Day 15 - Grianan of Aileach and the Wild Atlantic Way

Sunday, 29 September 2019
We say farewell to Derry today, but not without regret. My plans for a visit to the Peace Bridge earlier in our time here didn't work out, so despite our having a huge agenda today, some time there is absolutely my top priority. We need to go and retrieve the car to pick up our luggage anyway so we check out and leave the bags with reception meanwhile. It's a beautiful autumn morning as I lead the way. I've done some research online and seen the concept drawings and with Gleann's explanation yesterday I'm even more keen to take a closer look. On the ground the two bridges are paved in different colours to make the distinction clear as one bridge embraces the other. It's a beautiful concept. So much thought has gone into it's location and purpose.

A light breeze ripples the water of the River Foyle, disrupting the mirror effects. Despite our waiting luggage we take our time, soaking up the spirit of the place. Derry has been a delightful surprise. I am really glad we came here. OK I'm done, how about you? Hubby agrees and we walk back across the bridge together. If we are ever fortunate enough to return to Ireland we'd like to come back.

It's a quick and easy thing to drive up, pull up outside the hotel and load up. I very quickly snatch a rough photo of the memorial in the Diamond and an even worse attempt for the Hands Across the Divide artwork in the roundabout that meets a main thoroughfare across the Foyle.  

It's amazing how soon as you leave the city, you are enveloped in the rolling green countryside with pretty little houses and grazing stock. 

It's perhaps even more astonishing how soon you reach what must surely be one of the most impactful ancient monuments to be found anywhere on earth. Grianan of Aileach sits in deceptive modesty at the top of a hill with a fairly large carpak, complete with coffee caravan. A long ramped path for accessibility complements the main route up to the squat donut of rocks. It's hard to miss Grianan of Aileach when researching but what you can see online looks fairly pedestrian despite it's venerable age. Some cultural hero invested some money and restored it back in the 19th century is my recollection. Yeah, worth a stop, I mean why not. You're going right past.  Oh dear! Let me just make one thing clear as a bell. Grianan of Aileach is spectacular! WOW! The Monument itself is impressive. There's some tricky narrow stairs to climb to peer out over the edge, but the view. Oh my goodness, the view. 360 degrees of glorious country from the sea, along a river and distant mountains and a vertible heaven of productive farmland. A brooding sky creates a fourth dimension of light and shadow over all. Glorious. Simply glorious and impossible to do justice to in photographs or words. 

We walk the circuit of the walls, trying in vain to capture some image that will communicate the sense of space, the chill air, the depth of presence in the swirling cloud. There are some things that defy technology and man's control.

Back on our way, I notice the signs for the Rock of Doon. My research said there's a clooty well there so I was tempted, but in the end push came to shove and we've seen a clooty well before so we keep on.  

We wizz through the artworks in the roundabouts in Letterkenny. firstly The Workers and as if that isn't surprising enough, shortly after we come to the Polestar Roundabout. I love the rich artistic and cultural life displayed everywhere we've visited. My hasty memory jogger snapshots don't do the originals justice. 

As we approach Glenveagh National Park the look of the country changes and becomes overwhelmingly like driving through the Scottish Highlands. 

It's extremely beautiful, and the clouds add to the grandeur of the autumnal landscape. We make the turn and a decision is called for. The manifesto proposed a couple of walks and lunch. We've suffered some slippage. I don't think the walks are feasible today actually. I've seen some photos. I'm feeling a strong sense of Scotland de ja vu. Push comes to shove and the Wild Atlantic Way calls us on. Today was always going to involve some hard decisions. We've crunched Donegal about as tight as it's possible to do. 

As we come into Dunfanaghy, my initial response is delighted surprise. I don't know why I should be surprised. I hadn't imagined it to be such an inviting, bustling place. It looks like it's a lovely place for a tourist to stop and poke about in the shops or relax in a cafe. The locality is very pretty too, situated on a beautiful bay. I find myself thinking that this would be a lovely spot to stay if one had more time. We never have enough time on this side of the globe. 

From sea level we climb again up along narrow roads where weathered poles support wire fences to protect the stock from passing traffic. I call for a stop when we find a flock of horned black-faced sheep near the road in amongst electrical staunchions and various compositional hazards. No good. Everything about this spot doesn't work for a photo and the sheep are skittish anyway. Judging by their reaction, they really weren't expecting a car to stop here. The sheer bald faced affrontery of it. 

At Horn Head there's plenty of cars parked along the road and plenty of people coming and going from the rough path up to the viewpoint. 

Wow. Where do you look first? 

A World War 2 observation post sits in ruins on the headland, a glassless bay window and a fireplace suggest a history of quiet comfort or was there a clacking transmitter operating all the long hours of survellance?  I can think of worse occupations than sitting here by the fire peering out to see on a cold blustery day or night. I check my photograph to find the view overlayed like a roll of celluloid film edged in black.. 

I'm struggling with the camera. The light is challenging, the auto settings aren't really coping as well as I'd like and I'm not sufficiently skilled to adjust things appropriately. Aagh. I need more practice. I feel like the intelligent auto setting my little Lumix would cope much better in this situation. It's very frustrating, but the spectacular views and scenery are sufficiently distracting that I almost don't care. Peninsulas to north and south create in my imagination an endless series of exploration trails. I would have loved to explore the more northerly sections. We've only time to go southward now.

Back down the track to the car, and around the mud flats in the bay, eyes peeled for migratory birds, we head back into Dunfanaghy, where there are public facilities handily located to the parking lot.  We don't linger longer than necessary and get back on the road.

Driving to Bloody Foreland, we come to russet fields with lines of white sacks that clue us in that this must be an enormous peat field. How fascinating. Vast areas are sharply and neatly ridged where roads have been cut into the peat. We have seen some smaller scale peat harvesting on the Isle of Skye, but nothing on this industrial scale

When we get to Bloody Foreland we find a large area for pulling over and some information boards that explain that the peat in this area was used to fire a power station from the war years until the 1990s. Well that would take a lot of peat wouldn't it. I wonder whether peat as fuel is being managed sustainably and how fast it lays down compared to demand for fuel. ... a little googling reveals that Ireland has been closing peat bogs because harvesting them releases carbon and that peat is more damaging than burning coal. Oh. That's a shame. So it's a situation of transitioning away from peat.  

The good time girls

Also very welcome at Bloody Foreland is a flock of horned black faced sheep that is quite sanguine about the proximity of tourists gaping at them. At last! I spend more time photographing the sheep than the views, which are splendid enough, but not quite on a par with Horn Head or Grianan of Aileach.  We know from a previous trip that the sheep are marked with a dye so that they can be identified at the end of the summer grazing. This trip someone we were talking to, another tourist, says they were told that the rams carry a coloured dye marker that marks the ewe when the ram services her, and this is why you get the two colours. Gees, talk about wearing the scarlett letter. Eventually I get a reasonably satisfactory portrait of the sheep and I'm ready to move on. 

Throughout this area I find myself marvelling at a reasonable density of housing and it's a pretty high standard of housing as well. I wonder where they all work. 

 

Quick on the draw I manage a reasonable shot of a flock of sheep being driven from one paddock into the next as we whiz past in the car. 

Mount Errigal from a pull over spot on the N56 at Gweedore looking up the Clady River

Time is getting away from us, so we head purposefully on to Ardara, pleased that we will be there in plenty of time to check out Triona. We park in the spaces in front of the premises and go in. The store is large and well stocked. A sales assistant comes over to help us with our selections. There are many beautiful things. Fortunately they ship internationally, so for a price, we save our luggage weight. 

It's great to be finished in good time because that means we can tick off a couple of pencilled in stops from the manifesto. We climb back in the car and set out, heading for Assaranca Waterfall, not sure what we'll find.  The waterfall is largely hidden on approach in a fold in the hillside. There's a on open space by the falls and a few people gathered around a tiny tripod pointed in the obvious direction. The falls are very beautiful. After a time we're left to ourselves as others depart. A local man walks past and sparks up a conversation, observing that they are flowing very well due to their having been a lot of rain over recent days.
With the light still holding we follow the brown signs to explore down towards Loughross Point and ultimately find ourselves at a curious boat ramp, quite different in nature to those with which we are familiar. Hubby's finding this most interesting and enjoyable. We look across to the cliffs, though late in the day the cloud cover limits any colourful effects.

It's been a long day and we've pushed it to its limits. It's time to go and check in and get settled before some dinner. Our base overnight is the Nesbitt Arms in Ardara (pronounced Arda-RA). The town is very busy. Parking is limited and the best we can do is down the street and around the corner. We've got ourselves organised so we only need our overnight bags rather than everything thank goodness. Walking to the Nesbitt Arms we walk past Nancy's and it sounds lively in there. We tired though, so just want something simple with a minimum of fuss or delay. 

Our room is comfortable but we're not there long before heading down to the dining room, where after a brief pause of uncertainty a table for two is found. 

Of course we do a good job of sampling the menu and probably ate more of it than it really deserved.