Glenveagh is a national park in Donegal containing Lough Veagh and a Derryveagh mountains. It is free to visit and offers some beautiful walks and views.
West of Glenveagh you will find the coast. We stopped at Narin Beach to build another sandcastle. I am writing this two or three weeks later and my hands are still blistered from all of the digging.
Ireland has a series of folk parks which are open-air musums with traditional buildings and often have people in character doing traditional activities. In Belfast, you will find Ulster Folk Musum and in Clare you will find Bunratty. In Donegal, you will find Doagh Famine Village, which had been on my bucket list for a while.
Unfortunately, they recently had a fire and some of it was closed. But they were still offering visits and a large part of it is a tour in which a former resident of one of the houses presents some living history, demonstrating the food and traditions of the area. You also get some seaweed and a shot of potcheen to try. There are a few buildings to explore after that.
Inishowen is a peninsula north of Derry featuring a load of cool stuff, including Malin Head, which is the most northerly point of Ireland. It’s fantastic. I loved Donegal and Inishowen was probably my favourite part. We drove up the east coast and stayed in the village of Greencastle where our bedroom had a view of Lough Foyle.
The good was great, too. We ate at the Redcastle Hotel on the first night. My rule is that hotels don’t do food good, but I will grudging admit that their food was good. Was also ate at Rosato’s in Moville, which is a pub and restaurant serving good food. God was smiling on me because there was only one slice of mint aero cheesecake left and the table just ahead of us foolishly passed on it.
Inishowen is also home to several beautiful beaches including Stroove, where we built another sandcastle.
And Doagh Strand which is an incredible place to watch the waves come crashing in. There are other beaches, too, that we did not get time to visit. Add to that a lot of beautiful hills and not too much traffic and it is a wonderful place to spend some time.
When Storm Floris rolled in, we decided to head to Derry to seek a bit of shelter. After some lunch at the Terra Bakery, we headed to the Museum of Free Derry in Bogside to learn about The Troubles. It is a small but well put-together museum telling the story of Battle of the Bogside and the surrounding events during The Troubles.
Dunluce is a ruined castle sitting between Portballintrae and Portrush. It is built on a rocky outcrop of land that is connected to the mainland by a bridge. Excellent for defending if a little intimidating to cross. A good place to defend and you get some fantastic views down the coast while you are there.
It’s a bunch of rocks.
They are cool rocks. I always imagined it being a whole coastline of suff, but it is one rocky ourcrop. Much smaller than Filey Brigg, but then everything is better in Yorkshire. Still, it was cool to see, and the scenary around it was lovely.
The site is managed by the National Trust who heavily monitise it. They have to provide public access for free. But what they have done is built a visitor’s centre and car park that they do charge for. So if you want park near the site, or want to have a wee, it’s £15 per adult. And if you want to use the shuttle bus ro get up an down the hill, that costs extra money.
Our first base camp for our road trip was the seaside town of Portrush. Long beaches, fish and chip shops, arcades, the whole classic British seaside town feel. It also had a parkrun. With Portrush being a summer hotspot, over 500 runners turned up for an out-and-back along the beach. The sand was firm enough under foot but there were some wet bits to run through. A lot of runners did it in bare feet.
After parkrun, Venla and I built the first of many sandcastles.
Earlier this month we a wee trip around the north coast of Ireland. Starting in Larne we followed the Causeway Coast all of the way to Derry where we picked up the Wild Atlantic Way and followed that, on and off, as far as Sligo.
I will be filling in some blog posts here, but if you want to follow the whole story, visit our North Coast Road Trip photo essay.
The Assertiveness Workbook: How to Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships is a book by Randy Paterson.
It’s written as a self-help book but makes for an accessible read for clinicians, too. The book begins by describing different types of communication and how they differ from assertiveness communication. It then breaks down specific topics such as giving compliments, giving and receiving feedback, saying no and handling confrontations.
What better way you could spend a Saturday than running through the Dublin Mountains?
The Trail Festival is run by the same people that run the Dublin Mountain Backyard Ultra and takes you through 30k of hilly terrain with the option of doing one, two, or three loops.
The run starts at Kilmashogue Forest and goes straight up. There were about 30 of us taking on the 30 km single loop and I soon found myself at the back of the pack. The uphill was a lovely wide gravel track but also uphill. The downhill was single track and I’m not much of a trail runner so I didn’t pick up a lot of speed there. Luckily, there was a two-kilometre road section into Glencullen that allowed me to catch the back of the pack.
Trail is a word with a wide definition. Once we were through Glencullen, we ended up climbing a steep bank (I would have completely missed the turning if I hadn’t seen others) and then onto what the locals called the “bog road” where the path disappeared and we were running through small bushes. Then there was a small gully with a river at the bottom and ropes to help us climb down. The ropes did not save me and I fell over twice here.
We almost made it back onto the Wicklow Way track before turning again towards a trig point at the top of the hill. This offered spectacular views of the whole of Dublin Bay and Wicklow in one scene.
Here we got into the real bog. I stopped on what I thought was a solid bit of mud and found myself above submerged up above my knee and had to climb my way out. At around 15k, Dublin disappeared behind the hills and I felt panicked about being in the middle of nowhere even though I knew it was just over the horizon. That was an unpleasant half an hour.
At around 23k we came down into ZipIt where there was a water drop. I had brought enough food and drink for five hours but was drinking more than expected so glad to be able to refill my bottles. Then it was straight up the hill again and towards the finish. I was tired by this point and started stumbling over rocks a lot but luckily did not fall.
The final two kilometres were downhill again and my quads were on fire as I descended. I managed to find the correct turning point, which I was quite proud of, as almost everyon else that finished came in the wrong way. Very glad to be done. I’m not sure I had fun but I’m glad I did it :D.