Driving to Donegal
One of our most fun days was Monday, when we drove from Doolin to Killybegs, County Donegal. We were up early so Peter could photograph the sun rising on the rocks in the Burren. Yes, I mentioned that this was a working trip of sorts but I bet you didn't think about what that meant.
What it means isn't entirely unpleasant for me, since Peter goes out of his way to make sure we do things I want to do (see Moher Hill Farm). It's just that there is a lot of waiting for him while he takes photographs. Sometimes I wait in the car, other times I hang out where he is. A book is indispensable to this waiting around business. I also get to carry his camera bag, which I usually don't mind all that much even though that sucker is heavy and it makes me nervous to tote around all those delicate, expensive lenses.
So, I'm basically the lovely assistant, the pack mule and the lady in waiting while Peter does his thing. It's not a bad life, really.
After the morning photo shoot, we drove north, through County Galway and then County Mayo. We stopped in Aghamore, the village where Peter's mother grew up and had a look around her childhood home, which for reasons I don't really understand is in an abandoned, state of disrepair. We also stopped at the cemetery.
We were making good time so we were able to slow down in County Sligo, which was much prettier than I'd expected. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be pretty - it is Yeats Country after all. We went to Lough Gill, saw the inspiration for Yeats' "Lake Isle of Innisfree" and had a guided tour of Parkes Castle.
The castle tour was cool although I guess Peter is right that when you've seen one castle, you've pretty much seen them all. I should probably limit our castle excursions to ones that are historically or architecturally significant.
We tried to stop in Sligo town to find a bookstore. We'd been using a Fodor's guide to Ireland that we'd picked up in Ennis and were finding it lacking. It's like it was written for rich people with no imagination. Drive to Town A. Look at Sight 1 and Sight 2. Have lunch in upscale restaurant X. Stay in hideously expensive 4-star hotel Y. Drive to Town B. I'm more of a Lonely Planet girl myself.
Sligo is a town under massive construction and their traffic patterns were greatly suffering from it. We couldn't easily figure out how to get where we needed to go, so we decided to just press on to Donegal town, which turned out to be much more navigable. It also had a great little bookstore where we were able to buy the Lonely Planet guide for Ireland, which we used to book accommodation for the next two nights.
I love the Lonely Planet guides for their attention to budget and insider details. We decided we'd stay in Killybegs, since it was near enough to Slieve League and Fodor's had called it a nice little fishing village. Lonely Planet let us know that the emphasis in that sentence should be on fishing and that a fishmeal processing centre on the east side of town pumped extra fishy smells into the air. We took LP's advice to heart and booked a B&B on the west side of town.
On the way out to Killybegs, we took a diversion down a peninsula and ended up at Unlike County Clare, where the lands are all "preserved" by their owners (essential a posted/no trespassing type deal), the private land we came across in Donegal had signs that said the land was private and asked cars to keep off the grass or do other reasonable neighbourly things while accessing the land.
We shared the land around St. Johns's Point lighthouse with a herd of bulls. Yep, bulls. Not cows. Bulls. For the most part, we ignored them and they ignored us, but I can't pretend that they didn't make me a little nervous. Call me crazy, but 1-tonne animals with horns do that to me. The herd grazed closer down the point and when we were ready to leave, they were between us and our car. We debated walking through them to the car but decided, since we don't have health insurance, to err on the side of caution and take the long way around the lighthouse back to the car. We did and arrived back to the vehicle without incident.
Our last stop, after checking into the B&B, was to head out to Slieve League for the sunset. The cliffs at go up to 2,000 feet and are all sloping jagged beauty. They're not sheer like the Cliffs of Moher but they are no less impressive or beautiful. Peter took his photographs and I hung around and provided a decoy for the midges. Midges are about the size of gnats, come in large swarms and bite like mosquitoes. I have quite a few souvenirs of our time with the midges, mostly on the right side of my face. Despite the midges, it was a good day.
What it means isn't entirely unpleasant for me, since Peter goes out of his way to make sure we do things I want to do (see Moher Hill Farm). It's just that there is a lot of waiting for him while he takes photographs. Sometimes I wait in the car, other times I hang out where he is. A book is indispensable to this waiting around business. I also get to carry his camera bag, which I usually don't mind all that much even though that sucker is heavy and it makes me nervous to tote around all those delicate, expensive lenses.
So, I'm basically the lovely assistant, the pack mule and the lady in waiting while Peter does his thing. It's not a bad life, really.
After the morning photo shoot, we drove north, through County Galway and then County Mayo. We stopped in Aghamore, the village where Peter's mother grew up and had a look around her childhood home, which for reasons I don't really understand is in an abandoned, state of disrepair. We also stopped at the cemetery.
We were making good time so we were able to slow down in County Sligo, which was much prettier than I'd expected. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be pretty - it is Yeats Country after all. We went to Lough Gill, saw the inspiration for Yeats' "Lake Isle of Innisfree" and had a guided tour of Parkes Castle.
The castle tour was cool although I guess Peter is right that when you've seen one castle, you've pretty much seen them all. I should probably limit our castle excursions to ones that are historically or architecturally significant.
We tried to stop in Sligo town to find a bookstore. We'd been using a Fodor's guide to Ireland that we'd picked up in Ennis and were finding it lacking. It's like it was written for rich people with no imagination. Drive to Town A. Look at Sight 1 and Sight 2. Have lunch in upscale restaurant X. Stay in hideously expensive 4-star hotel Y. Drive to Town B. I'm more of a Lonely Planet girl myself.
Sligo is a town under massive construction and their traffic patterns were greatly suffering from it. We couldn't easily figure out how to get where we needed to go, so we decided to just press on to Donegal town, which turned out to be much more navigable. It also had a great little bookstore where we were able to buy the Lonely Planet guide for Ireland, which we used to book accommodation for the next two nights.
I love the Lonely Planet guides for their attention to budget and insider details. We decided we'd stay in Killybegs, since it was near enough to Slieve League and Fodor's had called it a nice little fishing village. Lonely Planet let us know that the emphasis in that sentence should be on fishing and that a fishmeal processing centre on the east side of town pumped extra fishy smells into the air. We took LP's advice to heart and booked a B&B on the west side of town.
On the way out to Killybegs, we took a diversion down a peninsula and ended up at Unlike County Clare, where the lands are all "preserved" by their owners (essential a posted/no trespassing type deal), the private land we came across in Donegal had signs that said the land was private and asked cars to keep off the grass or do other reasonable neighbourly things while accessing the land.
We shared the land around St. Johns's Point lighthouse with a herd of bulls. Yep, bulls. Not cows. Bulls. For the most part, we ignored them and they ignored us, but I can't pretend that they didn't make me a little nervous. Call me crazy, but 1-tonne animals with horns do that to me. The herd grazed closer down the point and when we were ready to leave, they were between us and our car. We debated walking through them to the car but decided, since we don't have health insurance, to err on the side of caution and take the long way around the lighthouse back to the car. We did and arrived back to the vehicle without incident.
Our last stop, after checking into the B&B, was to head out to Slieve League for the sunset. The cliffs at go up to 2,000 feet and are all sloping jagged beauty. They're not sheer like the Cliffs of Moher but they are no less impressive or beautiful. Peter took his photographs and I hung around and provided a decoy for the midges. Midges are about the size of gnats, come in large swarms and bite like mosquitoes. I have quite a few souvenirs of our time with the midges, mostly on the right side of my face. Despite the midges, it was a good day.
posted by -Ann at
1:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home