Donegal in sunshine

 We took a couple of nights away earlier this month. C had been up in Donegal for work back in February, and came back full of enthusiasm for the scenery. His dad was  from Donegal but a different part to where we went. I had a couple of childhood holidays there, but I suspect that it was only a couple because the cottage belonging to my aunt was a bit too small for a family plus dogs and usually at least one cat. All our later holidays were in rented houses in West Cork for a couple of years and then in Connemara for as long as I went on family holidays, initially in a house right beside the sea, then in one on a little almost island in a lake.

Anyway, the place we went this time was near where C had been for work, and also very near where I went to Irish Summer College when I was about 14 or 15 - it's an Irish speaking area. We were blessed with the most amazing weather and I was regretting having forgotten to pack my swimsuit as I would definitely have got in, and I also wished I had sandals for the half day we spent walking around Glenveagh National Park. We walked from the carpark to the castle, around the castle gardens, up to the viewpoint above it, then took the electric shuttle bus back to the carpark and did the short nature trail, so we probably walked about 6 miles in all.

Apart from that we spent most of our time visiting two beaches - one just down the road from our guesthouse, and one a little further south which had a very picturesque ruined boat (Bád Eddie, Eddie's boat - the first time I said it C thought I was saying "bald Eddie" and had no idea what I was talking about). It's the ever diminishing remains of what was a small fishing boat just needing a couple of timbers replaced back in the seventies. We ended up there with a snack picnic supper at sunset on the first evening because the pizza place we wanted to go to was closed, and we went back again for sunset the following evening. 

On the way home, C had already decided that we would go home a different route and because that meant passing very near to my early childhood holiday location, I checked the tide tables and asked could we visit Muckross Head. We didn't have time to wait for low tide and therefore couldn't walk all the way round the base of the cliffs, but otherwise it was exactly as I remembered it, and was new to C as it was too far off the beaten track for him ever to have been there in the days when he was a delivery driver. 

Small selection of photos - if you have the stamina for a full 100, the album is HERE. 

Dunlewey

Port Arthur Beach

Gola Island, known to all Irish schoolchildren (at least of many generations) from the song "Báidín Fheilimí - the tune was "instant total recall", my sister said when I sent her a photo

Mount Errigal

Maherclogher Beach

Glenveagh National Park

back to Port Arthur beach

And back to Maherclogher beach

Muckross Head

rock pool

Dungloe - one of my mother-in-law's favourite Irish folk songs was Mary from Dungloe, and C often used to play and sing it for her. 

I make mention of the sunshine because one of the years we had a family holiday there my mother had forgotten to pack waterproofs. After three days confined in the cottage, she decided to bite the bullet and buy us new raingear in the local fishing village. I still remember those macs and sou'westers - red for me, blue for my brother and yellow for my sister. 

Holiday - photo heavy

Well, in fact as far as holidays go, it's photo-light due to various circumstances, but for a blog post it's photo-heavy as it doesn't seem worth splitting into two. Back in March we decided that it was highly unlikely that we would be able to get to France on the dates we had booked the ferry for, so we decided that a Shannon cruise would be the safest holiday bet for this summer. It's not a cheap option - it probably cost about the same for a week as three weeks camping in France all told, but it was pretty Covid-proof unless we had another major lockdown and couldn't leave our county, and I went for the only company that offered a full refund rather than credit if you had to cancel for Covid-related reasons. It's twenty-five years since we last did this, but not a lot has changed on the river. Navigation is easy - going upstream, you keep red markers and buoys on the left, green on the right, and the reverse coming downstream. Not a lot of photos because of being on the go (although in fact we only logged just under 25 engine miles over the week, I still haven't figured out a mileage), and because of the highly contrasty conditions with water, reflections and wide-open skies. We were blessed with pretty good weather on the whole, and a wonderful downpour when we tied up for one night in a small town and a group of teens were playing very loud rap on the quayside.

Our first night was spent in Cootehall, we were the only boat there. As we were late leaving the cruiser base that afternoon, this was as far as we could come before the locks were open again the next morning. 
 

I don't think I've ever seen so many cormorants in one place before - on a very rocky strip in the middle of a lake. 

An old folly, in Lough Key, where we spent our first full day and second night. C rowed around several of the islands in our little dinghy. 

The castle is in fact just a folly, although the island had been previously occupied. 

This tall viewing tower dates from the seventies. Despite my poor head for heights, I managed to make it to the top, and enjoyed the views. 

I don't know how many swans and cygnets we saw during the course of the week - hundreds....

A common sight on many of the navigation markers - gulls and cormorants finding a handy perch. 

A bonus when we were unable to moor where we had planned one evening, and had to go further downriver to the next town. 

Carnadoe - we spent two nights here - it was lovely and peaceful, so after spending a day going down the two lakes beyond it, we were quite happy to moor up early and spend a second night there. 

On Kilglass Lough and Grange Lough we saw more crested grebes than we have seen for years. There were some youngsters too, more stripy looking. We even saw two Little Grebes, which I haven't seen for many years.  When we were tied up for our coffee break on Grange Lough, C was thrilled to see a kingfisher. 

I can't remember if this was our second evening in Carnadoe, or in the morning before we pulled out. Very peaceful just sitting there listening to the cows munching away, and the birds singing.

We covered parts of counties Leitrim, Longford and Roscommon. In some places the county boundary runs down the river, so a town might be in Longford on one side of the river and Roscommon the other side. We self-catered, apart from the very last day, No photos of any of the locks, because with only two of us, we were always both busy holding ropes. I don't remember that any of them had red/green traffic lights on the approaches when we did this before - it was certainly helpful to see that as one approached. Almost all of the ones we went through now seemed to be automated, but we took a side trip down the Camlin River, as our boat was small enough to do so, and the lock keeper at the end of it where we rejoined the Shannon was just using old-fashioned manpower to push the gates open and closed. I imagine it gets a lot less traffic than the locks on the main river - on our way upstream at Albert Lock, we had to wait for 4 boats to come through before we could go up, and there were another 9 queued up waiting to come down. The lock is only large enough to hold 4 at a time, so it would have been a bit of a wait for some of those. I was glad the upstream traffic wasn't so busy. 

The Towers

 Our last trip, on Sunday morning while we waited for the tent to dry, was to The Towers, near Lismore. 

According to "Discover Ireland", Ballysaggartmore Towers are imposing gothic style buildings situated near Lismore in pleasant woodland walking and picnic areas. The magical towers provide a fairy tale setting which does not reflect the sad period in Irish History where extravagance and starvation lived side by side.

They were constructed for an Anglo Irish Landlord, Arthur Keily-Ussher no later than 1834. He held an estate of approximately 8000 acres, the majority of which was rented to tenant farmers but he retained approximately 1000 acres as a personal demesne.

The Towers: Built in 1850 by Arthur Kiely-Ussher for his wife, the extravagant gates were the only part of the castle to be built as money ran out soon after their completion. The Kiely-Ussher family then resided in a modest house on the grounds - since demolished the small castle is not open to the public.

We had been here before with my brother; admittedly a good number of years ago, as R finished school this year, and on that occasion she was still young enough to go in one of those back carriers. But I find it hard to understand how C could remember the fact of the walk, but have zero memory of the towers! I'd have thought they were pretty unforgettable. There was a sign saying that woodpeckers had been recorded earlier this year, and to report any sightings to the biodiversity watch as they are not common here. But we weren't lucky. We did see several of the silver-washed fritillary butterflies, which we had also seen in Glenshelane the day before. 

We stopped at the little farmers' market in Lismore on the way back, where I got a Shasta daisy and some lemon balm to go with my purchases from Fota. 

Glenshelane Woods

 Our third trip was to Glenshelane Woods, near Cappoquin. When the kids were smaller, they used to go there for picnics after riding on Saturday mornings - they could paddle and cool down. I paddled too when we got back from our walk - with the sun right behind the bridge, getting on the other side of it was the only way I could take any photos showing it clearly. It had three arches, in diminishing sizes. There were some tiny little fish swimming in there, too. As the river seemed to divide in two after I got to the other side, it still wasn't possible to take a picture showing all three arches. 

We followed the long trail, though I'm not sure I agree with their 3 1/2 hours time allowed, as we did it in two and I wouldn't have said we were walking that fast. Luckily I had downloaded a pdf with the map, because there was no phone coverage, and as we had only been walking just over an hour at that stage, it was hard to believe that we had reached the end of the trail even though the arrows clearly indicated that we had.  As we got higher up, there was a lot more dew still remaining even at midday, and our feet got quite wet. After returning to the carpark we retrieved our picnic and refreshed ourselves beside the river. It was mostly deciduous woodland, skirted by some coniferous planting. 

As usual the photos aren't in order -the ones that show first are actually the last ones I took.