Here's an article I came across from Pat Byrne's column in the Irish World newspaper from Sept 2003 Dear Donegal Going back to Donegal is like going back to fairyland. It is the mountains that make the place so strange and haunting, that raise the heart. And then the sea thundering in unhindered from the vast Atlantic gives the place an awe and power that few counties in Ireland possess. But it is the ordinary people of Donegal, I think, who give the place its unique and special warmth. There is something about the Donegal people that has remained unchanged in spite of all the upheavals in the world around them. They are the kind of people who welcome strangers and treat the passing world with a deference completely undeserved. No wonder so many war-weary, sectarian-saddened Belfast people head for Donegal when they want to get away from the awfulness of the knee-cappings and the kitchen-window assassinations of the Falls and the Ardoyne. I went there myself last week to let nature’s beauty and the gentle people work their magic on my mind and body. Donegal’s spell grips you as soon as you pass Letterkenny and see the mountains rising before you. You begin to feel at home and to relax after the dark uncertainty of Tyrone, where you don’t really know where you are. It is a return to the old decencies. We try to come to Donegal every year, to a spot on the northern coast between Creeslough and Port na Blath. Our view is of the camel’s hump of the Downings Peninsula beyond a wide inlet of blue water, framed by crescent-moons of beaches which are as unspoiled as if God had just created them. “It was love brought me here,” says the owner of a little man’s shop (Siopa Fir) in Falcarragh. “I talked a bit of Irish to the wife and learned it that way. And then the children came along and we talked to them.” Which, of course, is the best way to learn Irish or any language, marry one of the natives. You get so laid back in Donegal that you feel you have been here all your life. I looked out our big picture-window onto the long field where seven fat heifers grazed, taking their work seriously as they moved from one lush clump of grass to another, putting on the condition almost visibly as I looked. They looked at me, but got bored and returned to their work. I met a man on the beach from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and says he to me: “I’d settle for this any day, over that.” A major admission by an American. “We’re here for the day,” he added. ”I wish we were here for a month.’ Back in Creeslough, I went into a little shop and got talking to the owner about the Donegal football team. “They’re a brave wee team,” says he to me. “They could win it next year.” I had intended buying the newspaper, and he didn’t have one, so I was feeling a bit bad about not giving him any business. But he was as happy as a badger in rushes just talking to me. I think Creeslough folk are just happy to see strangers decorating their village and bringing their home place into the mainstream of greater Ireland. Driving out of Creeslough, I spotted something through the corner of my eye which you don’t see much of anywhere nowadays. A homemade signpost pointed its wooden finger to the attraction, which seemed to merit only one word, probably because everybody would have known about it. The word was: WAKE. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.754 / Virus Database: 504 - Release Date: 06/09/2004