Three and one-half hours of driving gets you from Westport, Co. Mayo to a pub in Lifford where they give you directions to St. Johnston. Just up the road in Carrigans is Mount Royd, a nice Country Home that became our home for about a week. Its cheaper staying in Donegal because euros are the currancy of choice rather than that Brit money used just over the border. We were close to everything we needed; the genealogical records in Derry, the Innishowen Peninsula, the Ulster American Folk Park (what a pleasant surprise) James Fleming and J.B. Shannon and that pub in Lifford which just so happened to be the home pub for the goalie on the Irish World Cup team. I will digress for a moment now that we are talking soccer. We got up at 6 AM one day, drove to the pub to get a seat (hahaha, fat chance) to watch the 7:30 match between Ireland and the Cameroon) and along with the other 200 people who got there before us, stood toe to toe with pint in hand and cheered the Irish team on to a respectable 1-1 tie with the favored Africans. Good crack, that was!! Drinking before 8:00 AM is different. It seems now looking back over my many trips to Ireland that I have not given Donegal the respect it deserves. Seems so far out of the way when you are down on the Ring of Kerry or over in Dublin. What a mistake, it is beautiful and it is Ireland without the hordes of tourists you find in the south. The Innishowen Peninsula presents quite an unexpected picture, it is more heavily populated, with picture postcard viliages and tidy homes than most rural areas of Ireland and the views of the sea are nice, as long as you can see the sea through the rain. Without question the single most important device for a successful Irish motoring experience is the windshield wiper and ours worked flawlessly. I mentioned James Fleming and JB Shannon because they became important as local historians and offered us every piece of knowledge they had. Some of you have purchased the two Laggan Presbytery books from me and those that have not, should. They are THE most detailed records of early Presbyterians in Ulster and if you read closely you will find JB Shannons name in the book thanking him for his assistance. In other words, he was the source for most of the technical info. in the 1975 reprint of Lecky's 1905 and 1908 original version. He is also over 90 and is the last person alive who had anything to do with these books and we got to sit with him and pick his brain and listen to old stories and drink hot tea. That meeting was worth the price of an airplane ticket. When he dies, a chapter in Donegal history will be gone forever, and it was special to have had the chance to peek inside. On the Way to Derry, Robert Cowan