Coleraine ti Donegal

Saturday 9^th April


Derry was the first port of call after a very leisurely morning.  First stop was the City Walls which were completed in 1619 and are 8 metres high and 9 metres wide with a circumference of 1.5 kms.  These are the only city walls in Ireland to survive almost intact, perhaps this is because of the width of them.  They are the only walls that have never been breached by an invader.  These walls were less impressive than the ones we saw in York, but never the less well worth walking around.  Looking to the west on the wall clearly visible is the Bogside district which was developed in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as a working class, predominately catholic residential area.  People’s Gallery consisted of 12 murals that decorate the gable ends of houses along Rossville Street and they are the work of the Bogside artists.  The murals mostly painted between 1997 and 2001 and commemorate key events in the Troubles.  These murals are very powerful and moving.  The People’s Gallery and Studio situated on “Aggro Corner” the street intersection once notorious as the kicking-off point for confrontations between Bogsiders and security forces.  It is now an exhibition space for local and international artists and it provides some very thought provoking images.  One can’t help but think how blessed / lucky we have been are to be born in Australia.  We then head to the local Bogside pub, Tracy’s Bar, primarily for a pee but having an obligatory pint of Guiness whilst we were there.   This was hilarious, I was the only woman in the pub.  There were a couple of guys there who had obviously been on the slops last night.  One guy said that he felt so crook that “I could have murdered myself this morning.”  It was certainly a character pub, both in building and clientele.  We found it difficult to understand the broad accents, but could clearly understand the amount of “fooking” that was rolling off the tongues of these chaps.
With Donegal programed into Sheila we are soon pulled over by the police as road works had closed the road.  Sheila does not like this at all, if she could get the accent right I am sure she would have been saying “fooking” also.    We are taken on real country roads and constantly diverted due to the road works. Our darling Sheila soon leads us to Omagh where the young policeman was killed by the car bomb, a place that we were trying to avoid.   Finally some 3 hours later we arrive in Donegal and are in the EU, road signs are now in English and Gaelacht.  Donegal is a pretty town at the mouth of the Donegal Bay, on the river Eske and in the shadow of the Blue Stack Mountains.  About 1/3 of county Donegal residents speak only the Gaelacht language.  The weather in Donegal is lovely today and is often mild due to the Atlantic Gulf Stream nudging the coastline, but it is also very prone to howling winds and sheeting rain.
We check into the Abbey Hotel and when we get to our room, there is a huge four poster bed and it is elegantly decorated.