Donegal Drive

We had the breakfast room to ourselves this morning so the proprieter came over to chat with us is a friendly way. When we had our Pub Crawl tour in Dublin, the musician told us all that the Irish will always want to know all about you, they’re just naturally nosy. he said within 2 minutes of meeting you, the Irish will ask…Where are you from? Where have you been, Where are you going next etc. We laughed at the time but have found since that he’s absolutely right! Several times since we’ve had a waitress or shop assistant ask us …Where are you from? Where have you been.. Where are you going next? 🙂  We got the third degree from the chap at breakfast this morning and he then suggested some things we  might like to see along our way. Yes, nosy…but also very charming!

We had a fair bit of driving this morning to cross some fairly ordinary country before we arrived at our first “sight” of the day – on the shores of Donegal bay is Classiebawn Castle. It’s a relatively young castle, most of what you can see is from the 19th century but it’s claim to fame is that it was the holiday home of Lord Mountbatten, the Queen’s cousin, who spent his summers there until his death when his boat was blown up off the coast of Mullaghmore by the IRA in August 1979. It’s not open to the public but by driving past it to the ocean we could get a good look at it with the mountain Ben Bulben brooding behind it.

Not far from here was Creevykeel Court Tomb, our neolithic site of the day. It consists of a wedge-shaped cairn about 50m long, incorporating at its eastern end an oval-shaped court. It’s probably one of the less impressive ones we’ve seen and with the rapidity that Neil walked around it I suspect he’s pretty much reached his full capacity for neolithic stone structures for this trip. 😉

From here we left County Sligo and drove up past the town of Donegal, then head west again to see the “biggie” for the day, the Cliffs of Slieve League. These are about 3 times the height of The Cliffs of Moher that we saw yesterday and are the tallest sea cliffs in Europe but get far fewer visitors. This is partly because they are much more remote from the other big tourist centres in Ireland but also because they are much harder to access, you couldn’t get a big bus anywhere near them.  We parked at the car park at the bottom of the hill and took off for the 20 minute walk up the hill to the viewing site. It was very steep to start with but then levelled out and gave us a fine view back down to the ocean.  Along the walk we passed a series of egg-shaped rock sculptures set as way-markers along the path. Unfortunately there was nothing to tell you why they were there or who made them?

There is also a parking lot up the top but the advantage of doing the walk up was that it was easy to stop and admire the view of the green ground sliding down steeply to the water, and the sheep precariously grazing in the edges.

At the top there was a huddle of small carts selling coffee, ice cream and lobster rolls as well as several cars and small minibuses of people who preferred the lazy way up. The photos just don’t do justice to the scale of the cliffs I’m afraid, we struggled to find anything to give the pictures a sense of the scale.

We had planned to buy a coffee and a lobster roll from one of the carts at the top but not long after we reached the cliffs the rain started to come down so we skipped them and headed back down to the car. We thought we’d stop at the cafe in the town below that we’d spotted on the way up, but when we reached the door of the place we discovered it was heaving with people! Everyone had had the same idea. So we set off back along the road and found a light lunch of sandwiches and coffee in a little pub.

Our plan was then to head up over he Glengesh pass for the 30 minute drive to Ardara where e were staying the night. Unfortunately the drizzle stuck with us and made the view a bit less impressive than it should be.

In Ardara we stopped in to see the Triona Donegal Tweed centre. This area is famous for its beautiful woolen tweed cloth and they had two huge old looms here that are used every weekday to produce the cloth which is then tailored into garments in the factory downstairs. They had an interesting short video about the history of the weaving industry in Ardara and a replica of an old weavers cottage. They also had a huge shop full of VERY expensive Donegal tweed garments.

We resisted he temptation to come home with tweed jackets and made a beeline for Woodhill House, the country house hotel where we’re spending the night. The owner ( wearing his tweed jacket, of course!) greeted us and showed us to our room in the old coach house, overlooking the walled garden. The oldest part of the house dates to the 1600s but the newer sections are Victorian.

Dinner is a fixed price for three courses in the hotel restaurant but there’s plenty of choices and it’s all done in the Grand Hotel style ( mixed with a little of Fawlty Towers 😂) We were invited to sit in the bar with a drink to peruse the menu and place our order, eventually the waiter collected our glasses on a silver platter and escorted us to the table in the dining room . My smoked salmon was lovely but the steak was truly superb! ( and was served with three kinds of potato no less!) It was a lovely meal , very indulgent as neither of us can usually manage three courses, but we did our best to do justice to it. A very fine finish to our day.