Donegal

There has been too much going on the past few weeks to post the rest of our trip.  I am going to try to get it done before it gets too hectic before Christmas.

Clifden was such a fun place to visit and we knew our trip was winding down, but we still had the area around Donegal to explore before we headed back to Dublin and the end of this fantastic trip.

There were several sites along the way that we wanted to explore before we arrive at the Rossmore Manor in Donegal.

Carrowmore is one of four major passage tombs in Ireland.  The burial area is within the stone circle.  These megalithic tombs are among the country's oldest, with monuments ranging from five and a half thousand to six and a half thousand years old.

 

 

The grave of  Irish poet W.B. Yeats and his wife George is located in the cemetery at Drumcliffe Monastery.   Benbulben, the massive table mountain located nearby was the subject of one of Yeat's last poems.  The last three lines of the poem Under Ben Bulben are inscribed on his grave.

This high cross dates back to the 9th century.

 

This is all that remains of the round tower after it was struck by lightning in 1936.

 

 

Benbulben, the massive table mountain which was one of Yeat's favorite places and the subject of his last poem. 

 

The ocean at Mullaghmore is one of the best high wave surfing areas in the world.  Somehow I have never associated Ireland with surfing, but in March of 2012 the world's best surfers gathered here and rode the waves, some as high as 50 feet.  Mullaghmore is also known for the 1979 bombing which killed Lord Mountbatten and several others by the IRA. 

 

 

 Mullaghmore has a big fishing industry with most of what they catch exported to France.

 

We stayed in some very nice B&B's in Ireland, but the Rossmore Manor in Donegal was a favorite of ours.  Located a few miles from town and close to Donegal Bay, we were quite impressed as we drove up the drive to this home built like a modern day castle.   

 

 

 The owners were a young couple with 5 children and they like gargoyles.    We were excited to spend the next two nights in this beautiful home.

 

 

Our room was in a wing separate from the main structure and was quite large.

 

 

 This sitting area gave us great views of the bay.

 

Johnny and Hannah stayed in the castle room and it was huge with high ceilings and even a fireplace where we enjoyed a peat fire one evening.



 

 

This was the view we had from our sitting area.  We drove into Donegal that evening and enjoyed a good dinner.  The Donegal football (soccer) team had just won the national championship and there were a lot of people, young and old, in town celebrating.  We called it a night early and went back to the B&B to rest up for our next day of exploring.

 

 

Day 9 and the Dubliners

We were in Clifden during their annual Arts Festival Week.  The Dubliners were the headline act for the week and we were excited to get tickets to see them.  The concert was Friday evening and we still had the day to see more of the sights around Clifden. 


I forgot to add these in the proper order so we are starting at the end.  I wouldn't tell you that but I know Johnny and Hannah are reading this blog!

 We stopped at Coral Strand Beach where the sand is made of crushed coral.  We couldn't tell at first, just that it was very coarse.  When we picked it up and looked at it closely you could definitely tell it was coral.   This is a magnified look at the sand.



I like to hunt for seashells while I walk on the beach.  It wasn't much of a hunt here, the challenge here was to not crush them as you  walked.  We smuggled a few of the unusual ones home to put in my collection.

 



 This is where we started our day.  A drive along Bog Road on our way to the town of Roundstone.

 We made a stop at the Malachy Kearn's Bodhran's shop and gallery.  Doesn't every little boy of being a drummer some day?  I think these two must have had that dream.

 

 We also paid a visit to a pottery shop where I bought a necklace and a pair of earring.

 

 Roundstone is a pretty little village along a beautiful bay.

We spotted these men working along the bay and stopped to see what they were doing.  They were pulling in sea weed to be used for feed for cattle.  Sea weed has many uses that I didn't know about.  It is used in cosmetics, skin care, clothing and food (for humans and animals).

 



 

As we were making the loop from Roundstone to Clifden we spotted a sign saying there was a ring fort in the area.  We were fascinated with ring forts so we decided to hike up a very steep path to find it.  We hiked for quite a ways and never did come upon it, but we did enjoy some beautiful country and views of the bay and coastline.

Our hike down the trail was much easier than the one up.

 

 

We arrived back in Clifden in time for an early dinner.  The concert was scheduled for 8:00 p.m. and we wanted to get there early to get a good seat.  Ken and Johnny  are a lot alike and decided we should probably get there around 6 o'clock.  We were plenty early, in fact we arrived at the same time as some of the Dubliners.  It worked to our advantage though, we had front row, center seats and were lucky enough to meet three members of the group.  The Irish aren't known for their promptness and the concert didn't actually begin until 8:30 or as they say in Ireland "half eight".

 

 



 John Sheahan has been with the group the longest, joing them in 1964. 

 

 The Dubliners group was formed in 1962 and has been performing for 50 years.  There are no remaining original members of the group still performing.  They performed for over 2 hours, putting on a concert that was well worth more than the 25 euros we paid for each ticket.  The only thing bad about their music is that after you hear it, it stays in your head for a long time.  When I went to bed the songs ran through my head for hours. 

 Sean Cannon joined the group in 1982 replacing lead singer Luke Kelly who died at a young age. 

 

 Emmon Campbell has been with the Dubliners since 1987 and has produced all of their albums along with producing albums of many other Irish bands and performers.

 Patsy Watchorn is the newest member of the Dubliners.  He joined the group in 2005, but belonged to several other groups over the years. 

 





 In April 2012, the last remaining member of the original group, Barney McKenna passed away unexpectantly.  Rather than cancel their 50th anniversary tour they asked Gerry O'Conner to join them to play their remaining tour dates.  What a great time we head listening to one of Ireland's legendary top music groups- in the community center gymnasium of a small Irish town. 



Clifden

Spending four nights in Clifden gave us plenty of time to explore this beautiful area of the country.  The scenery was very different on the Western Coast of Ireland as you will see from the many pictures I am posting today.  I'll comment on some of them, but for the most part you can just ride along with us and enjoy the scenery.

 Another example of an Irish road.  Not much traffic on this one though, other than sheep.

 

 

 

There are cemeterys everywhere. 

 Aasleaigh Falls

 

 



 

Kylemore Castle/Abbey

Although this castle looks like one out of a fairy tale book it was built by an Englishman in 1867 as a residence for his family.  His estate provided many improvements for the local area which was recovering from the Irish Famine.  In the early 1900's he sold the castle to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester who lived a lavish life style they couldn't afford and only lived in the castle for a few years.  In 1920 the property was sold to the Benedictine Nuns who ran a boarding school for girls from 1923 until they closed their doors in 2010.  American actress Anjelica Houston attended school at the abbey. 

 

 

 Johnny and Hannah are standing in one of their favorite spots in Ireland overlooking Doolough Lake.

 

In 1849, over six hundred starving people made their way into the town of Louisburgh in search of food. They met with the Receiving Officer at the Louisburgh workhouse. He told them he had no authority to grant them food or a ticket, but they could appeal to two of the Board of Guardians, Colonel Hograve and Mr. Lecky, who were meeting the next day at Delphi Lodge, located twelve miles south of Louisburgh. Delphi Lodge was a hunting lodge and was located on the other side of Doolough Pass, a mountain pass that runs between the Sheffry Hills and the Mweelrea Mountains.
The crowd spent the night in Louisburg. Weakened from their trip, many of the 600 men, women and children who slept in the streets that night died. The next day, five hundred of those that remained trudged through the mud and rain along a goat track in the direction of Delphi Lodge, crossing the Glankeen River at flood stage and through the mountain pass. Still more died of exhaustion along the way. They arrived wet and cold at Delphi Lodge the next afternoon.
The Board of Guardian members were at lunch when the people arrived and amazingly, they could not be disturbed. The starving crowd was told to wait. A few more died of exhaustion while waiting. When they had finished their meal, Hograve and Lecky decided to meet with the great mass of starving people.
The crowd was advised to return to Louisburgh. Without explanation, the two Guardians refused to give them either their three pounds of corn or a ticket to enter the workhouse.
Disappointed, the group headed back to Louisburgh over the same bleak and dangerous path they had just taken. A strong south-west wind blew up carrying with it showers, freezing rain and hail stones. Their journey took them back through Doolough Pass. As their journey continued, the crowd continued to leak a trail of dead behind them as hypothermia and exhaustion took its grim toll on the starving band. They soon reached a spot in the pass called Stroppabue which was a cliff overhanging the lake of Doolough.
At this point in the pass, the cold air funneled across Doolough and churned into a screaming vortex of wind and hail. Weakened by starvation, disease, and exposure, the heavy squall swept many of the starving crowd off the cliff and into the lake. Many drowned in the icy waters. Others managed to reach the bank of the Glankeen River, but fatigued by the hardships of their journey, there they died.
It is unknown how many of this group of starving people met their death in the waters of Doolough. Accounts of the tragedy place the death toll at anywhere from 100 to over 400.
The next morning, the Receiving Officer at Louisburgh heard of the tragedy and took a group of men along the goat track to Delphi and buried the dead where they fell without coffins or ceremony. It is recorded that the path from the Louisburgh to the Glankeen River and from the Glankeen to Delphi was covered with corpses “as numerous as sheaves of corn in an autumn field.”
When the burial group reached Doolough, they found so many dead that they dug pits and buried them together in a nearby glen. Many bodies that were blown into the freezing lake were never recovered. Some call the dead victims of the Great Hunger; others refer to them as martyrs.
In May of 1994, a marker was erected in the Doolough Valley by Action From Ireland (AFrI), a famine relief organization. The stone marker topped with a stylized Celtic cross bears the inscription (and a quote from Mahatma Gandhi): To Commemorate the Hungry Poor who walked here in 1849 and walk the Third World today. “How can men feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings?”

(this is such a sad story that I copied it from the internet so I wouldn't get it wrong)

The town center in Clifden

E.J. Kings where we spent a couple of evenings listening to some great Irish music.

 

 We had been eating some great "pub grub" the past week but we decided to treat ourselves to a nicer dinner and sample some seafood.  I ordered shrimp scampi, which wasn't anything like our scampi.  The presentation was very nice though.

 As we were eating we noticed some commotion outside the window of the restaurant.  The president of Ireland was in town to open the Clifden Arts Festival week and was getting into his motorcade to go to the ceremony.  We saw a lot of garda (police) and official looking people, but never did see the president.

 After dinner we decide we were going to hit some pubs and listen to music.  In the states it would have been called "bar hopping", but in Ireland we did a "pub crawl".

 Hannah looks like she's part of the group.

 

We were told by a woman on the street that there was some incredible music being played at Griffin's bar just down the street.  We squeezed ourselves into this tiny pub and had an unforgettable night of local music.  There were two young men, one played the fiddle and the other a melodius mouth organ.  An older gentleman was playing the bodhran (irish drum) and the spoons.  Occasionally, a bar patron would break into song, a young girl danced the Irish jig and the violin player joined her in one dance.  This was one of my favorite nights in Ireland, an experience never to be forgotten.