Wednesday, March 23, 2016

3/20

I started the morning in Letterkenny with pancakes...the first I have seen since I got here. Breakfast seems to be consistently the following: variety of cereals, fruit salad (thankfully banana free), yogurt, toasted (sandwich) and untoasted (usually wheaten bread which is smaller and less consistent than sandwich) bread. Then you can have a full fry or some of those components. A full fry constitutes, for those unsure, eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled tomato, toast. Depending on where you are it can also include one or more of: fried mushrooms, black or white pudding, beans. It's all a bit much really. It's one saving grace is that it is mostly protein and lasts a long time (till dinner). 

Anyway, I stayed at a nice B&B, an older couple. I went first to Doon Well and Stone. The well is a holy well, supposedly blessed by a healer and not dedicated to a saint or Christian. Except when I got there there was a big sign about how to do turas (pilgrimage) and it involved a lot of Hail Marys and the apostle creed. Neither of which I know. And the water was...well let's just say I wasn't touching much less drinking it! Pretty spot though and obviously much trafficked since there were several trees hung about with offerings.  Later, at the workhouse museum on something about railways, it mentioned that the railway made trips to the Doon Well easier. I was interested as it is quite a distance for people to have wanted to go on the 1800s. Then I climbed Doon Stone which was used for crowning cheiftains, mostly O'Neills I think. It was a lovely high point from which you got a great view of the countryside (which I didn't photograph since I didn't take my camera). 

From there I wandered about the area where St Colmcille (Columba in English) was born. He's one of Ireland's great saints, along with Patrick and Brigid. He also founded the important monastery on Iona, a Scottish island. Anyway, I spent a long time drawing the cross at one of his first monasteries by his home and then the church wall. I'm fascinated by the dry stone building and the lovely way it goes together. Also the doorway is no taller than I am at its highest point. 

Then I drove around Glenveagh national park which was seething with families and people on bikes, because by this time the clouds of the last few days had lifted and the sun came out. Very pretty. These are the Derryveagh mountains, seen from outside the park:

No, it's not snow on top. 

I next came over a hill to a valley where I could immediately see a lake and a ruined church. The turn was also good for the Poisoned Glen, supposedly poisoned when Balor, a one-eyed king of Tory, was killed. His eye spilled poison on the Glen. More prosaically, it was a cartographers mistake--they change one letter of the Irish name and went from heavenly to poisoned. It was a very rocky place between arid looking mountains with a lovely stream running through it. 
 
The old church was quite picturesque and I spent a lot of time drawing it too. It's a Church of Ireland church which was building mid 1800s and in 1955 the roof was removed as there was not enough people for the congregation. The graveyard is still in use though. 



When I got to the coast, I went to a museum in an old workhouse to learn more about the famine and workhouses. Extremely sad and brutal history. Workhouses did feed and clothe you but they were terrible places to live and separated families, even babies. 

Driving down the coast I circled the Gweedore peninsula, stopping at Magheraroarty beach. This is also where the Tory Island ferry goes from.  It's a lovely long beach, which makes a sweeping curve around the bay and bends out towards Inishboffin island. I hear (from a lovely lady who chatted with me) that Inishboffin is even prettier than Tory but harder to get to as no one lives there year round. 


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