< Magazine Index > < Index For This Edition > < Subscribe >

Christopher Deliso is an American freelance travel writer with a master's degree in Byzantine Studies from Oxford.  Deliso has lived abroad in Ireland, England, Turkey and Greece.  Most of his experiences in Greece came to him on the island of Crete.  If you would like to see other examples of his work, there are two notable works on Greece, and one on Turkey, in the p(o)ems section of the kinetictravel.net website - Click Here - The article below is the longer version of his story which appears on that website. Additional Resources Living and Working in Ireland  more Deliso Articles  Travel Books on Ireland

Donegal,  the wind-swept  and  rugged northernmost  province of Ireland, is arguably also Ireland's most  beautiful region.  A stark and  serene beauty pervades the barren fields and rocky  hills that make up the  majority of Donegal. All  around are remnants of the Celtic past -- the ‘beehive huts’ of early Christian  monastics, well-rounded piles of clustered stones, as well as the  mysterious ‘standing stones’ of the ancient Celtic druids -- slabs of stone carved with ancient,  impenetrable signs. It is commonly believed that if one even touches such a stone, he  will be cursed with  bad luck. There have been cases of farmers having their livestock die and houses burn after failing to give the standing stones their proper respect.

I bore this in mind as I passed by them on the  six-mile bike ride from my secluded hostel to Glencolumcille,  the western edge of  Donegal where the cliffs  thundered into  the sea and  where one of Saint  Patrick’s ardent followers had once worshipped.  On the way I passed plenty of the beehive huts, indicators  of the presence of early Christians in this awe-inspiring landscape, one that must have been especially conducive for contemplation of the divinity.

The next  day I turned in my bicycle and hit the road again,  this time to meet my girlfriend in the town of Dunfanaghy. She had  been traveling up from Galway  and was going to join me for a few days of exploring on the north coast, a storied region of uncertain weather and violent history, part of it even called  the ‘Bloody Foreland.’ I met her in late afternoon and we resolved to ameliorate the situation at once, and after a long day of travel headed down to the local pub for a quick pint.

We walked  into the tiny, narrow pub -- that is, we slid in sideways -- and sat at the bar. There  were three other stools at the bar; the entire pub, which looked like it hadn't  been painted in about thirty years, was about 10 feet wide and  20 feet long. There was space for  six, perhaps seven customers in the whole  place. We  were there, my girlfriend  and I, after a  hard day of
hitchhiking up from Galway.  We smiled at the bartender; and he smiled back, a bit sheepishly, however.

"Sorry you  came in on the Monday," he apologized.  "Any other day the place would be packed out."

We  had arrived  in the sleepy  Irish town of Dunfanaghy, (situated on the wind-swept coast of the  North Sea, at the very northern tip of the country) an hour earlier;  before  having this welcoming  pint of Guinness we had checked into the decidedly unique Corgreggan Independent Hostel (a.k.a. ‘the Old Mill’). Guests here are housed both in restored vintage boxcars from the old Donegal  train line,  out of service since the 60’s, and  in the actual stone floored building  that once served as a  mill. Our ‘room’  was a very cool red and gold painted train car, with an interior of polished wood and smooth red leather. Even if this was the only thing the hostel had going for it, it  would still have been remarkable, but there was more.
 

The  whole property, it turned out, was humming with a quiet energy that could not be described. Stories abound about how  the hostel was built over an ancient pre-Celtic ritual site, and about the magical triangles of power indicated by the particular placement of various rocks and buildings. I can't vouch  for that, and I didn't see any little people creep in from the Fairy World,  but on the  other hand I couldn't fall asleep for two consecutive nights. It was deadly quiet outside, but still I was wide awake. The  place made me kind of uneasy,  actually. But it's definitely worth checking out- and who knows, there may be something to the tall tales.

In addition to enchanted hostels and miniature pubs, Dunfanaghy is blessed with beautiful nature.  We took along bike ride through winding wooded roads to get to the beach -- one of the most perfect beaches I have ever seen, in fact.  If you looked at a picture only -- crystal clear, greenish water and fine white  sand -- you would think it was some exotic beach in Thailand or Australia. Only the unbelievably  frigid temperature of the  water gives it away. My  girlfriend, of stout Irish constitution, of course had no problem in diving in.  As she flopped around like a regular seal, I  gasped and hyperventilated for twenty seconds before scrambling back shivering to the beach, after all, it was the 29th of September. Only with the help of a few rounds of Guinness, and some good traditional music later on that evening, was warmth restored to my body.