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County Donegal: Come rain or shine

Mike Higgins spent carefree childhood holidays in County Donegal. Years later, it's still the place to meet the relatives

Saturday 17 September 2005 00:00 BST
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Funny things, big families. Take my mother's, the McFerrans. Nine children there were, and for a good few years they left Northern Ireland and one another behind: they emigrated to the States, Venezuela, South Africa and "the mainland". Now, though, four of my mother's siblings own homes in Donegal. And not just anywhere in this remote north-western county of the republic, but on one spit of land, Loughros Point, just outside the small town of Ardara.

Auntie Colette was the first to buy a cottage there, in the early Seventies, then Uncle Bro 15 years later, and most recently Sheila (Christine's cottage is actually a few miles up the road in Glenties). Why? You might well ask. Donegal is landfall for every major weather system that howls in off the Atlantic, and Loughros Point, jutting out into the Atlantic, gets a pasting from most of them.

I was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, but brought up in South Africa and England, so I've never felt quite as Irish as the rest of my family. All I remember from my first visit to Donegal in 1976 was the light - there wasn't much - and the Arran jumpers Mum bought me and my little brother: they itched like hell and smelt funny in the rain (most of the time, then).

My first proper memories of Donegal, however, are from 1984, when I was 12. We stayed with my Auntie Colette in her thatched holiday cottage, and over two sunny weeks in August, my brother, cousins and I ran up and down the huge, empty dunesof Liskeraghan and Maghera beaches. If you knew where to look, you could pick your own mussels on the Point, and go snorkelling for crabs. And when it rained we tagged along to the pub with our parents. While they got stoked on Guinness in Nancy's Pub (not much more than a front room) or Peter Oliver's (good for musicians), we didn't have to sit out in the car like we did in England, waiting for crisps and lemonade to be ferried out to us - we could come and go as we pleased, until 11pm, midnight, whenever closing time came round or Uncle Fred ran out of ciggies.

But even though Ardara was just four hours drive from Belfast, it was obvious that Donegal was a good quarter of a century distant from the UK. Herds of cows occasionally blocked the main street while many local children spent their summer holidays working on the small family farms in the area. Nobody seemed surprised when Dad told them that we'd been stopped in our car by a poacher - a man had sprung out of a ditch, opening his long, grubby coat to reveal a large fish hanging from the lining. He stuck his head in the window: "Would you be after a rock trout?" The rock trout, it should be said, bore an uncanny resemblance to a salmon.

I was back with my family a year later, when the big news of the summer was the arrival of garlic in the local Spar mini-market. Garlic! Not that Ardara wasn't cosmopolitan, oh no. Since the Seventies there have been plenty of Scandinavians and French to be found, and not just tourists either. In fact, to this day, if you spot a nicely restored thatched cottage in the area, it's a fair bet that its owner is from Copenhagen. By the same token, blame for the grim bungalows that dot the Donegal landscape can be laid at the UPVC double-glazed doors of the locals. Still, these new houses, along with much better roads, are at least a sign that the roar of the Celtic Tiger has finally been heard in Donegal.

These early travel memories were hard to ignore as, 29 years later, in Augustthis year, I returned to Donegal for a family wedding. The weather report forecast uninterrupted sun for the weekend. I knew better and packed as if I was about to spend three weeks on a North Sea trawler. Over three baking-hot days, dogs were seen to pass out and Donegal basked in the sun. But through the sweat that poured from my brow, I noticed that the 21st century had finally arrived in Ardara.

Today, it is as an international tourist destination. A coach-load of Italians was booking into the recently extended Nesbitt Arms Hotel as I passed. The town even has a proper Chinese restaurant now, and I was in Nancy's when two of its Chinese staff came in for a pint. This diversity would seem to go hand-in-hand with a new cultural self-confidence. You now hear more Gaelic spoken on the street, and not just by the old men.

But the most telling accents you hear out and about are those of the English visitors - for the duration of "the troubles" many English acquaintances of mine seemed to believe they wouldn't be welcome anywhere in the north of Ireland. The Donegal beaches, the sea cliffs of Slieve League that seemed to mark the end of the world, the Guinness you could stand a wooden spoon in - none of the tourist-brochure images I painted for my friends was as vivid as that of a burned-out car in Belfast on the Nine O'Clock News. Not that there wasn't the occasional tense moment in Ardara. Back in the mid-Nineties I remember getting together in a pub with a few cousins who, like me, had been brought up in England. There was a fiddler there too, quite a good one; as the evening went on he began playing rebel songs, and in a way that suggested we ought to finish our drinks and go. We disagreed, more drink was taken, more turf thrown on the fire and the music stopped altogether in the tiny bar so that the fiddler and my cousins could get down to a proper drunken row. In the end, no one had the stomach for a ruck, thankfully. Tempers calmed and the fiddler left. We were then told that he was a Dublin bus driver who took a couple of weeks off each summer to tour the pubs of the West - he was spoiling our holiday, in other words, as much as we had apparently spoiled his.

Now that peace is breaking out, fitfully, across Northern Ireland, Donegal is benefiting. Belfast weekenders, such as my aunts and uncles, are even more common, and there's a touch of glamour about Ardara. In August there were posters for the annual Ardara Show; the year before, Sarah Jessica Parker had been roped into handing out an agricultural prize, and had bought herself some Donegal tweed in Triona, a knitwear shop on the high street. A bit of probing revealed that she and her husband Matthew Broderick, the son of a Donegal family, have a cottage in nearby Kilcar.

But it takes more than yer woman from Sex and the City to turn heads in Donegal. Americans have been pitching up in search of a "roots experience" for generations - you would have thought the US was the county next door. Auntie Colette bought her cottage in 1975 from an American whose family had lived in it before emigrating in the 19th century. The day after my cousin's wedding in August, my girlfriend and I headed up to Glenveagh House, which, from 1937 to 1983, was owned by a wealthy American, Henry McIlhenny (his grandfather emigrated from Donegal to the US where he'd made a bob or two inventing the gas meter). McIlhenny would invite friends such as Greta Garbo to Glenveagh.

Today, the extensive gardens McIlhenny developed are well worth a visit, as is Glenveagh National Park, but prepare yourself for the interior of the heavily crenellated house - "camp" doesn't really do it justice.

I return to Donegal more often now. I've cousins who live a few miles from me in London, or at the end of a cheap flight in Belfast or Dublin. But it's in a small town on the weather-blasted northwest coast of Ireland that we seem to enjoy getting together. As I said, big families are funny things.

GETTING THERE

City of Derry is the closest airport to Donegal. The only airlines operating flights are Ryanair (0906 270 5656; www.ryanair.com) from Stansted and Loganair from Glasgow and Manchester on behalf of British Airways (0870 850 9 850; www.ba.com).

There is a regular direct bus service between the Derry Bus Depot at Foyle Street and Donegal (00 353 74 912 1309; www.buseireann.ie). The journey takes around an hour and a half. From there it's a 15-minute drive by taxi to Ardara.

STAYING THERE

The Woodhill House Hotel, Ardara (00 353 74 954 1112; www.woodhillhouse.com). Double rooms start at EUR90 (£64), including breakfast.

Nesbitt Arms Hotel, Ardara (00 353 74 954 1103; www.nesbittarms.com). Double rooms start at EUR90 (£64), including breakfast.

SHOPPING THERE

Triona Design, Ardara (00 353 74 954 1422; www.trionadesign.com).

EATING AND DRINKING THERE

Nancy's Pub, Front Street, Ardara (00 353 74 954 1187).

VISITING THERE

Glenveagh National Park (00 353 74 91 37090; www.npws.ie). The park and gardens are open year-round, admission free. Glenveagh Castle opens March-November, daily from 10am-6.30pm. Admission EUR2.50 (£1.80).

FURTHER INFORMATION

County Donegal Tourism (00 353 74 912 1160; www.donegaldirect.com).

Tourism Ireland (0800 039 7000; www.tourismireland.com).

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