Heather cascaded over the old stone wall along the path,and the wind was sharp with the pungent fragrance of the ocean.
Exhilarated by the brisk sea breeze, we climbed back up the road from the Causeway, had a cup of tea in the cafe, and continued on our way to our next stop, Londonderry (called simply "Derry" by the Irish). We had lunch at the River Inn, Londonderry's oldest bar, established in 1684. There we sampled some seafood chowder famous in this part of Ireland.
The Guild Hall was the center of the city, with a magnificent organ which had 50 stops and 3132 pipes. I was able to hear most of a lunch-time concert of J. S. Bach chorales.
Our local specialist in Londonderry was a young man named Ronan. He said his mother was Chinese and his father was Irish, and he was Buddhist. He said he was often asked, "Are you Catholic Buddhist or Protestant Buddhist?" He took us on a tour of the famous Londonderry walls. The city was untouched by the Nazi bombing in WWII, he said, because it was too far to fly on a tank of fuel.
Nearby, Cecil Frances Alexander was buried, author of Once in Royal David's City, and All Things Bright and Beautiful, one of my favorite hymns.
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.
Ronan was a philosophical local specialist - he hoped for peace in a kind of Buddhist way. It began to rain a little, and we all sheltered under a big oak tree near the city walls; in a little while, the sun came out again.
We continued driving south and were soon back in the Republic of Ireland again, stopping to see the 15th century Donegal Castle. Showers continued off and on.
We climbed into the Dartry mountains, beautiful countryside, as we approached the ocean again; rain spattered on the windows of the coach.
And then we arrived at Duncliff Churchyard, where the grave of W. B. Yeats is located. In light rain, we filed off the coach and payed our respects to the great poet. Yeats famously wrote his own epitaph in the closing lines of his poem, Under Ben Bulben.
Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
At the end of a long day, we arrived at perhaps our most interesting accommodation for the night, the Ocean Sands hotel in Inniscrone. The North Atlantic Ocean was spread out before us, and the sunset was absolutely amazing.
One of our travelers told us the next morning that he had been placed in the Presidential Suite and had thoroughly enjoyed it. Our room was out back, with several others, in a separate building. Upstairs there was a huge living room/dining room/kitchen, and downstairs two bedrooms. The Master Bedroom had an adjoining bathroom with a bathtub but no shower curtain, but there was another bathroom down the hall, so tiny that the shower could be compared (as I did the next morning to some of our fellow-travelers at breakfast) to the phone booth in which Clark Kent had changed into Superman. I had to step out into the hall to dry myself with a towel. Martha, showered before I did, spent a good deal of time trying to turn on the hot water, until finally she realized it was operated by an electrical switch on a wall in the hallway outside. Travel is always so interesting!
We stepped outside into a brisk wind to look at the hotel before sleeping the sound sleep of weary travelers. Beautiful! Despite the unusual plumbing.
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