“It is still said that on nights with a full moon, swans gather on the stretch of the lough’s shore closest to the castle and create a curious and chilling cacophony.”

There is a chunk of the Republic of Ireland that appears—geographically—as though it should be part of Northern Ireland. It is County Donegal, and it wraps itself around Northern Ireland’s western border like an open hand around a fist; its southern edge is no more than six miles in width, from the Atlantic Ocean to a sharp point of the Northern Ireland county of Fermanagh, while its northernmost point, Malin Head, is farther north than the northernmost tip of Northern Ireland. (Adding to the confusion is that County Donegal, as well as its fellow Republic of Ireland counties of Cavan and Monaghan, is part of the province of Ulster, even though usually—wrongly?—Ulster is used to describe the six Northern Ireland counties.)

Derry faces County Donegal and is actually on the same side of the River Foyle, and a 10-minute drive can take you from this beautiful walled city to the Irish border.

I was in Northern Ireland for a week researching the story that is in print in this issue’s Car & Travel and had a morning off from appointments. The call of the Republic proved irresistible.

The first change you’ll notice crossing into the Republic of Ireland into County Donegal (in Gaelic Irish: Contae Dhún na nGall) is that the currency changes from Pounds sterling to Euros, although the gas stations on either side take both currencies. After 15 minutes of uninteresting businesses lining the N13 road through Bridge End, I emerged into a glorious green world of neat fields punctured by a high, square castle. Reaching it took 20 minutes, as I drove down one narrow lane after another, each bordered by hedgerows higher than my car. My sense of direction in this emerald labyrinth did not help me get any nearer, so instead I traced back my steps and drove through an entrance to a farm. After not finding anyone there, I wrote a note of apology, hoping it was permissible to walk through the farm’s land, adding that I would close all gates behind me (if one thing in the British and Irish countryside will avail yourself to the locals, it is this act. Failure to do so will earn you an opprobrious condemnation—often given as a shriek from an unseen local—as a “townie.” Amid leafy lanes, there almost is no worse insult).

Even so, reaching this castle—Burt Castle—was not easy. Just as I neared, a thick hedge would block my way, or high stinging nettles appeared, just as effectively barring my passage. Finally, I did find a gap, strode over a cleared field and bumped into a man pushing a bicycle.

“I’ve always wanted to come to this place,” he told me. “I live in Australia now, have done so for many years, but I was born just down the road, in Burnfoot, and I remember seeing the castle every day from my house.”

Standing proud in a field of golden corn, on the other side of a stone wall, was the castle, which was constructed in the 16th century and overlooks Lough Swilley, which divides the promontories of Inishowen and Fanad and empties into the Atlantic Ocean (the word “lough” in Irish is the equivalent of “loch” in Scottish parlance). The castle’s exact date of origin is unknown, but a coin dating from 1547 was found inside. A ruin since 1833, the castle might have been involved in a few skirmishes, and it had the job of looking for signs of the attacking Spanish Armada in the late 1580s.

One legend about Burt involves a pregnant girl who was spurned by the father-to-be, who lived in the castle. Distraught, she walked toward the lough. Soon she was surrounded by a gaggle of swans, which entered the water. She followed them and was drowned. In revenge, the girl’s father crept into Burt, killed the unborn baby’s father and threw him out of a window. It is still said that on nights with a full moon, swans gather on the stretch of the lough’s shore closest to the castle and create a curious and chilling cacophony.

The castle (in Gaelic Irish: Caisleán Bhirt) itself is not structurally impressive, with only three stories, but it does command a special spot on a crest of a rise overlooking fields of wheat and, farther off, green sheep pastures.

I drove farther north up the peninsula of Fanad, which is where, supposedly, begins the Gaeltacht, a region in which Gaelic Irish still is spoken. The language clings to the western edges of Ireland, in such spots as Connemara, Dingle and Donegal, and like many fringe languages, it is enjoying something of a comeback.

My first stop was the small town of Rathmullan (Ráth Maoláin), where are two or three pubs that look completely the part of the tourist’s image of an Irish bar. It was from here that occurred in 1607 the Flight of the Earls, in which Irish chieftains and noblemen fled Ireland for Spain, hoping that that Catholic kingdom could help them evict the English from their home. This was several years after the Spanish Armada was defeated, and also after the death of Elizabeth I, when the Catholic King James I was on the throne, someone perhaps who might have been a little more sympathetic to the Irish cause. I noticed that I was standing in Rathmullan five days shy of 400 years since the lords left; it was also here that Wolfe Tone, leader of the Republican Irishmen, was captured in 1798. The town has a ruined Carmelite abbey, dating from 1516, in the middle of which was growing a thick carpet of orange lilies. Quite some history, and quite some scenery, too, a pleasant beach on the edge of Lough Swilley and the rugged hills of Inishowen beyond.

An Indian women who lived in Rathmullan saw me looking at a map.
“Under no circumstances must you miss Ballymastocker Beach,” she told me. “It is one of our pride and glories.” Then, to reiterate and firmly drive her point home to me, she added, “It recently was voted by the Observer [a British newspaper] as the second-most beautiful beach in the world.” (As first place went to Anse Victoria on the Indian Ocean island of the Seychelles, that accolade did not sound too shabby.)

The narrow road along the coast to this beach is an attraction in its own right and plunges down hairpin bends past purple heather. Suddenly, the road turns to the left, with the beach able to be seen to the right a hundred feet or so below. Seals swim here regularly. Park the car safely and have a look down at the pinprick people walking their pinprick dogs on wide sands. It is beautiful, just as the woman told me and the judges agreed, but if it came to wanting to swim, I’d chose the Seychelles beach every time, I think.

I drove back via Dargan Hill, Tamney and Rosnakill, the countryside dipping between hills, over small rivers slowly moving to the sea and by prim cottages standing sentry on crossroads and chipped village place-name signs hiding behind trees and hedges.

A circle of driving completed, I then moved directly south of Burt Castle and 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. The wind whipped relatively mercilessly up here, too, the long access road looping first to the left, then to the right and then straight uphill where a couple more looping bends might have been more friendly to car and nerves.

Locals say that the fort was built by a powerful king called Daghda of Tuatha dé Danaan, or People of the Goddess Duna, ruler of an ancient Irish people whose origins have been lost or are the subject of conjecture and mythology. It certainly was built before the Common Era and was the seat of a local, powerful kingdom.

Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known as Ptolemy, the Roman astronomer and geographer who lived and worked in Egypt in the 1st and 2nd centuries, mentions a spot called Regia (which scholars believe is Grianan of Aileach) in his Geographia, one of only a handful of Irish sites thus honored. Ireland at the time was the farthest west that the world reached; after that it was thought that all that remained was a huge watery cliff plunging down without end.

The roads from the fort are very narrow and both so completely empty and seldom used that healthy crops of grass grow down their centers. Three young boys jumped out of a field and raced me on cycles a mile or so down to the main road, knowing that to pass them I also would have to squash them. I was very happy to drive through this scenery at 10 mph and enjoy the game.

My last County Donegal stop was the small town of Raphoe, which also can claim ancient history, being named Ráth Bhoth by the Irish, meaning “Fort of the Huts,” a reference to a monastery that St. Columba supposedly founded there in the 6th century. Like Ballymastocker, it also boasts a “secondmost” award, that of being the second-highest town in Ireland.

I had lunch on a patch of green in its centre called the Diamond, where I read in a local guidebook of how dangerous it was to be the bishop of Raphoe. Take in case the example of John O’Culenan, who held that relatively thankless task from 1625 to 1661. Often arrested and harassed, he was captured in 1643 by the English and asked to choose between death by drowning or death by musket. Ready for the worst, his faith came through for him. Firstly, his executioners’ guns failed to work, and, secondly, as he was then about to be dispatched at the point of a sword, an English general appeared and gave him pardon, which is a better fate than that received by 70 or so of his defenders. Instead, he spent four years in a dungeon that for all purposes was worse than death. He managed his freedom in a prisoner swap, but three years later, following another battle, he realized all was up and escaped to Belgium where he died eight years later.

I asked the proprietor of the sandwich shop the directions to the nearby stone circle of Beltany, which has 64 stones and a diameter of 144 feet. The stones surround a tumulus that was supposedly 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 a thousand feet or so suddenly gives a view of the complete site. It is a wonderful way in which to reach the circle and its only residents, a flock of sheep.

A sculpted head was found here many years ago, which scholars believe links the site—and others in the northern portions of Ireland—with ancient races in both modern-day Great Britain and Germany. It is 10 inches in height and has large ears, eyes and mouth, all made to stand out by the inclusion of chiseled dots around them.

You now are less than five miles from the border with Northern Ireland.

History has a huge span here, all the way from mythical races to contests in recent Sunday supplements.