Monday September 5th

Over the last two days we have been exploring the area around Donegal. Today started out beautiful and sunny. We went into Donegal Town and saw the Abbey Ruins and Donegal Castle. The Abbey ruins are now a cemetery. I wondered about where the walls had gone from the Abbey. It turns out that some of the stones and door architecture where taken from the Abbey just a short distance away to be used in the Manor House part of Donegal Castle. They have done a very good job of restoring the tower part of the Castle.

 

We headed west out of Donegal to see what this area was like. We saw the Slieve League cliffs. We were glad to find out we could drive closer to the cliffs. We would not have seen them if we had to walk from the first parking lot. This was a very nice site to see. As we left Charles thought we were going the wrong way so that he turned into a driveway to turn around. Next thing we knew a car wanted to turn into the same drive. We had a laugh about this.

 

We found a beautiful place to have lunch. Again it was very windy but it was not raining. Quite a number of people arrived at this lookout to see the sites while we had lunch

 

Onward we went to Glencolmbkille to see the Folk Village Museum. It was started by Father James Mc Dyer. He came to the area in 1951. He was very influential in trying to improve the poverty ridden area. He campaigned to let the government and church know about the terrible conditions. He started the Folk Village to increase tourism and create jobs. There were examples of cottages form the 18^th 19^th and 20^th centuries. It was a very interesting place to see how things changes over time. We also learned about rope thatching for the roofing. We had not seen this type of thatching before.

 

Now it is raining quite hard so we headed for home. This different route took us across more peat bog country. When we came to the Glengesh Pass the rain had stopped and we were able to see the valley below. The bowl shaped valley made us think it was formed by glaciers. The rest of the trip home was in rain.