Since I last wrote, we've covered quite a bit of ground.
After leaving Belfast, we drove north, continuing our anti-clockwise tour of the island.
The northern coast is lovely. As soon as you leave Belfast, you arrive in Carrickfergus (Carraig Fhearghais) and find yourself on the coast. The scenery only gets better from that point forward.
We stopped at the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, a 20m long, 1m wide construction that spans the chasm between the sea cliffs and the tiny island of Carrick-a-Rede. It's a must-see/must-do kind of experience.
The views along the 20 minute walk from the car park are stunning and, even though you'll probably need to queue to cross the bridge when you get to it, it's well worth braving the hordes for.
That evening, we stayed at the Causeway Hotel, located right next to the cliffside walk that leads to the world-famous Giant's
Causeway (Clochán na bhFómharac). There was no time that day to see the causeway, though; the plan was to spend the night in close proximity, thereby giving ourselves a good chance to get down there ahead of the masses the next morning.
The plan worked. The Causeway Hotel could have been a better experience; the rooms are in need of some attention and the same could be said to apply to the table service. It's a grand old building, though, with the potential to be a fantastic place to stay, rather than just a place to stay.
Anyway, the cliffside walk to the Giant's Causeway the next day afforded us fantastic views of the causeway down below. Even by the time we got down there, it was only busy, not yet swarming with people.
When the left the hotel's car park to continue our journey, attendants were not letting any more cars enter the causeway car park, because it was full to bursting and new cars were arriving every minute. If you don't get there before lunch, you're too late.
The weather had turned, too, and it had started to drizzle. Our cliffside walk and time on the causeway had been in the sun, a rare treat on this trip.
Lunch was in a fabulous little place, just up the road in Ballintoy (Baile an Tuaigh) harbour. I think it was called Roark's Kitchen. I had a delicious Irish stew there, followed by a delicious piece of lumpy bumpy, a creamy cake.
At the end of the day, we arrived in Derry, a.k.a. Londonderry (Doire). There was some kind of international youth football tournament going on that week, so we'd had a hard time finding a hotel. Consequently, we were staying a few kilometres out
of town.
We didn't get to see Derry until the next morning, but what a lovely surprise it was.
Derry is a charming walled city, with a very chequered history. From the Siege of Derry to 1969's three day Battle of the Bogside, this city has seen a lot of strife. Like Belfast, it had a more or less recurring spot on the evening news when I was growing up; and what was being reported, of course, was never positive.
I wanted to drive over to the Bogside district, so I set the sat-nav for the junction of Fahan Street and Rossville Street and off we went.
As with the Falls and the Shankhill in West Belfast, what immediately strikes you is how close the Bogside is to the centre of town. almost all of what was the Bogside at the height of The Troubles is now gone; only a gable daubed with the slogan You Are Now Entering Free Derry still stands.
Plaques abound here, many placed to mark the death of someone murdered by the British Army on that very spot. All too often, the plaque's text details the shooting of a child.
Murals abound here, some placed by the IRA, but most these days painted by the Bogside Artists. These murals are very striking and a real treat to behold. Most of them commemorate key events during The Troubles, such as Bloody Sunday and Operation Motorman.
Bloody Sunday is the notorious day on 30th January 1972 that the British army opened fire on unarmed civilian demonstrators, murdering fourteen of them. Many of them were shot in the back as they attempted to flee the mayhem. Six of them were aged only seventeen. This is the subject of U2's well known song, Sunday Bloody Sunday. No-one was ever held accountable for the shootings.
The Bloody Sunday Monument subtly commemorates this tragic event, which not only directly caused the death of so many innocent people, but also indirectly caused the death of many more, by causing the ranks of the IRA to swell with new volunteers.
Just across the street is a stone monument to the IRA hunger strikers. It's H-shaped, representative of cell block H, which is the infamous wing of the prison where the inmates were held.
I spent quite a bit of time at the Bogside Artists Studio, talking to one of the artists. He was quite the raconteur and regaled us with eye-widening tales of his life during The Troubles. One can only try to imagine what it must have been like to see what he saw and experience what he did.
That was our last day in Northern Ireland. The next day, we crossed back into the republic and headed north west to Dunfanaghy (Dún
Fionnachaid), a small town right on the coast of Co. Donegal.
Dunfanaghy is beautiful; there's no two ways about it. New houses are being built everywhere, as demand for the views around here must be high. Who knows if they're actually being sold any more, though? The housing slump has supposedly hit Ireland very hard.
The next day, we drove south along a long and winding route that took us over the amazingly beautiful Glengesh Pass and to the breathtakingly sheer Slieve League (Sliabh Liag) cliffs, the latter of which are quite reminiscent of parts of Iceland and the Faroe Islands (which is hardly surprising, when you think about it).
This long, long (or so it felt) drive brought us to the outskirts of Ragh(e)y, a small place just outside of Donegal Town (Dún na nGall). We're
staying at Coxtown Manor, a hideaway recommended to me by my good friend and former office-mate, Peter. This lovely old manor house is charming, atmospheric and, above all, quiet. It's set well back from the road and is a veritable oasis of tranquility.
The place is run by a Fleming, so the food is an interesting mix of Belgian and Irish cuisine. The room rates, however, are overpriced for what you get; and dinner yesterday was a drawn-out affair, at which we were severely under-dressed, although no-one seemed to care. Eloïse
ended up going to bed far too late, so we opted out of dinner this evening and had it in Donegal
Town instead.
Our bed, too, creaks and squeaks like a rusty hinge and the Manor's Web site misleadingly suggests that all of the rooms have Internet access, which is most certainly not the case. I have to sit in the bar in order to post this entry.
But the Internet is not why we're here and it's only for a couple of nights, anyway. Mostly, we just need sporadic access in order to book hotels a couple of nights ahead. Don't forget that we're in high season on this trip, and booking hotels just a couple of days in advance in the most popular regions of Ireland is proving tricky.
Tomorrow, we drive on through the counties of Sligo (Contae Shligigh) and Mayo (Contae Mhaigh Eo) to the
small town of Roundstone (Cloch na Rón). It's a long drive, which will place us squarely on the west coast of Ireland.
We feel that we're moving around Ireland too quickly to be able to do it justice, but we've opted to do that instead of touring a smaller area more intensively. After all, we don't know when we'll be back.
Another reason for the pace is the weather, which hasn't been great. Today was sunny again, but we can count the sunny days over the last few weeks on one hand. Most days see some rain, but it's mostly confined to passing showers. We're thankful for small mercies; we could be rained out completely. We're more or less used to the cloudy days and mild temperatures. Today's 21°C or so felt several degrees warmer to us.
So, it's with regret that we can't spend at least a few nights in each county, including the inland ones, where far fewer tourists are found. We would have also liked to get out to the Aran Islands (Oileáin Árann) and some of the others, such as Tory Island (Toraigh), but the weather is too unpredictable and you need a few days on these
islands to do them justice. That's time we simply don't have, as we do need to get back to Amsterdam some time around 10th August.
Still, that leaves us with another couple of weeks to take in some more sights, so we have little to complain about.