(Ireland)...It took me twenty five years of travelling before I reached my neighbouring country of Ireland. That’s disgraceful. When I was young, it really was not a place anyone thought about going to; when I was older, I looked to mainland Europe; when I moved to the United States, South America beckoned.
Recently, however, the opportunity rose to get there. I drove across the River Foyle from Derry, after first seeing Bull Park, where pop-punk band The Undertones (www.theundertones.com) took the cover shot for their first album (the wall has been demolished, for health-and-safety reasons, so I was told—hardly punk) and entering County Donegal (Contae Dhún na nGall in Gaelic), which is technically part of Ulster, but obviously not part of Northern Ireland. Everything hereabouts is green, and it is not falling hook, line and sinker into a cliché to state that I saw at least 30 shades of that colour.
My first stop was a small castle that I saw standing proud in a field of golden corn. I aimed my car in its direction, but it still took a while to find. I did not turn into a farm, thinking this was not the way. When I returned, I left a polite note on my dashboard and set to walking around a field of wheat, over a stile, through some barbed wire, across another field and over a stone wall. I saw a man pushing a bicycle coming in my direction. He lived in Australia but was born just down the hill and remembered seeing Burt Castle (for this was it; see photograph above) every morning when he was a child. This was the first time that he had returned. 
The castle is ruined and consists of a single keep, not too large in size, the holes in one side making it look like a sad phantom. I walked inside. It is a 16th-century castle and overlooks Loch Swilley, which divides the promontory of Inishowen, which contains Malin Head, Ireland’s most northerly point, and the small promontory of Fanad, where I decided to head. The castle’s date is known, because a coin dating from 1547 was once found inside. It might have had a few skirmishes connected with it, and it has been a ruin since the mid-19th century.
One legend about it consists of a pregnant girl who was spurned by the father. Distraught, she walked to the loch, where a bevy of swans surrounded her. When they returned to the loch, she followed them and was drowned. In revenge, the girl’s father crept into the castle and killed the unborn baby’s father and threw him out of the window. On nights with a full moon, supposedly, swans gather on the stretch of the loch's shore closest to Burt Castle and create a curious and chilling cacophony.
Onto the peninsula of Fanad (I cannot remember why I decided to go there, as opposed to anywhere else), I stopped at the gorgeous village of Rathmullan (Ráth Maoláin), where are two or three pubs that look completely the part of the tourist’s image of an Irish bar. The Flight of the Earls was from here, in which Irish chieftains and noblemen fled Ireland for Spain, hoping that the Catholic kingdom could help evict the English. This was several years after the Spanish Armada was defeated, and also after the death of Elizabeth I, when King James I was on the throne, someone perhaps who was a little more sympathetic to the Irish cause. I was there almost exactly 400 years to the day on which the lords left.
In Rathmullen there is a wonderful, ruined Carmelite abbey from 1516 in the middle of which grew a thick carpet of orange lilies, and it was also here where Wolfe Tone, leader of the Republican Irishmen was captured. Quite some history! The coastal road is beautiful and leads to Ballymastocker Beach, recently voted the second-most beautiful beach in the world, so I was told by an Indian woman in Rathmullan. (First place went to Anse Victoria in the Seychelles, so second place is not too shabby.) The narrow road plunges down past purple heather to the beach, and a great panorama of the entire strand can be had by parking beside a cliff just before the road descends.
I drove back via Dargan Hill, Tamney and Rosnakill. Directly to the south of Burt Castle, I stopped by the famous Iron Age fort of Grianan of Aileach (Grianán Ailigh), which is impressive but not so much fun as Burt to scramble around. It is a ruin, but an exceptionally well-preserved one, which means you cannot get anywhere near it. Local mythology says that it was built by a powerful king called Daghda of Tuatha de Danaan, or People of the Goddess Duna.
The roads around it are very narrow and both so completely empty and seldom used that healthy crops of grass grow down their centres. Three young boys jumped out of a field and raced me a kilometre or so down to the main road, knowing that to pass them I would have to also squash them. I enjoyed the game. I headed to the small town of Raphoe, which can claim an even more ancient history, being named Ráth Bhoth by the Irish, which means “Fort of the Huts” and refers to the monastery which St. Columba supposedly founded in the sixth century. It also boasts that it can claim a “second most” award, that of the second-highest town in Ireland.
I had lunch on a patch of green in its centre called the Diamond, before getting directions to the stone circle of Beltany, which has 64 stones and a diameter of 44 metres. The stones surround a tumulus and supposedly were placed there to face the nearby hill of Tullyrap. I had to park my car at the end of a lane and walk along a narrow, treed path that after 400 metres suddenly gives a view of the complete site. It is a wonderful way in which to reach them and its only residents, a flock of 100 or so sheep.