June 10, 2013 Weds.
Surprisingly, the day
started with clear blue skies again but windy.
I thought the advance clouds of the cold front had already arrived. It was important to get the weather forecast
straight today because I had planned to take a boat ride under the Slieve
League at sunset and to drive up towards the top and hike there. All of that required good conditions. In retrospect, I should have gotten up a half
hour earlier and not stopped at the B&B or the boat launch before going to
the top. It was hard to predict.
This morning the staff
were doing their best to be attentive, I suppose to make up for what happened
last night. I got set up in the basement
living room while waiting for breakfast to be cooked, so that I could use my
laptop (close to the wifi source). I managed
to get out at 9:45 (the earliest yet), and went straight towards the south
Donegal coast, which means lots of zigging and sagging through the
mountains. But distances are short and
it’s scenic. But the speed limit signs
are crazy. Frequently you see 100 km
dropping to 50 km outside a town, but today there was a 100 km sign as I was
going over a straight flat bridge (fair enough), but then the road immediately
narrowed, and started winding through the mountains. There’s no way anyone could or should be
going that speed under such conditions.
I stopped in Ardara to
look for woolens. I wasn’t planning to
spend much time, but, as expeditiously as I could, cased four shops (this is a
town known for Donegal woolens), got a couple of mohair scarves, a calendar for
next year, and in the last shop found a pair of dark green herringbone trousers
that fit except for the length. At this
place, they not only do adjustments for free, but will weave and tailor you a
whole garment out of the pattern you choose for the same price and mail it to
you. I saw the weaver plying the loom in
the back room. The tailor was excellent;
she made notes not just about taking in but also adding material under the arm…
fairly complex tailoring. I ordered a
waist coat (vest) to match the trousers.
Who knew I was going to do this today?
Clearly, it was a good place, as there was a tour bus outside when I
arrived (and when I left..same one).
Once at the south Donegal
coast road, heading west in the direction of the cliffs, I saw my B&B, so
thought I’d just go in and drop my bags, figuring it wouldn’t take that
long. Two scones, butter and jam (lunch),
some chitchat, discussion about routes later, and I was off, taking a nice
diversion down the one lane coast road. This
coast road was so spectacular because it was both coastal and mountainous at
the same time. I met a few cars coming
the other way full speed, but at this point, I’d learned what to do.. look for where to
duck, pull over, wait. It was easy to
see cars coming from some distance on this road. I took some shots here and there of the farms built on the hillsides of the rugged coastline. 
.
The sun was still out, as I raced along the river, above, to see Paddy Byrne at the Teelin boat ramp. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there at 2:45. His normal departure schedule was every two
hours starting at 10 am, so at this point, he was out until 4. What to do?
Clearly I wasn’t going to hang there till then, and unfortunately, the
clouds had just rolled in, getting windier.
So I went to the TeeLin café/tourist cottage at the bottom of the climb
up to the Slieve League parking lots, looked around, introduced myself to Paddy
Clarke (we’d corresponded before), and headed up the mountain. I’d been rather nervous about the prospect of
driving this road, since it was barely 2 track up to the first parking lot and
then Google Map’s Street View didn’t go any further. That told me that they didn’t trust their
vehicle to go up the narrow road with sheer cliffs to the second parking
lot. So, I looked it up on Google Earth,
and on satellite image the road was clearly narrower, more winding, and closer
to the cliffs. Paddy said they’d widened
the road a few years ago, and I’d gotten more opinion from one of the other
tourists on the Derry walking tour a few days before that he’d done it. So I figured I’d go for it, having been on a
lot of single tracks in the last few days, but also knowing I probably could
not turn back once committed to drive past the first parking lot. Once I opened the sheep gate to the rest of
the road, someone was nice enough to close it after me. Thankfully, it turned out that this road was
not a true single track, and mostly the cliffs were not sheer off the side of
the road. I met only a few cars going
up, but there was no problem navigating around them.
At the top parking lot, it was
overcast and the winds were gale force so photography was going to be
suboptimal and a challenge. The guy in
the Irish ice cream truck (a little yellow truck in the video of Slieve League Descent, below) was nice to chat
with. I’d described my dilemma about
whether to go on the boat trip, how I’d contacted Paddy Byrne, the uncertainty about the weather, etc, whereby he told me to go closer to the edge of the
cliff where I could see Paddy Byrne in his boat down in the water. It was almost like a speck in the ocean, from
almost 2,000 feet up but I could see the boat pitching about once a second, and
realized I was lucky not to be in that boat.
The wind was so fierce, even holding my camera on my tripod on solid
ground, there was some vibration. Since
everybody else was doing it, I headed up the mountain. There were a couple dozen folks on their way
up or down. I don’t know how far I
climbed in altitude, but hundreds of feet at least. One German family recognized me from
yesterday .. “didn’t we see you at Horn Head?”
There were lots of Germans,
French, Italians, and Americans around.
Using the tripod, I took some shots of myself with Slieve League cliffs in
the background, then went up higher, did a panorama. Here are a few of the many photos I shot up there. Isn't it beautiful? Next time, I'll allow more time for hiking. There is a part of the five hour hike along the top of the long mountain ridge that is called One Man's Pass, which is so narrow, only one person can walk on it, and there is a very steep drop off on both sides.
Slieve League Panorama video
Because I didn’t want to be descending from the mountain in the rain, went back down as soon as I could. My car is parked on the edge at the bottom of the path, round the bend to the left in this photo.
I did take the time to enjoy some of the nice man’s Irish ice cream, and the “chocolate chip” was absolutely devine! It was chocolate with chocolate chips with a hint of mint.
I then drove down the
mountain, but first set up my smaller, “concert” camera above the steering
wheel to shoot a dashcam. The ice cream
guy said he knew of YouTube videos going up the mountain, but not coming
down. It’s actually more dramatic going
down. You can see how far you can
fall! As it turned out the rain started
during my descent as seen on the windshield, though I wasn’t really focusing on
that. There were sheep, hikers, and the
prospect of meeting cars head on to focus on.
After coming down Slieve
League, since there were still a few hours before sunset, I headed to
GlenColmCille, a tiny village near the southwest coast of Donegal. It was raining now, as I went through the
Folk museum, which showed how the area went from the middle ages to the modern
era in a few short decades, after about 1960, thanks to the local priest. It was stunning to realize how much of Ireland
lacked modern utilities like electricity and hot and cold running water until just
a few decades ago. On my way across and
back from GlenColmCille (pronounced Glen Colm Kill), I noticed that there were
people in the fields who had driven there, and it looked to me as if they were
mining the peat. The earth was clearly
partially dug and dislodged by farm equipment. I’d heard that peat used to be burned for
heat. It would make sense that there
would be peat in this area, being a long valley between the Slieve League
mountains and the uplands to the north.
I’m sure this also was a tradition (peat mining) in this area. But not a great thing to realize that the
peat, wonderfully rich soil for growing things, is mined for purpose of burning
it, especially since burning peat adds to the CO2 in the
atmosphere. Getting back towards the
area of my B&B in Largymore near Kilcar it was hard to find a place to
eat! I’d been warned about this by my
B&B hostess. Who knew? You can’t eat out on Sunday night. Even pubs were closed. Eventually, I found a really nice meal of “3
fowl” at Kitty Kelly’s (named after an old warlord). On the way in, prominent on the walls, were
framed photos of Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker. They told me that this is a favorite haunt of
theirs and they have a place nearby, Kilcar area. Interesting.
And since one of my friends lives a few doors down from them below
Greenwich Village, I know two places they live.
Tonight’s B&B is new, comfortable, well appointed, with a nice
hostess. Since she had been full up the
night before, and this night I was her only guest, she gave me quite a bit of
attention. The house also has a
fantastic view of the coast from up high.
On a clear day, one can see across the Donegal bay, where I’ll drive
tomorrow (to Sligo) on my way back to Dublin.
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