage is coincidental! Don't you just love the sentiments? After my own heart indeed, and it came with a 20% discount too! I also got some bargain-basement wool in a lovely shop, and I am busy making socks with some of it - one down and one to go.

But I digress - this was supposed to be about the cultural history of ancient Donegal - I drove up to the Ring Fort which was visible for miles around as a bump atop of one of the hills south of Buncrana - and the winding boreen led to a magical place - with the most spectacular view in a 360 degree panorama I've yet seen in Ireland. There are other wonderful vistas like The Vee nearer home just over the Waterford border in Co. Tipperary, but they aren't full circle views.
Looking north you see Inishowen and the inlets of Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle; looking east there's Derry and beyond, and looking west there's Letterkenny. South is...well, the rest of Ireland I suppose! In all you can see seven counties from the hill ford and here are some of the photos so you can see for yourself.

The Ring Fort is massive, over 3000 years old and featured in Ptolemy of Alexandria's 2nd Century Map of Ireland. This snippet is lifted from some of the tourist information I picked up in the delegates pack. It sits atop Grianan Hill at an elevation of 244 metres above sea level. It's an Iron Age fort, and underwent many changes over the next two centuries, until its destruction according to the Irish Annals in 1101. It was rebuilt to its present state in the late 19th century and much of the stone used was from the 1101 destruction. I'm sure it's an archaeologist's dream and Time Team would have a wonderful three days excavating the place to look for more clues about its origins and functions.

I just enjoyed the solitary beauty of the place, scrambling over the walls and trying to ignore any hint of vertigo as I scaled the narrow steps to the ramparts on the inside walls, walking the perimeter and taking photos from every side/angle. (Irish joke aside - how do you confuse a Kerryman? Put him in a Round Tower and tell him to stand in the corner! Caveat - Irish jokes told in Ireland use the Kerryman as scapegoat instead of the Irishman - a universal practice I'm sure!)

I hope you enjoy the photos and reading about this hidden gem in Donegal - I certainly enjoyed exploring another lovely spot in Ireland - a great country for a holiday or a staycation once you get decent weather as we were lucky to get on this break for the border.

Photos from the top:

• My Chocolate Teapot (Born to Shop brand)
• My Goody Bag Giveaway Contents (they came in a Christmas Bag!)
• Grianan of Aileach - Various Views
• Looking north to Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle
• Looking east to Derry and Northern Ireland
• The Ramparts of the inner Ring Fort
• The Gate of the Fort

More Northern Delights - from the Giant's Causeway to the Western Seaboard

On the final leg of our trip to Donegal we did some sightseeing in the North of Ireland (the UK part is Capitalised to distinguish it from the north of Ireland - which would be Donegal and the border counties of Ulster in the Irish Republic - oh, it's complicated if you don't know it already, I'm not going there in this post!)

It's often said there are two topics one should avoid in Northern Ireland - religion and politics - as they are the elephants in the room. What I do find is that I am trying to assess someone's position on both so I don't make a major faux pas in conversation. The clues are often easy to follow - just being introduced to someone can give a clue - an Irish-sounding name is generally a Catholic with probable nationalist sentiments, while an Anglo name is probably Protestant/Loyalist leanings.

That's the sort of thing living in Ireland over the decades of the euphemistically-named "Troubles" teaches you - that you can pigeonhole someone in a nano-second with the most ephemeral clue - and it still baffles hubby that we can do that - he thinks it's stereotyping -and he's right, but then so am I! At least now that a tenuous peace has been restored in the North since power-sharing those dark days are gone but they've left a horrendous legacy which you never escape as there are reminders everywhere - as I wrote on Derry two posts back.

We left Donegal and via Derry we went to the most magical place in Northern Ireland and one of the most beautiful in the whole island - the Giant's Causeway on the Atlantic coast. Legend has it that Finn McCool used the causeway as stepping stones to Scotland. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site - I think the only N. Ireland one and there are two in the Republic. (Skellig Michael and Newgrange/The Boyne Valley).

Basalt columns make up the Causeway and they are beautifully symmetrical polygons - mainly hexagons. It's free to visit but you pay £6 to park the car! We didn't walk the entire site - just down the road to the rocks and walked out onto them - and enjoyed the views and the landscape. It was a bit showery but generally the day was great and sunny, and we got some great photos.

We went back to Ireland via Strabane and headed through Co. Donegal towards Sligo - another lovely county. We went on another detour to Mullaghmore and saw the village where Lord Mountbatten owned Classiebawn Castle and where he was assassinated by the IRA in 1979 - a horrific mass-murder on one of the worst days of the Troubles when 18 British soldiers were also blown up by the IRA in an ambush in Warrenpoint. Sligo's iconic mountain, Ben Bulben, famed in W.B. Yeats's poetry, towers over every vista in the county, and it's a beautiful table mountain.

The light was wonderful as the evening sun was shining through rainbow-scattered skies between the sunshowers, and we were heading south-west for Co. Mayo, which made driving into the setting sun a bit of a challenge for hubby while I snapped and clicked both our cameras. We'd phoned ahead to book a room for the night in the Hotel Westport, thanks to the Garmin's hotel guide which I knew would come in useful one day! Thanks to the recession, rates were good for B&B in a 4* hotel even though I slept too late to have a swim the next morning - as I'd stayed awake watching two films back to back on telly - Witness (love that Amish film!) and a Nicholas Cage black comedy The Weather Man (a spectacular cinema flop by all accounts but I enjoyed it - love male menopause movies!)

Next day we drove home via Connemara and the Western Seaboard of Co. Mayo and Galway, and enjoyed the wild rugged mountain scenery of Delphi and Leenane at Killary Harbour which is Ireland's only fjord, in the true sense of the word - although we in Waterford claim to have one - hence the Ford in the name. We drove around the famous Reek - Croagh Patrick, the pilgrimage mountain that draws thousands of climbers in bare feet on Reek Sunday every July, and enjoyed the views to Achill Island across Clew Bay with its 365 islands - though I don't know who's counted them! In Connemara we saw Kylemore Abbey and the lake, and headed for Galway via Oughterard.

It was a lovely trip home and we arrived back in Lismore that evening, having driven from Galway via Limerick's new bypass tunnel under the River Shannon, which will make life a lot easier for airport-bound travellers who had to run the gauntlet of Limerick city centre en route to Shannon airport for years - last year hubby took 3 hours to get through the city in a bad gridlock day when he was coming to collect us when we returned from hols in Spain.

I still had two more days of hols before I had to return to work which made for a nice short week, and I am enjoying the balmy September days before the autumn kicks in - already it's
dark by 8pm and I miss the long bright evenings.



















Photos are a mix of hubby's and mine:

• Both of us @ the Giant's Causeway
• The Giant's Causeway
• Ben Bulben
• Classiebawn Castle
• Killary Harbour (Mayo-Galway border)
• Sheep crossing at Doolough, Delphi, Co. Mayo
• Kylemore Abbey and Lake, Connemara

A Tale of Two Cities - and a Break on the Border

Last week I went with hubby Jan for a few days to Donegal and Northern Ireland - he had a conference to attend in Buncrana for Town Councillors so I had plenty of time to explore the area while he was at the sessions and we also had time to sightsee together.

Co. Donegal is a beautiful part of the country and I hadn't been up there for over thirty years, while Jan had never been. Neither of us had been in Northern Ireland as tourists: apart form a perfunctory drive into Co. Fermanagh when I was at an INO (Nurses Union) Conference in Cavan - just to say I'd crossed the border - I'd never been into the North, and Jan had gone to Newry over twenty years ago to sell a car before we returned to Africa. It was a car we'd bought in Wales and it was easier to sell it in the North than to import it into Ireland and incur all that cost only to sell it on.

We drove up to Donegal in a day, took about six hours to get there via Dublin, which was a bit of an indirect route but the best roads. Motorway all the way to Dublin and Drogheda over the lovely new toll bridge over the Boyne (pictured in this post), then normal roads for the rest of the journey.

We stayed in Buncrana, a town on the Inishowen Peninsula which is the most northerly part of Ireland. We didn't make it to the extreme tip at Malin Head but we did get close to it when we went to Doagh Island. The first night we had dinner after checking in to our hotel, the Lake of Shadows, and dropped into the conference venue, the Inishowen Gateway Hotel, to meet some of the delegates. It was an early night for us both after the long drive. Next day Jan went off to the conference and I wandered around Buncrana for the morning - a lovely little town with some nice shops - including the oddest name
ever - Ubiquitous Restaurant!

Across the Border - the city that dare not speak its name

After lunch I went to Derry/Londonderry for a look around the historic walled city. Never has a city had such a controversial name - I still don't know what the official name is as the Catholics would use Derry and the Protestants/Loyalists use Londonderry. So as an uninformed Southerner I would probably be excused whichever name I used, as in mixed (religious) company you end up offending someone regardless. Not being terribly au fait with the current nuances of names, I just kept quiet and drove into the city - about 20 mins from Buncrana - and enjoyed the buzz that comes from being in a foreign country - as Derry is in the UK - and realising if I said that to a Nationalist Republican I would cause major offence as they claim ownership of the North as part of Ireland.

Well, the "North" is on the island of Ireland but as Six Counties of the North remained with the UK after Ireland's Independence in 1922 it has been a flashpoint ever since and 40 years ago the "Troubles" erupted with the loss of over 3,000 lives on both sides of the divide over the next three decades. There's peace now but as there are many unhappy with the Good Friday Agreement and the power-sharing that ensued it is a very tenuous truce - hopefully a lasting one, nonetheless. There's a powerful imagery in the sculpture at the roundabout to the city called Across the Divide - you can see the photo in this post. There's also a link to Lismore - the artist Antony Gormley has a sculpture at the Millenium Forum Theatre modelled on his own form as in the one in Lismore Castle Gardens.

The Walls of Derry were the scene of the famous Siege of Derry in 1688-89, and in more recent times there are many memorable infamous events, the worst being the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972 when 13 unarmed protesters were killed by the British troops. That inquiry has just recently ended with the British Prime Minister apologising to the relatives of the victims, which has brought some closure to one of the most divisive and bitter events of the Troubles. There's some tourism now around the Walls and even on the remnants of the Troubles in the Murals that give some colour to the housing estates - they are all highly political and have been retained as a marker of their significance to their communities. I managed to capture some on camera and they give an idea of the sentiments and sometimes persistent "Siege" mentality that persists to this day. This is evident in the dispute that's arisen over the British City of Culture 2013 that Derry's just been awarded - it led to a split in the City Council over the inclusion of the UK in the title.

It's fascinating contemporary and ancient history when you're in the thick of it and I certainly enjoyed my walk around the Walls, unguided apart from all the information points on the Bastions and the various Gates, and absorbing the atmosphere while wondering what tales these walls could tell of all they've witnessed since their birth.

I drove across the Craigavon Bridge - a double-decker bridge across the Foyle River and back over the Foyle Bridge and re-entered the Irish Republic/Ireland at a different border. The only indication that there's a border is in the speed limit signs - Ireland uses Km/hr and the North as the rest of the UK uses Miles/hr. The currency is the other clue that you're in a foreign land - the North is part of the Sterling Pound territory and £ signs abound, as the UK remains resolutely outside the Eurozone and I wrestled with some mental arithmetic to get my € rates converted to £stg. All I do know is that the North's prices are way cheaper than the Republic, even in the same shops - Lidl are said to be much better value in the North and as they are leading cost-cutters in the South that's saying something.

As we saw so much during this trip to the northern shores of the island, I will write a few different blog posts over the next few days, and hope you enjoy reading about what may be already familiar or totally new to you. It's fascinating stuff when you're in the thick of it and I certainly enjoyed my walk around the Walls, unguided apart from all the information points on the Bastions and the various Gates, and absorbing the atmosphere while wondering what tales these walls could tell of all they've witnessed since their birth.

I'll try to do a Picasa Web album for the sidebar!
The photos here include:

• Various views of and from the Walls,
• Cannon and plaques from the Walls,
• The Murals (the famous Free Derry one and a few Loyalist ones)
• The Boyne Bridge in Drogheda,
• The Ubiquitous Restaurant in Buncrana,
• The beautiful Guildhall in Derry,
• The Maurice Harron Sculpture "Hands Across the Divide"

Capital Culture Shock - Art, Shopping and a Summer of Discount Tents

Last weekend I went to Dublin for a break with teen daughter and three of her friends - foolhardy you might say but they have been hanging out for the duration of the Irish summer hols, which must be the longest in the planet. At least that's what it feels like when it's late July and you realise you've only passed the mid-point of the three-month-long break.

With teenagers who are too old for summer camps (mostly targeting primary school children) but too young to work in a minimum-wage (lower for under-18s than adults) service job (roll on next year!) the boredom factor sets in fairly quickly. And that's just the parents who have the unenviable task of monitoring their movements without being seen to be too much of a "helicopter" parent.

The boredom threshold is quickly reached, and the refrain "there's nothing to do - I'm bored" ring out across the nation. As we are not going abroad on holidays this year this adds to the sense of deprivation, and lectures ensue (= poorly disguised nagging) telling them how lucky they are. When I hear myself echoing my mother - "It's far from sun holidays I was reared" - then I have to call a halt.

Hubby bought a tent in Argos a couple of weeks ago - sale offer, 4-person with a sitting room you could stand in and a nice separate bedroom, and an awning - and that has gone down a treat for sleepovers, especially given the nice warm summer we're having. The n

ights have been very mild, and there is nothing nicer than staying awake in the tent in comfort - eating all night and staying awake till the dawn chorus kicks in - and having a good girly giggle with a bunch of pals. The first night the tent was used it lashed rain, and that

added to the sense of adventure. Of course there are mega-extension leads that bring light from the house to the tent, so it can be far enough from the house to feel like proper camping - and the garden chairs fit nicely in the sitting room part, with an old kiddie's table to sit around.

So a weekend in Dublin seemed like a nice diversion and was greeted with typical teen ennui - OK, we can go shopping, see a movie, and stay in a nice hotel. Museum visits or any cultural improvements weren't even up for discussion, so I didn't go there. Booked a couple of rooms in the Skylon Hotel in Drumcondra (wrong side of the river, one of the teens informed me, with genuine Ross O'Carroll-Kelly horror - she's city-wise having "grown up" in Dublin - on the right side of the river!) - and figured out the sleeping order would be 4:1 (they were happy to share a triple room) and we were sorted. I was pragmatic about the potential hazards of taking four young teens to a city three of them were unfamiliar with, as I felt they wouldn't leave the confines of whatever shopping centre they were deposited in, and I reminded them of the moral of "Taken", the chilling action movie about white slavery and wayward teens who didn't listen to their parents. They were pretty underwhelmed by my concerns, as they dismissed them as the usual parental fussing.

The trip to Dublin was a joy - the new tolled Abbeyleix Bypass reduced the 140 miles to just about 2hrs 40mins., motorway all the way from Cahir, and they slept all the way, after being awake all night in the tent. They decided to go to Blanchardstown shopping centre, which I thought would be a nice place for them - it was, but I didn't bargain for the nightmare on the M50 - SatNav was useless as the roadworks in what is known as Dublin's biggest car park (the M50 ring road) are unending and finding exits and ramps was a disaster.

I managed to drop them off, had a coffee and wandered around for an hour, then went back to the hotel and arranged to visit a friend later that evening. We spent some time with middle son who's finishing his MA in DIT, and I had plenty of time with him as well, while the girls hung out at the hotel with their shopping after I managed to collect them - a groundhog day experience as I overshot the exit ramp and got caught by the barrier-free toll cameras as I had to drive about 10 miles around the M50 and get back on track to re-enter the loop. Of course I missed the deadline of 8pm the following evening to pay the €3 and it doubled before I remembered it. No wonder it's such a controversial toll, and it's much dearer than the others on the motorway bypasses.

We had something to eat in the hotel, and then went to the cinema in the Omni centre in Santry - the girls to see the latest Twilight film "Eclipse" about sparkly vegetarian vampires, and my friend and me went to see the delightful "His & Hers" - sort of a documentary or narrative by women from young toddlers to elderly widows talking about the men in their lives - a real heartwarming feelgood film that had no commentary other than the women from the Midlands of Ireland talking to camera about fathers, husbands, boyfriends a nd brothers. It has got rave reviews, not surprisingly, given the dross that's in the cinema this summer it wouldn't be hard.

But what of culture, I hear you ask, as alluded to in the title? This turned out to be a spur of the moment thing that was a real delight as so many spontaneous decisions are, when the girls went to town Sunday afternoon after checking out of the hotel, and middle son and me went to town for some supplies for his thesis in Easons.

We drove around Parnell Square to find a parking space and there was one just by the Garden of Remembrance - around the corner from the Hugh Lane Gallery, with its Lavery "Passion and Politics" Exhibition, which was serendipitous as I had seen the famous Lady Lavery portrait in Lismore Castle at the Sotheby's Irish Sale Preview in April. That one sold for over €250,000 and we went to have a look at the current exhibition. The Hugh Lane is a fabulous facility for the city, as it is free, like so many of the National Museums and Galleries, and has a wonderful permanent collection as well as the special exhibitions like this. I really enjoyed it and took a few flash-free photos before realising that I wasn't supposed to - but I didn't feel too guilty as I don't see what harm it does when the flash isn't used.

The Politics and Passion refer to the new Irish Free State Government asking Laver y to paint a symbol of the new country (Éire, depicted by a beautiful woman) for the new Irish Currency, and then he used his high society American wife Hazel as the model. Given that she never set foot in Ireland (they lived in London) it must have been a controversial issue at the time, as her lifestyle would be pretty far removed from DeValera's Madonna and Motherhood vision of Irish womanhood! There were a lot of documents on display; correspondence between the Departments and Lavery and some from WB Yeats and other famous contemporaries of Lavery. I've come to the conclusion that Lavery was pretty full of himself - there are self-portraits of him receiving an Honorary Doctorate in Belfast and being conferred a Freeman of Dublin. They were probably the Posh and Becks of the Twenties, albeit with a lot more talent! And the irony of Lady Lavery adorning the currency for almost 50 years can't be missed, as they both represented the wealthy ascendancy that the new State was so keen to expunge from its history. But that's a whole other story and not one for this post; I might return to it one day.

My son had seen the Francis Bacon Collection a few times as he is a great fan of the notoriously untidy late artist. He certainly could identify with him on that score, with his vaguely similar artistic penchant for creative chaos in living spaces. Out of sheer curiosity I had to see the Francis Bacon Studio which was brought from London and lovingly recreated in a special viewing room in the Gallery, with every messy rag and paint tin (great ad for Dulux) and stacks of dusty books replaced forensically as they were in his London house. His Irish connections were as

tenuous as many of the great artists and writers we claim - he spent some years of his childhood in Dublin and then went off to school and fame in England. Some of his works were also in Lismore Castle at the Sotheby's preview.

It was a very pleasant interlude and I came away with my cultural antennae recharged, and determined to soak up some more free stuff on future Dublin visits - there's the Dead Zoo, the National Gallery, the National Library, and the National Museum at different locations around the city. Cork has the lovely Crawford Gallery and I visited there a few years ago. It would be nice to entice the teenagers to visit something like a museum but sadly they passed that stage after our last visit to the Dali Museum in Figueras in 2006! It'll be another decade or two before they'll rediscover culture and hopefully decide that it's not so bad after all.

Photos - from the top:

• Blanchardstown Shopping Centre
• The tent in the garden
• Hugh Lane Gallery
• Passion and Politics Exhibition detail
• The Lavery Legacy and currency notes
• Painting of picnic scene by Sir John Lavery
• Fireplace in the Hugh Lane Gallery
• Lady Lavery Painting by Sir John Lavery
• The Francis Bacon Studio
• An aptly titled bus - for teen daughter