Wanderung 34

Loop North from Derry along the Wild Atlantic Way

(Monika:) The Irish Republic has the coastal road from Derry to Kinsale designated and road-signed as the "Wild Atlantic Way". We had encountered these signs in the Connamara Peninsula and, of course, around the Ring of Kerry. Today we were going to start exploring Wild Atlantic Way from its starting point on the northern coast of Ireland just above the border with Northern Ireland.

The border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic starts just north and west of Derry. Our B&B is just a mile east of the border in Northern Ireland. There are two ways to tell which part of Ireland you are in: in Northern Ireland the speed limit is listed as mph and in the Republic as kph. But the better way to tell is to look at any official sign: in the Republic you always will see it in Irish and in English, Northern Ireland uses only English. So if you can't read half of the sign, you are in the Republic. The border itself is almost invisible: on the street out in front of our B&B, only the road surface changes, but that is it. We both wondered what would happen after Brexit, particularly if a hard border is created with checkpoints and all these small, unmarked crossings are closed off. We think that would be a disaster for the people living here.

But back to today. We started driving northward along the east side of the Peninsula that Derry is on. The road was marked as scenic, and indeed it was: water and distant land on the right side and gentle hills with fields and sheep on the left. We stopped a couple of times to take pictures.

The little fishing village of Greencastle gave us especially good opportunities for interesting pictures with the colorful fishing boats in the harbor, the town going up the hill with the church on top. No wind to give us great pictures because the boats reflected beautifully in the calm water of the harbor.

Here also was a ferry that went over to the other headland across the bay since this was the narrowest point of the inlet.

So it also made a lot of sense that just outside the village was the ruin of an old castle to guard the bay and just beyond that the ruins of a fort erected during the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the 19th century. The walls and Martello tower were still standing, but where the outside sea wall used to be, we now had a row of condos. They certainly had a great view across the inlet!

10km on was a very photogenic lighthouse to make my day complete. The tall, white spear was located on the outward shoulder of the bay, marking the entrance.

But we weren't done for the day. We retraced our steps to cross the peninsula and drive up the west side to the most northern point of Ireland. Since on our previous trip to Ireland we had gone to the most western and southern points, I feel we are doing Ireland justice. The drive to that point was again very scenic. We stopped at a little picnic area to have some snacks and give Bob a rest, since all these roads were of the narrow type with blind everything (hills, curves, dips). So driving for him was nerve wracking.

But we forged on. I was surprised to see another tower rather than a lighthouse at Marlin Head. This was another tower from the Napoleonic era, but also used during the two World Wars in the last century with barracks from the last war. The expected lighthouse was actually out on a small island, barely visible. Unfortunately visibility was not too good, but it was fun being at another of these landmarks. It reminded me of the westernmost point in Australia, that we saw on our last trip, Wanderung 33.

By now it was 2PM and we both were getting seriously hungry. We backtracked to the slightly large town of Carndonagh, where I spotted a Cafe. It had warm sandwiches, so I had a ham and cheese toasty and Bob a chicken wrap. They even came with a little bit of salad, so we lived healthy.

From there we drove across the countryside. This area looked forbidding. It was different than any other area in Ireland. But of course there was enough growing here for the ever present sheep, and here they were even allowed to roam free. When we came to one stretch were there where no curves, Bob speeded up. I said something like: wow, here you can see for a mile what comes, like the big sheep right ahead there. At which point Bob slowed down again.

When we were almost home, we thought we wanted to see the old round stone hilltop fort, Griannan of Aileach, that we could see from our B&B, and headed in the direction we thought it was. When after a couple of miles we could not find it, I used the POI feature of our GPS to locate it. It turned out, we where too far to the east. As the crow flies, we probably where only a couple of miles away, but as the roads go we had to go down to the valley, across the next valley and back up the next narrow road. But we did find it in the end.

A wedding party used the interior of the fort to take pictures. We tried not to photobomb them, and just climbed up the three interior levels of the wall to take pictures of the surrounding area. The views were magnificent almost up to Marlin Head on one side, and on the other side over to Derry and beyond. You could see why they put the fort at this point.

But that was truly all we felt like doing. Since we still had soup that could be fixed for our evening meal, we did not even feel we have to head to the Centra shop. So we headed straight home, had our soup, and put our feet up for the day.