Donegal

  Donegal Town, Co. Donegal, Ireland
Monday, July 30, 2007

Donegal! Beautiful! This is considered the wild part of the country. Beautiful rustic mountains, blue coastlines, seal colonies, charming villages. The town where I stayed at, Donegal Town, is located in the southern part of the county. However, Donegal is the furthest most part of the island, even further north than most of Northern Ireland. It really is a spectactular area of Ireland. I think my favorite (wink, wink).

Road sign

This is very much a biking and hiking territory. The accent here is very different than where I have been in the west. The natives still have the lyrical Irish accent, but with faint echoes of the Scottish burr. I thinks this reflects Donegal's history with Scotland: when Ireland was finally conquered by the English, the crown brought settlers over from Scotland to Ireland. You can also see this in the last names, many beginning with "Mac" etc. I had fun with this accent! Donegal Town has an old castle that you can tour.

Donegal Castle

Really quite famous, actually. It was a stronghold of the powerful O'Donnell family and later a powerful English-settling family. It was quite beautiful...makes me want to live in a castle.

Tiny stairwells!

I thought it intersting that it was a medieval castle located in the centre of a booming town! But, that's Ireland for you! Modern and ancient, co-exsisting. But I suppose that is true for most places, especially in Europe. Gave me the chills walking through a castle where people lived, worked, and fought hundreds of years before! The town is located right on Donegal Bay and I took a waterbus of the tour and guess what? I got to see a seal colony!

Seals!

Apparently at times, over 200 seals live on this particular spot. The bay is also infamous for the coffin ships that used to sail out of its port during the famine years and their are monuments dedicated to this. Donegal Town even has a famine graveyard. I explored a ruined abbey, which is where The Annals of the Four Masters was written. These are manuscripts written by four monks fearing that the attacking English would raid their abbey. [PHOTO_ID_L=donegal-abbey.jpg
These manuscripts document Irish history from Celtic era to the 1600s. Apparently, it is a valuable source for historians to this day. The abbey, though in ruins, is a modern cemetary, some dating to the 1700s and through more recent times. I really fell in love with Donegal. I wish I had more time to go further up north--I hear that is where the real beauty of Donegal is. But, I will save that for next time!

Celtic High Cross-Abbey

Blue Stack Mountains