We left The Lough Eske Castle and drove to Donegal for a look around. Donegal township has a unique town square, it is Triangular! It looks strange but works. We had a drive by look at the castle, again like all castles here it has had a very interesting history.
Our next destination was further south, The Devils Chimney Waterfall and Glencar Lough. On the way, as we do, we had an interesting and diverse conversation with Martin. From the meaning of town names (did you know that “bally” means “town of” and “Doon” means “fort”).
We also found out that The Wild Colonial Boy, Jack Duggan, a bush ranger in Victoria in the early 1800’s, came from Castlemaine, County Kerry.
We called into a Presbyterian Church, St Columba, Drumcliffe on the way to the falls. It was built in 1809, built in a neo-gothic style and is very plain inside, lacking the ornate finish that Catholic and Anglican churches have. It is notable for being the final resting place of the famous Irish poet William B Yeats.
We got to The Devils Chimney waterfall area in County Sligo (pronounce Slay-gull) late morning. It is the more spectacular of two popular waterfalls in the area, but because you cant get right to the fall base it is less popular, so less people. And we like that. Access to the viewing areas was via a trail through a farm and then a lush forest. Where the forest and farm met there was a small herd of donkeys. We tried to feed them some grass and sampled the local blackberries growing at the edge of the path. Onwards we went up a moderate hill and to 3 or 4 viewing points. The waterfall cascades down from a height of 30 or 40m to the bottom of the cliff. It is fairly narrow, and easily gets caught by the wind. The water swings around like a pendulum in the breeze. In places it hugs the cliff and flows over moss covered areas before falling in streams. A very pretty falls. The views behind us of the valley and Glancar Lough were beautiful, lush green fields and valleys into the distance.
After lunch in Sligo, we went to see the Keash Caves. These are limestone caves perched 200m high up on a steep hill/mount. They are natural features and are striking from the road below. The are 16 caves, and most can be seen from the car park area below, black holes in the white limestone escarpment above. The trail up there is very steep in places, and it is an effort to get to them. Once up there you can only visit 2 of the caves, the others are deemed unsafe to enter. Archaeologists have found animal remains dating back to around 12,000 years. There is also evidence of human activity in the caves dating back to the early Iron Age and over several periods of Irish history. They were very muddy inside and interesting. We were told that the caves are all interconnecting and some extend very deeply into the cliff.
We left the hills at around 2:30pm and went into County Mayo and our farm stay for the next two nights.
We had a relaxing afternoon, dinner at a local pub and settled back for a night in front of our “bog” fuelled fire!
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