IT SEEMS like the world is packing up and heading to Donegal... last one out, shut the door.
“Donegal,” I sigh, as yet another friend talks of long white sandy beaches and friendly pubs with roaring fires and men playing the fiddle as the firelight sets their pint of stout a-glimmer.
Ah, the romance of the boreen and the cottage with the turf piled up against the wall and the shining plates upon the shelf.
For I am of Donegal – bewitched by the smell of roasting turf, at home in the great wildness of it and the white horses chasing each other into frills of foam on the beach.
My great grandfather who lost an arm to a train accident and made do with a hook, had a cottage at a railway crossing – his compensation – and he and his family opened and closed the gates for the trains coming through.
The family were drivers and firemen and inspectors on the trains. We are railway people and proud of it.
My great grandmother was forced off the Donegal land in the time of the shattered hearth by Lord Leitrim and had to tramp barefoot through the Sperrin mountains to find refuge with family near Dungiven.
And there are stories of the night when my grandparents lay on the floor in their Glenties cottage as the two sides shot at each other in the Irish Civil War. In daylight, both sides returned to apologise to the woman and her husband and her baby that got stuck, in the darkness, in the middle. No-one saw them.
So I am of Donegal – proud and warm and stubborn as my forefathers. And my eyes rest easy on the Blue Stacks and trace the fine line of the old railway track edging its way through Barnes Gap.
This is the view my grandfather would have seen on a day’s work driving the train on tracks that wove their way through butter yellow gorse and furze as the small clouds chased each other across a blue July sky.
Give me a cottage and an old black range and a poker and I shall poke.
So that though we were reared in a town where they locked up the swings on the Sunday and the only ones who got to use the local swimming pool were the born again Christians heading for a full immersion baptism, my heart belongs to Donegal.
Do I love long, lonely beaches? Yes, perhaps I do.
And my childhood was a Donegal one in the days when foreign holidays were truly exotic and it was far from that we were reared. And the only hint of exotica were the dolls dressed up in glittery Greek and Tunisian national costumes that my aunt Eileen would bring us as presents from her trips abroad.
We hugged them, loved them, treasured them, then shrugged our shoulders and packed our bags with swimming suits and Aran sweaters because, on a Donegal summer day, you never can tell and it could be all four seasons in one afternoon.
And nowadays, even though I’m a genetic local in Donegal, I’m not so sure I want to immerse myself in its wild beauty.
My mother and father liked the solitary nature of it all far too much. A cheery wave and off they’d go, striding out for a long walk across the dunes. We, meanwhile, were down on the beach, building sandcastles... and I was never a master builder.
There are only so many sea shells to collect and crabs to poke and the shop – a mile and a half up the road that only opened for an hour every day – was the height of excitement.
You had to walk – get your exercise. Say hello to the donkey on the way there. We filled our pockets with Emerald Toffees and liquorice toffees – the kind you could never get north of the border – and returned to the cottage.
So that though I do love it, honestly, I’m a city girl at heart. I dreamed of sky scapers glinting steel and silver in the sun and backdrops pierced by needle sharp towers. Give me the streets that never sleep. Give me all-night pubs and cinemas and art galleries and long leafy walks and bustling cafes.
But sometimes late at night, eyes closed softly in the darkness, I am back at my great grandfather’s cottage, walking under the old archway where the pink roses ramble and in through the door to the armchair by the sturdy black range.
It feels warm and friendly. It is a Donegal homecoming... I feel it still in the deep heart of me.
