On Monday, we headed north again, this time to North Donegal, our last hurrah on our Wild Atlantic Way trek.
We only had to drive about an hour and a half north, so we wanted to take in some of the sights we planned to visit in this area on this transition day. One place on our must-see list was the highly recommended Glebe Gallery and the Derek Hill art collection located in his former home, next door. We drove to Letterkenny and then headed west to Churchill, where it's located. I don't want to say much about about the current exhibit at the Glebe, but it is the work of an artist that collects dead crow wings and makes art pieces from them.
The real reason for this stop was to see Derek Hill's house and art collection. He was a respected artist himself, but he also collected art. I'm talking multiple Picassos, and Braque, Renoir, Bonnard, and many others I don't know. After living in this home 50 years, he left it intact (including the Glebe and extensive grounds) to Ireland. It was quite interesting to visit. Our tour guide knew Mr. Hill well and had heard him talk about his artwork and his home, and she clearly adored him. It made the tour very different from other house tours.
We drove on over a mountain pass and down into Dunlewy.
And then we headed further north toward Dunfanaghy and a section of our Atlantic drive. Can't stay away too long, you know. (Our B&B hosts in Donegal Town had given us a helpful brochure/map of donegal with 6 different recommended loop drives. It really made it easier to see where we could pick up a section of a loop that made sense given where we were and how late in the day it was getting.)
This is the view at Portnablagh, just beyond Dunfanaghy.
On Tuesday, our primary focus was to visit Glenveagh National Park, a highlight of any visit to North Donegal.
We debated visiting the castle that is part of the park. It was really an extravagant private home, and had quite a string of American owners. Celebrities and aristocrats (American and otherwise) were frequent guests. There was nothing historically significant about it, and we're a bit house'd out. The things we'd read about it, however, made us decide to do it. It's quite a place and in a spectacular setting along the lake with views in both directions. After the fact, we were glad we'd gone ahead and included the castle tour.
The BBC was there, taping a music special. Because of that, a couple of the rooms were closed to us. We did get to see a crew using a drone to get some aerial shots of the lake. That was kind of fun to see.
The lands were purchased by Ireland in 1975 for the National Park. In 1981, the last American owner--the curator from the Philadelphia Museum of Art--gave the castle and gardens to Ireland as well.
After touring the castle and walking through the extensive gardens--the walled garden, the Swiss garden, the Tuscan garden, etc.--we began a scenic drive around two peninsulas.
First up was what sounded like--and looked on the map like--an easy loop around the Rossguill Peninsula. It turned into one of those drives we should have come to expect, but don't seem to be very good at avoiding. The road narrowed and narrowed. We kept praying we wouldn't encounter any other vehicles. It climbed; it twisted. And it was so beautiful. There were only a couple places to stop, but it was scenic indeed.
At the end of Rossguill, looking west. I can't believe what the people who live here must go through every time they have to come or go. The last thing we were expecting out here was a cluster of houses.
A short distance later, looking east.
A snippet of a view to Tra na Rossan beach. Very pretty setting; lovely beach.
Then we took a bridge onto the Northwestern corner of the Fanad Peninsula. Our inn was on the eastern shore of the peninsula, looking out to Lough Swilly, so this was a logical and convenient extension. There was a point at which that logic came into question, but it all worked out.
Below is Fanad Head, the northernmost point. Next landfall is Scotland.
This, too, was a lovely though challenging drive. In this case, we actually got rather lost, or thought we were. We couldn't believe that the road the sign indicated we should turn down could possibly be right and kept looking. After turning around twice, we finally headed down this track that looked like a paved path. Turned out that was the road alright.
View to Dunaff Head on the Inishowen Peninsula, across Lough Swilly (a sea lough and referred to as a fjord).
And another view across Lough Swilly.
On Wednesday, we decided we'd had enough of these bracing drives on goat tracks and gave ourselves a much milder day. We spent some time in Ramelton, a small town just down the shore of Lough Swilly from where we were staying.
Then we drove along Mulroy Bay, which is between Rossguill and Fanad. Since we had crossed onto Fanad by bridge the day before, we'd missed this pretty bay, which was a route recommended by our inn.
View to Lough Swilly and Inishowen from the crest of Fanad Peninsula.
One treat in Donegal was that we saw almost no tour buses. It wasn't like there were no tourists, but they were in short supply in comparison to anywhere else we've been on this trip.
Something that really surprised us about North Donegal was that the land was much gentler than we'd expected. And it was much more populated. We had expected this off-the-beaten-track area to be more harsh and barren. It turned out it wasn't all that off the beaten track. We certainly hadn't expected holiday homes in places where there just shouldn't have been houses at all. There were fewer rock walls and more pastureland. The hills were less dramatic. There were lots of bustling towns. Nothing about it said wilderness and harshness.
But, then, Ireland is not what we expected either. We knew there had been a boom and a bust. We had heard of new roads and lots of building. And we saw all that. The country is much more prosperous than what we saw in 1987. There are good and bad things that have come with this prosperity. To a person, those Irish people with whom we have had conversations will refer to it that way--the good and the bad. But this country that is so relatively newly independent has its past of poverty and human suffering indelibly etched on its psyche. In Yeats' poem, Easter 1916, he refers to "a terrible beauty" and that seems a descriptor that is still appropriate.
We are sad to leave the Wild Atlantic Way. It has been breathtaking, in multiple senses of that expression. (I have decided the "Wild" part refers to the roads, not the Atlantic. No regrets, though.) The stunning views. The fresh air. The beauty of this place. We came to Ireland with quaint and charming in our heads and, instead, found a land filled with vast and beautiful landscapes. It's painful to have to leave them in our rear view mirror. We will never think of Ireland in the same way, that's for sure.
With all that grandeur tucked into our memories, it's time to head back south and wind down our touring. We head now for the Midlands and then home before we know it.
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