I woke up early on my last day on Inishmore, feeling a bit tired and melancholy. I’ve been going pretty steady on this trip, with a lot of highs, so there’s bound to be a low at some point. I packed up and left early for the 2 km walk into town to catch a different ferry, this time to Rossaveel, with a shuttle bus connection to Galway. This ferry was a much nicer boat, and they actually had a safety announcement as we left the harbour! It was a gentle, fair day, so not another rollicking ride. It was a peaceful crossing, with views back to Inishmore and to the distant horizon, which suited my contemplative and slightly sad mood well.
Once the shuttle bus reached Galway – a very pretty city that I wished I could spend some time in – I had 10 minutes to make a transfer to my bus north to Donegal. In the lineup, an older gentleman asked me a question or two, and then when we boarded the bus he asked to sit with me though there were about 40 empty seats! His name was John, he was 78 years old, and he had lived and worked in Boston for many years. He has two sons locally, but his daughter still lives in Boston with his only grandchildren. He has been a widower for 19 years, and we chatted about many topics for the next hour or so, including work, travel, religion, children, pensions, and the wonders of Guinness. He thought that I look very Irish, he said several times that I am a “fine looking woman”, and he remarked that I have nice teeth! Once he knew I was married, (he asked why I don’t wear a ring), he started asking about my mom! “Oh, maybe she’s the woman for me.” He was very charming, and nice to talk to, and he quite unknowingly helped me to feel uplifted again.
The rest of the bus trip to Donegal was enjoyable, and I again alternated between looking at the scenery and reading a good book. It’s very restful to travel by bus! I arrived into the very busy town square in Donegal – with a wedding going on – a couple of “hen parties” – and people wearing jerseys and heading to pubs to watch their local football team take on a rival team. My bed and breakfast was only a three minute walk from the centre of town, and surprisingly quiet, and I was lucky to get this lovely little room with a view out my window of the river and the town castle.
The castle, right in the centre of Donegal town, was built in 1474 by the chief of the O’Donnell family. It is thought that there was an earlier Viking fort on the same site in the 12th century, hence the name Dun na nGall, which translates to “Fort of the Foreigner.” The castle was an important meeting place for Irish chieftans during the Nine Years War as they planned and battled against English forces. After losing the war, the O’Donnell chief destroyed part of the castle, before leaving with other Irish chiefs, in the “Flight of the Earls” to go to Rome and appeal to the Pope and the Spanish to raise an army to help Catholic Ireland reclaim its land from the Protestant English. In 1611, the castle and its lands was gifted by the crown to an English Captain, Basil Brooke, and the castle remained in the Brooke family unti 1898, though it was abandonded a century earlier and fell into ruin .
The Jacobean fireplace, below, is original to the early 1600s and features the coats of arms of Brooke and his wife, as well as ornamentation that includes the tudor rose, an emblem of England, and the Scottish thistle. There are no Irish motifs as the period after the Nine Years War was the time of the “plantation”, when King James of Scotland and England decided to import 200,000 settlers, ninety percent of them lowland Scots, to take up Irish lands and make them their own.
The guided tour at Donegal Castle helped me to connect a few more dots on the timeline of Ireland’s long history of struggle, resistence, and occupation.
The next morning, I headed back up to the town square to catch a bus north to Derry, also called Londonderry, which is in Northern Ireland. The river Foyle divides the town, and the town was also divided by the “troubles” in the 1970s. I crossed over the pedestrian”Peace Bridge”, built to symbolize peace between Ireland and Northern Ireland, to arrive at the train station and pay for my rail journey north to Port Rush in pounds sterling rather than Euros.
It feels different here, in Northern Ireland, and I felt a little guilty and traitorous somehow, feeling that I owe my allegience to Ireland. This is an occupied land, though it has been so for over 400 years, and the people living here belong here too. On the train to Port Rush I was speaking with a young man, surname Benoit, whose Dad is French Canadian, and his mother is English, but he was born and raised here and considers himself Northern Irish. Hopefully Ireland can be reunited one day, peacefully, or perhaps not, peacefully. There have been enough troubles here over the ages.
Which brings me to the beautiful ruins of Dunluce castle on the Antrim coast, dramatically perched on a cliff, and built for defense. We have our modern-day worries and fears of random dangers and acts of violence, but think of what life must have been like under the near-constant threat of raiders, mauraders, and invading armies.
Here are the dramatic views to the west of the castle, with arches lining the white chalk cliffs, and then to the east, directly beside the castle.
After visiting Dunluce castle, I took the local bus a little farther east along the Antrim coast to my bed and breakfast at lovely Craig Cottage where I enjoyed an early night. I was too tired to blog, and was almost falling asleep by 7, but then I started watching the speeches from the Democratic National Convention – first Michelle and Barack Obama (both with amazing speeches), then Chelsea Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, and Tim Kaine. Tonight, I’m tired again from a big walk today, and I’m almost caught up with my blog, so I’ll watch the speeches by Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and lastly Hillary Clinton.
But, I’m off topic. Two days of travel, two castles, and now two Irelands, though I am in Northern Ireland only briefly. Just before I say goodnight, this is the view from the dining room of my bed and breakfast where I have been sitting and blogging for the last hour or so. I also have the same view from my bedroom. Fields, cows with their calves, and the sea, with Scotland just visible in the distance. I’m starting to really like a sea view, Brent!
