The Wandering Genealogist: If we could only speak Irish ...

Today was a travel and sightseeing day although we revised the planned itinerary somewhat. A trip to Malin Head at the "top" of Co Donegal was just too far, so I've put that off for another occasion. We decided on a bit more of the Wild Atlantic Way. Now most sane people who want to travel from Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh, and go to Limavady in Co Londonderry, would not even give a passing thought to Donegal. But I'm not most people and some days I wonder on which side of sane I'm living. Today - it was that Other side. Here's how it went.

Departure went smoothly as we headed towards Omagh and on via Strabane to Letterkenny with a destination of Glenveagh National Park in Donegal. There is a lovely, not ancient, castle with beautiful gardens. I'd been there in 2008 but was more than happy to make a return visit. We decided to use actual paper maps and ignore Google, except for getting us through Enniskillen to the correct highway. That turned out quite well as we didn't need to be told where to go after all. The route was well-marked and easy to follow. The plan was working. OK - insert the questions: "Really? How long will this continue?" Answer: very briefly. And just to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

There's a roundabout at that border, and one road leads to a Tourist Information office. It was well marked, but alas, closed. I should say that the day had been intermittently sunny and raining, and sometimes both at the same time up to that point and the rest of the day was no different. The windshield wipers were so busy I swear they were sighing at one point. We had discovered at that closed tourist office that one of the headlights on our car was not working. As we were not going to be out after dark it was not an immediate concern. And we had topped up the oil before leaving in the morning. We could cope. Hah!

Time to have another go at that roundabout and set out on our own. Again the road was well signed, by this time in English and Irish, and we easily found Glenveagh National Park, had lunch at the cafeteria and prepared to tour the castle and gardens. We took the shuttle to the castle - alas it was also closed, but at least the beautiful gardens were open for our enjoyment. We enjoyed them in the sun and the rain, well, the enjoyment was mostly when it wasn't raining if I'm totally honest.

When we had seen more than enough beautiful flowers we got the shuttle bus back to the parking lot, ready for phase 2 of the day. Phase one had gone according to plan. Well, that old saying "the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay" or something like that, was prophetic.

The helpful staff at Glenveagh gave us enough directions to get us on our newly chosen route to see a bit more of the Wild Atlantic Way, heading towards Creeslough and continuing in the circle of highway N56 back to Letterkenny - that place with the closed tourist office. It should take about 45 minutes we were told. But they had no idea who they were directing. Getting lost is a specialty of mine and I outdid myself today.

Off we went, in good faith, that this time the route was so simple that even we could not go wrong. Perhaps if we hadn't entered the Gaeltacht it would have been fine. Neither of us knows Irish and up to this point in our lives (getting the senior discount everywhere even without asking) that hasn't proven to be an issue.

For those of you who don't know, An Gaeltacht on a sign indicates an area where Irish is spoken as a first language and the previously bilingual signs are now all in the Irish language. For some places you can easily figure out which place written in English on your map, is the place named in Irish on the signs. That didn't work out very well today.

At no time were either of us aware of having headed off that loop of a highway. We were enchanted with the views and very happy we'd diverted from the normal route from our starting point to our destination. We just missed that one turn - because we couldn't read the signs. If you have a map of Donegal handy (doesn't everyone?) we were at Glenveagh, heading to Creeslough then around the top of the loop to Milford, Ramelton and back to Letterkenny.

In time it became evident that we had been driving for more than 45 minutes and had not seen a sign that we were en route back to Letterkenny. Or any other recognizable places. We couldn't read the place names. We had passed through Dunfanaghy twice when we realized we were in a spot of bother. We had the same feeling at Gortahork. We weren't supposed to be anywhere near either one. Somehow we had missed the turn at the top of the planned loop. It's entirely possible that the places we considered the most scenic were on the wrong road. The song "We're on the one road, maybe the wrong road" came to mind. Repeatedly.

A bit of mild panic set in and we called upon Google - shortly before cursing her/it. That voice with a penchant for small roads leading off into the wilderness was back and taking revenge for having been ignored all day to that point. We finally found a place to ask for directions. We were only about an hour away from Letterkenny. Whaaaat? The directions we got did get us back to the right road, but it seemed that our destination was receding into the fog now shrouding my brain, so we stopped and asked at a gas station. It was the right road. By that point we were only about 50 minutes from Letterkenny. 20 minutes of driving and we were 10 minutes closer? We also asked for the Irish version of Letterkenny but only saw it on a sign when the English version also appeared.

Eventually, we found the place just in time for rush hour. If you don't care much for roundabouts when there is little traffic, you really won't love them when everyone is at the roundabout you are trying to enter.

But, now using only the map again, with Judi keeping an eye on the signs and that they corresponded with where we were headed, we managed to find the right route, via Derry, to our destination of Limavady.

Our accommodations are quite lovely and the host had thoughtfully provided a lovely supply of essentials like milk, bread, soup, bacon, eggs, and much more. I was more than grateful that we didn't have to try to locate a restaurant for our evening meal. We even had a half dozen of bottles of cold Budweiser in the fridge. There are fewer bottles now and the beer went down a treat.

The evening was spent watching mostly YouTube videos of old SNL episodes on TV. We had watched a bit of news but decided on something that would keep us in holiday mode when we found TV access to youtube.

I'll download a bunch of photos, add them here for your viewing pleasure, then turn out the lights for a nice long rest. My good humour has returned after our trying afternoon of being lost in a land where the road signs were a mystery to us and we were so ignorant that we didn't realize when we'd gone so far off track. But the views were lovely and probably worth all of the aggravation. I can say that now that we finally found our way.

The photos that follow somehow uploaded out of order. If this is a problem for you, just skip the pictures altogether. I can't seem to move them around without messing them up.