Tuesday 1 April 2008

A Little Bit About Donegal



If you look at a map of Ireland you will find County Donegal up in the North West corner (top left).

County Donegal is one of the largest counties in Ireland and a great place to live or visit. We enjoy the benefits of living in what is still largely a rural part of Ireland and yet a drive of a little over 3 hours will have us in Dublin or Belfast in little more than a 2 hour drive.

The county has hundreds of miles of coast line and probably more large sandy beaches than any other county in Ireland, many of which are Blue Flag beaches which means they meet high standards of water quality, safety etc. Ireland in the current year has 80 Blue Flag Beaches of which 11 are in County Donegal. You can read more here http://www.blueflag.org/Criteria/Beaches.

There are mountains and cliffs and thousands of acres of dramatic scenery to take in. A few miles from our cottage is Slieve League, the highest accessible sea cliffs in Europe at 1972 feet/595 km, making their height over twice the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The weather here is temperate all year round, benefiting as we do from the effects of the Gulf Stream which sweeps round our coastline. While like the rest of Ireland, we do get plenty of rain, Donegal hit a record for the most hours of sunshine in Ireland in July 2007, so, gladly, it's not all rain!

1 comment:

Catherine McGlynn said...

how many beaches are in donegal?