Monday 15th June Day 28
Our first plan this morning was to go into the village and get a coffee as reimbursement to the local economy for our free nights stay, which if we spent more money in the village instead of making coffee in Glo, didn’t make the nights stay free, but hey a proper coffee is better than instant, anyway it ended up being a free night as even though it was 10am nothing was open, 6’ish euro saved. We had gone a bit mad as we had a two day plan laid out, firstly head to Donegal with a possible overnight stay somewhere close by and then on to a couple of the locations that Stephen had given us yesterday, hey how is that for planning. We had two drops to make before we arrived at Donegal which depending on what they were like could have changed the whole plan, things did actually speed up as both of the towns ended up being drive through’s without a hamburger or a coffee, as they were both shut, the town, not the drive throughs as they didn’t have one. On we went to Donegal, I had found a car park at the harbour a few minutes walk from the town and you could stay there overnight at a total cost of €2.70 for 24hrs, listen to that Liverpool One, we arrived and there were lots of vans already there but there was still plenty of space, I paid for 3 hours 90 cents hang the expense, as we were not sure if we were going to stay overnight as we really wanted to find a campsite. The town was really busy with them there tourist types buying “I heart Ireland” stuff, we were to find out later why there were so many tourists in the town, now it must just be us and towns as after an hour and thirty minutes we were done and that included stopping for a 0% beer, we really must have something about towns that we didn’t know about, this meant that we weren’t staying at the harbour overnight even if it was only €2.70, I had found a campsite about an hour away and off we went. On route we went through the village of Killybegs, now here is a prime example of not doing any research, we arrived at Killybegs expecting a small fishing port, well it is a fishing port but get this, Killybegs is the Largest fishing port in Ireland and there are dozens of extremely large and I guess extremely expensive fishing boats but no matter how expensive they are, there was a bigger rascal parked up against the harbour wall and that was Cunard’s second largest ship the MV Queen Anne, wow now that was a surprise. She was only there for the day and I guess the passengers got off and were then transported by bus for a day in Donegal, if I had been a passenger I would have stayed on board and made a dent in my extremely expensive all inclusive drinks package. Our next stop was a basic campsite at a farm 20 minutes from Killybegs, this place was in the middle of nowhere, the last 10 minutes of the drive were down a goat track and we did wonder if Syd had lost the plot but he hadn’t and out of nowhere a farm appeared. Barb went and booked us in, she didn’t return for ages and it was because the farmer was extremely friendly and was giving her lots of information about the area, he also told her that his grandmother had bought the house and the farm for 90 Irish punts during the Great Depression in the 1930’s, I haven’t got a clue how that conversation came around and I guess that was a lot of money back then but it certainly worth more than that now. Going a bit off piste now and I am actually going to give anyone that is planning on doing this journey with some travel info, the site is a working farm, now I say working as in so much that there was a tractor parked in the yard, some chickens and a couple of sheep and two of the baby sheep were being bottle fed but that was about it. As for the site, the pitches are just park were you like, it is what I suppose you would describe as the farm yard, the facilities are a bit dated but fully functional and very clean, there is a massive indoor camp kitchen with everything you would need, there is a BBQ if you fancy, that’s outside, great view and not a noise to be heard apart from a couple of chickens with chicks and a couple of sheep with baby sheep and when they went to bed there was not a sound. All this for 30 Euro and it even included EHU it’s definitely worth a visit, right that’s enough travel info, it’s starting to get a bit like a travel blog. Not much else happened for the rest of the evening so you will have to see what happens tomorrow, there might be another assault on a summit but we will find out if that happens tomorrow.
Stop over Derrylahan hostle and camping Kildare County Donegal
WTW visits.vowing.tibias