A look around my island(Ireland)

[flash]

In this thread we will take a look around the beautiful island of Ireland.
we will begin in Donegal

Donegal (Dhún na nGall) is at the north west of the island and is the fourth largest county in Ireland but with a population of only around 15000 it is one of the most uninhabited. It is made up of a lot of small towns around the coast and fishing and the manifacture of Donegal tweed are the two main industries. Rory Gallagher and Enya are two of Donegals most famous.

Donegal is one of my favourite counties, it is baron and rugged and very untouched, the winters(and summers) can be pretty brutal with storms coming in off the Atlantic, don't know if I could live there but it is one of the most beautiful places in the world to visit, it has an amazing coastline with unspoilt beaches, some of the highest cliffs in Europe and scenery that kinda brings you back in time.

This is Mount Errigal which stands at 749 metres the highest peak

our destination is on the other side of Errigal.
it is a beautiful drive around the coast, the roads are pretty tight so you don't really have any other option than to enjoy the scenery.
here are some photos from the road
















the sun was setting so we set up camp for the night

[flash]

when we woke up the next morning it had turned out we camped in a pretty cool place(didn't notice the night before cause it was pretty dark and we were shitfaced)
Beach at Bunbeg


we packed up and set off along the coast again to get to Magheroarty point to catch the ferry to Tory Island.
A few pictures on the way

this device provides electric for the whole of Donegal








We caught the ferry to Tory Island
here is Mount Errigal again



Tory Island is a small Island 9 miles off the coast of Donegal and is the second most northerly point of Ireland, it id 2.5 miles long and .75 miles wide, in the winter it can become isolated from the mainland for a couple of months at a time due to rough seas,



our first sighting of Tory


Tory Island has a population of 155 and Irish is the main language but english is understood.Tory has had its own King since the 6th century, the current king is Patsy Dan Rogers who meets every new visitor that goes to the Island.
Tory has a pub, a cafe, a shop, a school and a church. it is that exposed to the weather that nothing really grows on the island, there are no trees at all, i thought i found one but a local assured me it was just a big bush.

This is where we set up our camp, you will see the cliffs in the back ground in a bit

[flash]

we settled into the pub played a few games of pool when we were joined by the King of Tory, No police on Tory so the pub stays open until everyone has had their fill. We sat listening to the kings stories of mythical sea creatures and giant dogs untill the small hours, although the topic of conversation eventually turned round to latvian hookers, This King knows how to enjoy himself, he wobbled out of the pub and
the pub closed. We went and to our camp site and enjoyed a bottle of whiskey around the fire,the sun was gonna be coming up soon so we took a walk to the cliffs on the north side of the island.









The light house you see is one of the 3 Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) reference points in Ireland





A beautiful sunrise that morning










So thats a little look at a little bit of Donegal, i will keep adding new places to this thread from time to time

[flash]

Maybe a clever mod could resize the pictures so they don't stretch the screen cause i'm stupid!!

[davearn]

Excellent pics, Flash. Great scenery.

So now I know when I land on your island of Ireland I won't be ired by the land.

Cheers mate.

[Tao]

Great Stuff, makes me thirsty for a Guiness. Have a green!

[sunsetter]

amazing pics flash looks amazing out there

[Gallowspole]

Spent a long Easter weekend in Donegal quite a few years ago. Pubs never shut and we only got to the B&B once - we just slipped into unconsciousness where we drank. If I could remember it fully, it would probably be one of my best holidays ever.

Thanks for the pics. Stunning scenery.

[extras]

Very nice, flash. Very nice indeed.

[Mathos]

In a nutshell, Bloody Fantastic:-

A Green for you and 'Old Ireland'

[CharleyFarley]

Between you in Ireland and Mathos in Lancs you are breaking my heart with bringing back such fine memories of these places.

There is an ache in my brain to revisit and repeat the drinking , golfing, musical moments to be had there.

Wonderful, thanks Flash, and I ain't so old either.

[jizzybloke]

Looks nice Flash!

latvian hookers

This bit sounded interesting!

[donny]

How much is LT/ST in Donegal?

[tayto]

Lovely pictures of my home county, was born in Derry reared in Donegal and you have captured the best of it.

I would still be there except for the rain and the cold wind that never seems to go away. Though I miss Donegal i don't think I could ever live there again after spending over 7 years in Thailand.
Did you try out Dixons pub near the Tory ferry? a good friend of mine owns it and he serves a wonderful pint of guinness.
I got me edumecation in Falcarragh just a few miles away from Magherroarty.

[flash]

Thanks for all the feedback

Next we go to the village of Carlingford( Cairlinn) in northern County Louth
It is situated between Carlingford Lough and Slieve Foy, sometimes known as Carlingford Mountain.
The name of the village, Carlingford, is explained by examining the two constituent words "carling" and "ford".
"Carling" or "Carlinn" from Gaelic: "Cathair + Linn": "Cathair" meaning city and "Linn" meaning pool. Literally "City of the Pool".
"Fjord" or "fiord" from Norwegian, from Old Norse "fjorthr" meaning a firth or ford. Indicating a relatively narrow inlet of the sea.
Combining both therefore leads to Carlingford - "City of the narrow channel pool"

Carlingford is a medieval village and archaeological artefacts remain relatively intact, my parents had a small cottage here so i spent a lot of my summers around this area, my first job was picking winkles on the shore here.

here is a few pictures taken with my phone











and this is what a pint of Guinness should look like,

too many of these and you might end up spending the night in the village drunk tank



Carlingford is a great little village that has won the annual "tidy town" comp in Ireland for a lot of consecutive years, the main industry is tourism as there is nowhere else in Ireland with so many examples of medieval buildings so close together.
the village itself has around 6 pubs that serve decent food, a few shops a hostel and a couple of small hotels, everyone is made feel very welcome in Carlingford and I always have a good time here.

Dominican Friary (Mainistir Chairlinn in Irish). The Dominicans were established in Carlingford in 1305








I remember when i was growing up going on the annual Leprechaun hunt in the mountains behind the village, ceramic leprechauns would be hidden on the mountain and have a different value on each of them, so you had maybe a thousand people searching through streams, under rocks and through the gorge bushes for a leprechauns. it was at this very place that i learnt the power of gravity, we would sit at the bottom of the mountain and cans of beer woud just roll down to us, which is pretty cool when you are 12.



Unfortunatly the waters around Carlingford are some of the most polluted in Ireland
its location is opposite the Sellafield nuclear power plant in England

[flash]

I will do a more detailed post about belfast when i gather up a few more photo's.
these are taken from Victoria Square, a newly opened shopping complex

in the distance you can see Northern Irelands Parliament Buildings, known as Stormont because of its location in the Stormont area of Belfast.



this is Belfasts leaning tower of Pisa, the Albert Clock
Built in the 1860's on wooden piles on bog land the top leans around 4 foot out of plumb.
this also used to be the part of town where you could pick up the services of a lady of the night, a lot of money has been pumped into Belfast in recent years and it has cleaned up its image now that we live in more peaceful times.



Here is Belfast's most famous landmark the Harland and Wolff shipyard the 2 crames you see are called Samson and Goliath the taller of the 2 standing at 106m.

At its peak Harland and Wolff were Northern Irelands biggest employer, with 35,000 employees it was quite an operation.

And why is this landmark so Famous?



This is where the most famous boat ever made was built, the HMS TITANIC
a lot of development have gone into the "Titanic Quarter" with new industry and residential buildings, the shipyard is still in operation and with the biggest dry dock in the world still gets some impressive looking ships there. Tom Hanks was using some warehouses there last year to make a movie, something about trains i think


We will take a closer look around the streets of belfast another time

[peterpan]

Look forward to the rest Flash, great photos. Appreciated

[dirtydog]

Why are the cranes needed to be so high? they aint gonna stack containers that high.

[dirtydog]

Just realised, they are for lifting ships?

[flash]

Yeah for lifting ships and lifting parts of ships when they were building ships. they would have been used to lift those four giant smoke stacks onto the Titanic. must have been quite a sight seeing the Titanic being built, at that time it would have dominated the skyline.

that would have been a pretty cool construction thread

To be honest I find it a bit strange that they are making such a celebration of a ship that sank.

[sabang]

I never made it to Donegal (neighbouring County) but my mothers side comes from the Westport area of county Mayo. Connemara is absolutely gorgeous.

[dirtydog]

they would have been used to lift those four giant smoke stacks onto the Titanic.

I've always wondered why the Titanic sunk so quickly, Irish labor perchance

[jizzybloke]

Didn't all 3 sister ships sink?

[flash]

there were two sister ships of the Titanic, the Britannic, and the Olympic.
The Britannic was sunk by a mine in 1916 somewhere close to Greece.
The Olympic was retired after 24 years of service.

[tayto]

CNN - Memories bittersweet on Titanic's 86th anniversary - April 14, 1998


Construction marked by problems

Photograph of the original Titanic
However, not all memories linked to the ship's construction at Harland and Wolff dockyard are positive ones. The yard's giant yellow gantries still dominate the Belfast skyline; its workers now build oil-drilling ships.
Seventeen workers were killed in accidents while building the Titanic and the ghosts of two -- Danny and Hugh -- are said to be still roaming the old Belfast slipway today.
Part of the Titanic's tale also is intertwined with the troubled history of Northern Ireland and the deep sectarian divide between Protestants and Catholics.
Catholic shipyard workers, the target of Protestant attacks, believed the ship sank because it carried hidden anti-Catholic messages. They claimed the ship bore the number 3909 ON, which when reversed says "No Pope."