Port, Donegal

Tonight’s the last chance to see  the Northern Lights in Donegal.  Astronomers, photographers and pilgrims are heading in droves to the county, which is receiving a  major major  treat  from Mother Nature  since last Sunday night when the Aurora Borealis first hit Donegal’s northern skies.

Last Sunday night in Donegal. By Adam Porter.

Gutted that we weren’t in Port to see it. Check out http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Northern-Lights-draws-thousands-of-visitors-to-Donegal-137950378.html for more

just 745 of these and its all yours

A Donegal man has just beaten the world record for the most sheep sheared in 8 hours, in New Zealand on Monday. A staggering 744 lambs were sheered by Ivan Scott from Kilmacrennan , beating the last world record by two. To achieve this, he had to shear on average about 92 lambs an hour, more than one a minute.

For more detail, check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-16486373

PS: Thanks to John Berry for the Port sheep with attitude

The highest wave ever recorded in Irish waters formed off the coast of Donegal this afternoon, according to Met Éireann. It measured over 20 metres high – a monster. All the more substance to claims that Donegal offers some of the best surfing in the world.

Like this, but even bigger

Go to:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1213/breaking25.html?via=mr for more details.

Or in Irish the Búd An Diabhal. No need for more words, watch this breathtaking climbing video filmed in Port bay

Use the fast link or paste this into your browser. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V09d9Lk-Sg

This video on the life of Dylan Thomas during the two weeks he stayed in the next valley just north of Port goes a long way to explaining why he never came back. It’s a… little slow…but stick with it for some great mise en scene, a few snippets of the master’s work, and his comments on the town of Ardara – including the immortal line,  “a village you cant be too far from”.

Well you cant say much for the supermarkets, but there are a couple of little gems – incredibly , if you want clothing.

Eddie Doherty is one of the last Donegal tweed hand-weavers in the country , and his jackets are praised far and wide . Try this recent review from of New Zealand journalist..http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10718539.

Just next door, is Campbell’s where Hughie sells the nicest jumpers – a mix of Donegal wool and cashmere – and great socks – with his inimitable style.

Traditional music fans will love next week-end in Ardara. It’s also got a great name, and people are already flooding in for the liveliest weekend of the year. Go to  www.cupoftaefestival.com

Thumbs up from the Environmental Protection Agency.Go to

http://www.donegaldemocrat.ie/news/local/donegal_beaches_among_cleanest_in_the_country_epa_reports_1_2608271

for full story.

Yup, thats pretty clean

Off to Maghera today. We go there for the wide, wide stretch of beach, soft white sand, dunes, air…

The wind was whipping up the surf,  blowing the sand into streamers, up high the weather was coursing over the beach.

We walked into one of the caves on the south side …there are thirteen in all.

You can see the cave - a dark space half way up the picture

This was the first, set high on the cliff. Local folklore relates, and the girl in the car park kiosk repeated the tale ..that 500 people were in hiding there shortly after the 1916 Rising – but the Black and Tans were alerted to their presence when they had to light a fire one night as a woman went into childbirth. All but one were massacred – he hid himself on a high ledge.

These days, it looks like the odd rave happens there, nightlights perched on the shelving rocks.

Another local tale tells how  a man and his dog went walking into the thirteenth cave. The dog emerged some time later from the hillside here at Port, five miles away as the chough flies, but the man was never seen again.

Photos courtesy of Bella Purcell

I’m breathless,

We are just back to Port after the winter break. Its incredible what it has withstood, without us. A winter where temperatures went down to minus 15…and winter on the raw edge of the Atlantic can be punishing.The cottage stood waiting for us, like a loyal dog.

Who would have thought it? Yesterday, we emerged from the cottage to see a spring you dream of. Though our sheep in the Midlands have already birthed, the shaggy Donegal flocks are lambing now. In the stone-walled field next door, we saw a lamb no more than a couple of hours old – staggering, fragile and china white, behind its mother. And what a thing for your first sight of the world to be Port.

It has been very dry this April, the streams are low, the blogs barely squelching, but the grass is still fresh and green. The first heather is blossoming, small and white, crunchy. We walk barefoot – feeling the land’s differences. Some of the grass is soft and springy, moss-depthed, and woven together. Other parts are like walking on the cropped pelt of a lion, tough and stringy.

Our concession to a garden has emerged, huge bunches of narcissus bend behind the lichened stone walls, , while on the rocks around the sea-shore, the everlasting flowers are blooming. We scrambled over the plated rocks around a lively sea. The air was almost edible with the freshness of seaweed. We watched the lobstermen’s wooden boat being tossed around in the big swell. The children played chicken on the edge of the shore, dashing away from anything too big. The sunned ocean, laced with surf and gashed by rocks was too utterly breath-taking to absorb. In a world where we tire of things so fast, how can a place like this just continue to rise in stature? It is something to do with absolutes – real values of beauty.

We walked along the sheeps cliff path all the way north to the top of the next valley Glenlough, (where Dylan Thomas stayed in 1934) which always feels like a walk to the wilderness. No one was here. Black choughs bleeted and hung on the cliff back-drafts; we found fox scat in several places (we heard him cry last night, he must be here for the lambs) – and at the top of the rise, the land fell away to one of the most awesome coves of all this coast – Glenlough beach. From a thousand feet up, its colours were tropical – the sea, shot with froth and air and the turbulence of tossed rock, was turquoise. The beach pebbles, laid in a generous crescent, were pale yellow.It was very very alone.

But it was the noise of this utterly abandoned beach that was more miraculous than all else  – it was funnelled up to us through the cliff ravines and slid up the steep banks of scree – the breathing, or panting, of the sea on the shore, a sound of the universe, a genuine OM…as the water  coiled itself around the rounded beach pebbles and dragged them forward and back, forward and back. A sonorous, scraping lament that continues day and night, year on year on year.  Dylan Thomas called this “the beach of a thousand sounding stones”.

I know the quote, but have yet to find the poem…someone help me here…?