July 26, 2024

July 26, 2024

From County Mayo in the northwest of Ireland we made the long drive to the Ulster counties in the North. I am shocked how good the roads are. This cannot be Ireland. The modern road while only two-lane is ultra-wide and straight making the drive a breeze. We only have to slow down as we go through towns.

Our first stop is an hour later outside Sligo at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery. Ireland has lots of ruins of Stone Age civilization. But here is the greatest concentration of burial sites from Neolithic times 6000 years ago. The New Stone Age started when man began farming and settling down in communities. Here they started a practice of building stone memorials for their deceased. Their ritual was cremating the body on a pyre and then interring the remains under a rock platform. A Stonehenge-like set of boulders was assembled around the burial box. This was repeated dozens of times in the immediate vicinity. Most were pilfered years ago for burial goods. One preserved site had bones and ashes from an estimated fifty burials.

Of the many burials in this site only one had a cairn built atop the burial box. This became the norm in the later Neolithic Age. We have reservations to see Newgrange, the largest of that type next week.

Back on the highway we passed through County Leitrim and made a stop in the town of Belleek outside the city of Ballyshannon. Aimee has a small inventory of their pottery. A factory was built here because the local hills contained the right minerals for fine pottery. The owner though had to smuggle craftsmen here from England. Belleek is famous for its Celtic Basket Weave designs. We pass on the factory tour and instead browse the gift shop and museum.

Our next stop is Donegal City. Donegal or Dun na Gal means Fort of the Foreigner, implying it was founded by the Vikings or Normans. Our route is blocked by a Gate1 tour bus loading passengers, so we park and walk into town. We start our visit at Donegal Castle, another Tower House. It was owned by the O’Donnell clan. O’Donnell was one of the earls that lost the Battle of Kinsale and fled Ulster to France. The English replaced him with the Brooke clan and opened the area to plantation settlement by Scottish Protestants.

From the castle, we browsed the small town center stopping in the gift stores. One shop had Aimee’s mother’s maiden name. She had to buy something in it.

Continuing north we crossed into Northern Ireland. This is a separate country, part of Great Britain; it uses Pound Sterling instead of the Euro, and distances are miles instead of kilometers. We finish in Derry finding our hotel on the edge of the town center. It is crowded and I can’t find parking. Aimee dashes in the hotel and comes out flustered. She said she couldn’t understand the clerk's accent so she made him write the location down.

After checking in, we walked to dinner. We took the long route atop the northern corner of the city walls, past the Guildhall, and then across the new pedestrian Peace Bridge spanning the broad Foyle River. We crossed Ebrington Square which during the Troubles held the local Army Barracks. Next to it is a Brew Pub.

Surprisingly we have a very tasty meal of Indian Dal. Dal is a Curry dish made from yellow Lentils. Our dinner didn’t start well though. Neither of us could understand a word the staff was saying. In particular, the waitress told us the Soup of the Day was “Cart”. You know that orange vegetable Carrot. The Derry accent has to be the harshest and most unintelligible I have ever heard.