For many years poetry was my cultural blind spot. I’m not going to blame this on my own literary failings, of course, but on a secondary schoolteacher who failed to convey his own joy of verse to a room of semi-comatose 16-year-olds.
You can imagine how thrilled I was to receive no fewer than five separate copies of Seamus Heaney’s The Spirit Level for my birthday in 1996, a bestseller at the time given that the Nobel Prize had just come his way. Twenty years later, still largely poetry averse, I visited the newly opened Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy, Co Derry. A recording of Prince Charles (as he then was) reading The Shipping Forecast unexpectedly drew me in: “Dogger, Rockall, Malin, Irish Sea: Green, swift upsurges, North Atlantic flux”. This “sibilant penumbra” of weather stations around Ireland and Britain had been roll-called from the radio every day of my childhood, and something ignited. Shamefully late, I finally began to understand the magic of poetry.
As a sea lover, all these maritime locations with their weather fronts “rising slowly” were a source of constant fascination. Growing up in Co Limerick, Malin Head, the most northerly point of Ireland, was especially exotic given the distance between these two points on the map. Back then, I don’t think I had ever met anybody who had been to Donegal, so it was a welcome surprise to marry someone totally smote with this far-flung county, and many journeys north ensued. Dunfanaghy became a favourite destination, Gweedore and Glencolmcille too, but somehow Malin Head remained elusive.
One night over dinner, a Donegal friend began listing the Inishowen Peninsula’s many highlights, culminating with the most curious one: “The view from the alpaca farm is the best in Ireland.” Just as Charles’s voice had broken my mental block around poetry, this conversation with a Carndonagh woman allowed me to get over my childhood notion that the northern tip of the country was beyond my reach.
RM Block
Within weeks of our sparkling-wine fuelled conversation, we find ourselves driving through Carndonagh and continuing north to Malin Head. This is one of the most wind-blown locations in Europe but no “strong gale-warning voice” features on the radio as we alight at Banba’s Crown. Instead our arrival is soundtracked by the broad vowels of a group of American tourists reading from their phones that this derelict signal station connected Europe by radio with their homeland throughout both World Wars. Perhaps some of their ancestors had bonfires lit for them at this very spot as their emigrant ships passed in the distance.
A very different type of ship appeared here in 2016 when the Millennium Falcon took up residence on a nearby cliff during the filming of the Star Wars movie The Last Jedi. A mural of Yoda on the gable wall of nearby Farren’s Bar forces a pitstop and inside we find photos of Mark Hamill and other cast members enjoying Donegal’s famed hospitality. I am somewhat amazed to find so many international visitors here before me. How did they have no issue with beating a path to the top of Ireland?
As we venture farther south, a signpost for the Wild Alpaca Way appears at a crossroads, and we decide to investigate our friend’s claim about the view. A narrow road leads up a steep hill and as we catch our breath we look around to see the snaking Five Finger Strand sparkling in the sun below us, and the glorious sweep of the Fanad Peninsula in the distance across Lough Swilly.
John McGonagle meets us at the gate of his scenic farm and immediately hands us the reins to one of the 37 quirkily charming alpacas. I’m not sure that anybody coming to Donegal imagines themselves walking up a mountain in the company of a woolly, South American mammal, but the joyous smiles on the faces of the families all around us make it very clear that this experience is a must.
Another random sight awaits us later, as we inch along the long driveway to the Red Castle Hotel, behind a line of polished and beribboned tractors and articulated trucks driven by tuxedoed teenagers with their red-carpet-ready dates. The local secondary school has booked the hotel for their debs, and local custom dictates a statement arrival. “It’s very Inishowen!” the young receptionist explains as she leads us to our room overlooking Lough Foyle. Our table for dinner also overlooks the lough, but more importantly it offers a bird’s-eye view of the terrace below and all the outdoor drama happening at the debs.
As we’re leaving I notice a print of the Lucien Freud painting Donegal Man hanging just outside the diningroom. I remember that the original made headlines in 2023 when it was put up for auction at €17 million. My phone confirms that Pat Doherty, the subject and original owner of the painting, is the owner of this hotel and that he was born in nearby Buncrana. Inishowen is full of surprises.
The next morning we cross the peninsula to visit Fort Dunree, a little up the coast from our hotel owner’s birthplace and originally built to ward off the threat of a Napoleonic invasion. The fort sits on a rocky outcrop accessed by a footbridge, and if Hollywood scouts ever return to Inishowen, this could be the location for the next Bond villain’s lair. Britain’s entire North Atlantic fleet was stationed here for a time during the first World War as a boom across the lough’s entrance cleverly kept unwelcome submarines at bay.
While Donegal seemed distant and out of reach as a child, my sense of humour was very much tickled back then by the naming of Slieve Snaght, the highest peak on this peninsula, which got trotted out regularly during geography class in a singsong listing along with Errigal and Muckish. This mirth-inducing mountain looms to our right as we traverse the hills to Ballyliffen for lunch at Nancy’s Barn. Ebullient owner Kieran Doherty’s seafood chowder was voted best in the world in 2017 and in the meantime he commissioned Letterkenny’s Kinnegar Brewery to conjure up a bespoke beer to accompany and further accentuate the taste of his prize-winning soup. I can testify that both are world class – as is the towering display of home-baked desserts that are impossible to resist.
Our criss-crossing of the peninsula continues. Kinnagoe Bay is also on our list of must-see Inishowen highlights and as we round a bend leading towards this secluded beach, a view opens up across the sea to the Scottish isles of Islay and Jura. Surrounded on three sides by vertiginous, overgrown slopes with barely a trace of human intervention, I can see why a few clever campers decided to pitch up on this stunningly beautiful beach for the night. A quick swim in the clear, green waters doesn’t offer any sign of the Spanish Armada wreck that flounders in this bay; the area’s notorious winds must have been their undoing. A second swim awaits at Culdaff, another beautiful beach farther west along the coast, this time followed by a welcome thaw in the Sea View Sauna stationed in the car park. The owner is away in London training to be an MMA fighter, so his mother fires up the stove in his absence.
McGrory’s Hotel in Culdaff village lures us in for our second lunch with their impeccably maintained facade heaving with window boxes and hanging baskets. Scott, the manager, moved here from Essex many years ago and never went home. I can see how this would happen, at this stage, I’m tempted to move here myself. He suggests ordering the lobster roll, as the local boat has just delivered their morning catch. This had been a trip of first time experiences in many respects: Malin Head, walking an alpaca on a lead, an Inishowen debs. Thanks to Scott, I add lobster roll to that list. As second lunches go, it is pretty impressive. McGrory’s doesn’t have any snaps of the Star Wars cast behind the bar pulling pints but instead, the walls are lined with photos of notable Irish musicians performing on their stage. Sadly there is no gig scheduled for the date we visited so we reluctantly drive on.
We call to visit our Carndonagh friend’s parents and, over cups of tea, slices of coffee cake and epic Donegal hospitality, we listen as they patiently answer all our questions about Ireland’s most northerly peninsula. They paint a picture of an incredibly tight-knit community and we begin to wonder why anybody would choose to live in cities. Their Austrian grandchildren are back for the holidays and they pop in to say hello, clutching bubble tea from a cafe in the town.
Back at the hotel there is no sign of the tractors and trucks but tuxedos are still in evidence as a wedding is in full swing and a multigenerational parade of friends and relations march past us in the lobby. We are seated at the same table in the restaurant as the night before and as the laughter and Abba songs waft up from the function room below, we are very tempted to crash the party. Sense and exhaustion prevail. Instead the lullaby of 100 people singing Dancing Queen in a far-off function room sends us off to sleep.
Our last morning in Inishowen serves up another unexpected encounter with animals, but no alpacas feature on this occasion. Wild Ireland has repopulated one of the last slivers of ancient woodland in these parts with some of its original inhabitants including wolves, wild boars, brown bears and lynx. This wildlife park has rescued more than 100 animals, providing rehabilitation and medical care and reintroducing them to a hospitable environment. Thankfully no reins are offered to lead any of the new arrivals for a walk but instead we join in a talk by the bear keeper, who explains that the Irish brown bear was the maternal ancestor of the polar bear and that up to 1,000 of these beautiful animals roamed the island up to 2,500 years ago. It’s nice to have at least three of them back.
There’s time for one final stop. The ancient stone ringfort Grianán of Ailleach sits atop a nearby hill looking out over the whole of Inishowen and much of north Donegal. The fort, one of the royal sites of Gaelic Ireland, was originally built long after the brown bears had disappeared in the sixth or seventh century. Multiple French tourists pick their way carefully up the stone steps to the top of the walls and we join in their lock-jawed wonder at the beauty of the site and the setting. I’m not sure how au fait the French are with Seamus Heaney’s masterworks, so I stop myself from quoting the final lines of The Shipping Forecast, but they sum up perfectly our time in this no longer distant part of Ireland.
It was marvellous
And actual, I said out loud, ‘A haven,’
The word deepening, clearing, like the sky
Fergal McCarthy was a guest of Fáilte Ireland. discoverireland.ie
