County Donegal – Travel Guide At Wikivoyage

Understand

Donegal is a large, thinly populated county in the north of the Republic of Ireland, further north than any part of Northern Ireland, and connected to the rest of the Republic by a strip only 9 km wide. Glaciers gave it a fractal coastline, gouging out large fjords such as Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly, and innumerable smaller inlets, peninsulas and islands. Except for its eastern edge, it's mountainous with poor soil and a cool wet climate. However ancient travel (even locally, to market) was better by sea than across the hills and bogs, so early Christian leaders established monasteries, and people fished. Vikings sailed up the fjords and settled (hence Dún na nGall, "Fort of the Foreigners", similar to "Galway") but were ousted in the 11th century, and the area came under Gaelic rule from clans such as Uí Neill and Ó Domhnaill. By the 12th century the Normans in their chain mail were clanking into the south of Ireland, grabbing the best land, and dividing it into shires or counties. And as far as this affected Donegal, they might as well have drawn county boundaries on the Moon.

The next big push from England was under the Tudors from the 16th century, and this extended further and deeper, as the arable land was divvied up into "plantations" settled by loyal colonists. Still the ancient kingdoms of Tír Conaill ("Land of Conal", Donegal) and Tyrone held out. The last act, almost, was the Nine Years War of 1593-1603 which broke them, and the Gaelic chiefs fled into exile. Just as the Tudors were congratulating themselves, yet another rebellion broke out, and Derry was burned before the trouble was crushed. That city was therefore reinforced with walls, a London business consortium took it over and called it Londonderry, and colonisation efforts were re-doubled with loyal Protestants from Scotland.

Ulster further east therefore became industrial and Protestant, while Donegal on its Atlantic fringe was neglected. Its people were subsistence farmers with little to spare even in the good years, and the famine years struck hard. Those who could, got out. Some of them formed Catholic enclaves in unfriendly Belfast, but more went on to Glasgow or to North America.

Irish striving for independence led to the Anglo-Irish conflict, and in 1921 created the state (later the Republic) of Ireland, at the price of partition. Six of the nine counties of Ulster remained within the United Kingdom, while Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal joined the south. This blighted both sides of the border and especially Donegal, which was suddenly cut off by a hard border from both north and south, neglected by Dublin and cast under the same pall as Belfast and Derry. Only with the Good Friday Agreement and open border since 1998 has it been able to re-launch itself as a tourist destination, and this is still a work in progress. There has been an ugly rash of holiday bungalows and second homes, but facilities and amenities are not as available as in, say, Kerry, especially out of season. The advantage for the independent traveller is that mass tourism has never arrived here and you can discover the place for yourself.