My Irish adventure: The beauty of Ballyliffin and Donegal

 Again a little picturepost....please enjoy the charming enchanting beauty of Ballyliffin, Pollan Bay and Donegal county

The fierce and wild...on a beautiful summersday

Lough Swilly

Imagine the sound of the waves crashing in, and then draw back...

Should speak for itself...

The world seems a bit upside down

I simply love laying in the grass and look at clouds

The rugged rough beauty of the North

I can stare at the waves for hours...can you?

The next Ferdinand the Bull?

Time and place for peace and quiet? Go to Donegal

TURTLE!

Makes me wanna go exploring

Listen.....can you hear those waves?

You can see so far

And look...Sheep...adorable

CAN SOMEONE BRING ME BACK TO DONEGAL AND BALLYLIFFIN????

My Irish adventure: To search and not find...GEOCACHING

Trafficjam in Donegal

Another day in beautiful Donegal, and we were going geocaching on Fort Dunree. For you who are not familiar with the term 'geocaching' it can sort of be described as a modern treasurehunt...with a GPS. One go online and search for your location and the different caches are popping up, some with clues and some without. Kinda addictive actually...

When we visited Letterkenny (read the previous chapters) we had at one point been exactly opposite the place we would be searching for 2 caches: Fort Dunree
Fort Dunree has a history back to the napoleonic ages, and is found at the mouth of Lough Swilly, a very strategic location. And you will certainly appreciate it when looking from the topspot.
In our quest we were looking for something small, black and magnetic we were told, that were to be found near one of the gates...believe me, we looked EVERYWHERE...I even almost fell into a thicket of nettles...
We ended the quest for the first one with almost concluding that the cache had been muggled (meaning that it has been removed from its place by someone unaware of its significance)

Abandoned and forgotten....

The other cache was supposedly hidden close to the place were the famous guns are placed, and the hint said something about a round table...we split up, me walking in one direction and Michael and Solveig in the opposite one. The fort has been abandoned for quite some time, and it felt like a ghostplace when I walked around looking for the cache, kinda creepy. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

Wouldn't like to be here during the night...one could make a really scary movie here...

But the surroundings of the fort is anything but scary. The scenery of Donegal is amazing even when the sky is grey and threatening to unleash a terrible shower upon the green land below. Once again I found a secluded and oh so beautiful beach...sadly I cannot find its name,,,

 

And some other pictures of the scenery

Enjoy

As we did not find any of the caches, we headed back to Ballyliffin through some amazing areas...and one place Michael told us that even if the road was steep and one should suspect things to go downhill, they didn't....the magic of Donegal.

Back in Ballyliffin, I went straight down to the beach to explore the wilderness, and old castle and the rolling waves. 

Rolling waves brings out the child in me

The sky of Donegal...so blue, almost sparkling

I miss this place soooooo much

I sat here for quite some time, waiting for the tide to come in

A rugged sort of beauty

Looks like its movement has just been frozen

a hint of the past

 The plaque by this place told an amazing story from the second world war: a boy had found a stranded floating mine, and since metal was valuable he had started dismantling it. When he brought some of the pieces proud home, his father understood what it was. He got on the bike as fast as he could to reach the closest Gardai-station to inform them about what had been found. His son went back to the mine, feeling guilty that he had caused so much trouble, and tried to put the pieces back in their right place. His mother called him in for dinner, and 5 minutes afterward the mine exploded, breaking nearly all the windows in the houses around. Luckily noone got harmed.

A little piece of heaven

So as I was walking back from the beach for a final evening in Ballyliffin, I discovered something. It seemed that all the snails of Ireland were gathering in the dunes here to mate...weird right?

The last evening at Michael's, we made a little geocache-challenge for him in his own house. First we hid the chocolate in the old, out-of-tune-piano, and a hint where he could find the next cache...which we had hid in his coat. There he got another hint, and it took him quite a while to find the last cache which we had hid underneath his pillow. That evening we watched an amazing movie; True Romance, drank wine and talked into the night. It felt so weird to think that the next day we would head for Belfast. 

I will never forget Ballyliffin; a piece of heaven

My Irish adventure: A day in Derry...with complications

I'm back again and this chapter will deal with what happened in Derry...I guess you are a bit curious now
Let me get started:

******

Bogside

The original plan was to go to Derry the same day as we would be leaving for Belfast, but luckily Michael had some things that needed to be tended to there, so we got a lift across the border into Northern Ireland. 

And what a feeling it was being back in Derry. As the historyinterested person I am, I tried to give my sister a teeny-weeny-historylesson about the place...which failed. So after 10 minutes in Bogside we split up, and I had no idea when I would see her again that day....

Amazing details in some of the murals in Bogside

The peacedove rises above imprisonment

The famous wall of Derry...still a symbol

So I went up on the wall, and decided to walk the opposite direction as I did a year ago with Steven and Amanda, and soon I found the little church close to the wall again: St Augustine

It feels so much bigger inside

The details in the stained glass-windows are amazing, so colorful

I was so amazed by this eagle last year since it reminds me of "Boondock Saints"

Detail from the eagle

Detail from the wall

When I got out, I decided to find a shortcut to Guildhall, the cityhall, but as I should know by now: "A shortcut is the longest distance between two points"....so by chance I ended up in Fountain by chance, and it started raining. So stood there under the bridge and just took in the feeling the place gave me...it felt a bit weird being down there, and not standing somewhere else and looking over a fence...

Identity? Definitely yes

This definitely shouts "HOSTILITY"

Would the world be a better place if everyone drank tea instead of fighting eachother?

When the rain stopped, I started walking towards the busstation to get the bus back to Ballyliffin, and guess who I ran into? My sister! We had plenty of time before the bus that would alledgedly bring us back to Ballyliffin (we had seriously no idea) was going, so we decided to do some shopping for Michael and surprise him with a proper dinner. So when  that was done, we got on the bus....and guess where we ended up?

CARNDONAGH!

So just 10 km away from Ballyliffin with no idea of how to get there...what should we do?

We started walking....and guess what? Things seems a bit upside down in Donegal, since the first sign I passed said that it was 8 km left to Ballyliffin...while the next said 9....weird

But finally a very sweet lady picked us up and drove us...cannot imagine how long it would have taken us to walk that distance with all we had to carry...

So that evening we surprised Michael with mushroomrisotto and appletart...and he even did not know that he had a springform pan. So an eventful day ended most perfectly.

Next time: geocaching

My Irish adventure: Ballyliffin 2

Yes, while the storm rages outside I will tell you all about the first evening in Ballyliffin and the following days. Ready? Well, here goes....

Michael was very busy working in the shop, but he popped by now and then to see how we were settling in. He told us that there would be a tradsession in Culdaff,  a tiny village north of Ballyliffin that evening, and since I had my fiddle with me it would be such a shame if I didn't join in. So off we went, chatting about everything and nothing, and Michael told us about the area.
The pub we were going to (McGrory's) was just like a proper Irish pub should be; warm and cosy with lots of people.

Solveig in her right element

Great musicians

Wonderful atmosphere

At first we just talked and listened to the musicians that were already there, and you could say it was quite impressive that Michael managed to talk me into this...with a little help from a french lady I believe

Me playing  the "Bergen song"...which has a slight resemblance with the Irish national anthem....

So here I was with my fiddle, in the middle of a tradsession...it felt like a shock of pleasure to sit beside these talented musicians and jam with them. The other fiddler was sooo amazing, I simply could not believe how fast her fingers moved. Very inspiring. They asked me to play something from Norway and the first thing that popped up in my mind was the citysong from Bergen (which is actually a french menuet). The funny thing is that this song is somewhat similar to the Irish national anthem; Amhrán na bhFiann, which is played at closing time...so people were wondering about what was happening.
But I made it right by playing a norwegian dance called tretur (has to do with doing something three times) and after getting a pint of Guinness on the house for being with the musicians, I sang "Black is the colour". You could have heard a needle drop if you were there, it gave me goosebumps. Such an amazing experience!

So when we drove home I couldn't stop smiling. But noone saw it as the night in Donegal is the darkest there is...