On to Donegal

Today was mostly a travel day and we didn’t have to start early so it was a bit more of a leisurely start.  We did venture out after breakfast to a nearby grocery store to pick up some sandwich ingredients as we would be on the bus over lunch.

Having secured our supplies we bade goodbye to our home base for the last three days, the Kilronan House, and dragged our luggage down the street towards the Harcourt Tram stop.  We’re starting to get some of this figured out and we’re starting to look like we know what we’re doing.  From Harcourt, it was four stops to O’Connell - GPO and we alighted right in front of the General Post Office, site of the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland.  There is history everywhere here and the Irish have often gotten the short end of the stick.

Also, we overheard that O’Connell Street is the widest street in Europe, so we’ll add that to our Largest collection.  We were there, on O’Connell Street.

From there it was a 20-minute walk to the Busáras Central Bus Station for our journey to Donegal, about 4 hours away.  The bus trip was uneventful, if a bit long.  The countryside appeared to be small plots of pastureland or perhaps grain crops separated by natural hedges, and we could occasionally see sheep or cattle grazing in these areas.  Most of the road was narrow and winding, and the trees whipped by within inches of the windows.  Margins here are a lot smaller than we are used to.

It poured rain a couple times during the trip, so now we are 4 for 4 on rainy days.  I’m wondering if we will break this perfect record. 

One unexpected bonus of this bus route: part of it travels through Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.  It didn’t look any different, but if you looked closely, the prices as the gas pumps in the small towns we went through were measured in Pounds instead of Euros.  And now we can say we have been to Northern Ireland.

We arrived in Donegal at just after 3pm.  Donegal may be a rather remote town on the northwestern side of Ireland, but it appears to be a victim of its own success.  The place was mobbed with tourists and the town is ill-prepared to deal with them in some ways.  The most obvious way is the bus stop.  Not having a bus station, the bus just double parks in front of the Abbey hotel, which slows the traffic moving through the center of the town.

And it’s not just one bus.  It’s dozens of them. Sometimes two are double-parked at a time.  We came back to the Central Hotel, where we are staying, after a walk this evening and a bus had just pulled up and disgorged a whole bunch of people who were all streaming into the hotel. Not sure what all they are going to do here, but there are just a lot of people.

We had a little time before dinner so we walked to the Donegal Castle and took a tour.  Built in the 1460’s, this castle was built as a fortress for the O’Donnell family, one of the most powerful Gaelic families in Ireland from the 5th to the 16th centuries.  It was destroyed and rebuilt in the 1600’s and then fell into disrepair until it was partially restored in the 1990’s.  It is described as one of the finest Gaelic castles in Ireland.

We then walked in the rain to the Abbey of Donegal, a ruin that sits right on the Donegal Bay.  This was built in 1474.  During the Nine Years War, in 1601, most of the building was destroyed after a fire broke out and ignited a store of gunpowder.  The ruins were never rebuilt and the area is used as a cemetery.

We met the guy from the outfitter, Séamus, after having dinner in the hotel restaurant.  He went over the routes and other important things with us and told us where some of the good views were. We will start on the biking leg our our journey tomorrow morning.  We’re supposed to have over a half-inch of rain tomorrow.  Part of the adventure, right?

This is probably the largest town we will encounter for the next several days, so we walked to the grocery store (we actually found an Aldi) and loaded up on some supplies, mostly chocolate.  Dark chocolate seems to be missing on most store shelves, so we made sure we were well stocked.