Ireland Adventures - Day 21

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August 11, 2011

Mountains, Valley and Streams . . . OH MY GAWD!

These two girls would never let a little rain, drizzle and cloudy skies stop us . . . we were up and at it not early but still not very late. We kinda piddled a bit getting ready but we headed out for our day of adventures well before lunchtime.
We left Derry and headed out on the N13 towards Letterkenny. Just before Letterkenny we switched over to the N15 which took us back through Ballybofey (alot of towns in Ireland have the prefix of "Bally", "Money" or "Killy" and when I get time, I'm gonna search out the reasoning behind this . . . sorry I'm digressing LOL), the spectacular Barnesmore Gap and then right around Donegal Town we hopped over to the N56 which took us into Killybegs and we ended up stopping in Teelin thanks to a suggestion of a friend we met in Draperstown who had mapped this route out for us earlier. I think the one place that we may have missed was the Bunglass Cliffs but we may have seen it and not have know because by the time we got to Teelin the mist had fully engulfed the cliffs and visibility was not really great!
We decided to head to the Teelin Viewing point because even though it was misty we were sure we didn't want to miss seeing this part of Donegal. So we parked our car (even though we learned later that we could have taken the road all the way to the top of the viewing point) and walked up this narrow road which we thought was a short walk and ended up taking this rather long, steep hike up the mountainside. We almost made it to the top too which was an accomplishment in itself but by the time we had walked about a half hour the mist and fog had gotten really bad and you could see absolutely NOTHING so we decided it was time to make the trek back down to our car. Now before you all say "well you never made it to the top so it doesn't really count" let me say that I did this with a sprained ankle and Kim has one if not two bum knees and just to be able to say that we made it up as far as we did is just amazing!
By the time we got back to the car, we were exhausted but we weren't ready to head back home the same way we had come. We wanted to see more of this beautiful part of Ireland so we opted to take a different scenic route back to Derry, but first we decided a stop at the Folk Village Museum in Glencolmcille was in order. We found it without any difficulty and parked our car and then noticed there was a little hill that we could climb up in order to see a few of the beach below . . . pretty amazing stuff. I basically crawled down backwards from the hill but the view was totally worth the effort. We then headed across the street to the museum to get our tickets. The folk village is built in the form of a village in which each house is an exact replica of a dwelling used the the local people in each of the three successive centuries (18th, 19th and 20th) and is equipped with the furniture artifacts and utensils of it's particular period. There were also two recently added exhibitions (2011) which are the traditional thatched shop/pub with a shoemakers in the lower room and a fishermans cottage dedicated to the history concerning the local fishermen and the sea. We were given a sheet which was helpful in doing a self-guided tour which told us all about the rooms and the artifacts inside each cottage! After our tour, we had a cuppa tea at the village tea house and then headed over to the gift shop for a quick look around.
Once we left the folk village we resumed our scenic route up through Ardara, Glenties and the best part of the entire path was our trip through the Bluestack Mountains . . . . TOTALLY INCREDIBLE everywhere you turned. The roads were very narrow and very winding but the views were BEYOND AMAZING! We missed the route we wanted to take at first but opted to turn around and go back to find the R253 and we were both SO happy that we did because it was truly worth a bit of backtracking!
We ended up back on the N13 for our journey back into Derry. We decided that our efforts for the day meant a well-deserved dinner and so we headed to Harry's just outside of Derry as it had been recommended as a great place to eat by Rick Steve's; however, when we got there we were told that they were completely out of fish and so we decided to find something within the city walls instead.
We dropped our stuff and the car back off at the house and then walked to Flaming Jack's for dinner as it had been recommended by Seamus. The food was good and extremely plentiful as it has been at many of the places we've eaten during our trip. The restaurants give you these huge plates of food which is basically enough food for 2 people to eat.
After dinner, we headed back to the house for the evening! It had been a long but glorious day of sightseeing and we were both tired. Kim turned in early and I finished up a load of laundry which didn't run as planned when we left the house this morning, but even I didn't make it to the end of the wash cycle before I made my way up the stairs to get a good night's rest.
Tomorrow is our last official day of sightseeing except for possibly a few things we hadn't done yet in Derry before we head back to Dublin on Sunday! Things are winding down and I am both happy and sad all at the same time! I can't really explain it . . . it's been a great trip and I've seen some amazing places but I am definitely ready to get back to some semblance of real life again!

Day 21 in Ireland was rainy, misty but totally splendimous!!!

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